I Chart Your Vitals at 3AM While Managing My Own

I have held a patient's hand through their worst moment.

I have charted vitals at 3am when my own heart was racing for reasons that had nothing to do with the floor I was working. I have administered medications — some of the very same class I take myself — with steady hands and a calm face, while internally navigating a storm no one around me could see.

I am a Registered Nurse.

And I am bipolar.

I used to keep those two sentences in separate rooms. Now I put them in the same breath — because that's where the power lives.

What They Teach You in Nursing School (And What They Don't)

In nursing school, they teach you about mood disorders. DSM criteria. Medication classes. Nursing interventions. They teach you to assess your patients for risk and respond with empathy.

What they don't teach you is what it feels like to be the one on the chart.

What they don't teach you is that the nurse explaining bipolar disorder to a patient in room 4 might go home that night and fight the same battle she just calmly described. That the healthcare professional dispensing psychoeducation sometimes has to re-teach it to herself at 2am when the thoughts get loud.

Nobody tells you that part.

So I'm telling you.

The Clinical Reality — And the Human One

As a nurse, I understand the neuroscience. I understand that bipolar disorder involves dysregulation of the limbic system, disruptions in dopamine and serotonin pathways, and a nervous system that responds to stimuli with amplified intensity.

I understand why I get triggered the way I do.

But clinical knowledge and lived mastery are two completely different things.

You can know exactly what a wound looks like in a textbook and still be unprepared for how it feels to clean one. You can understand the pharmacology of grief and still not know how to sit inside your own.

For years, I thought that because I understood my condition, I had power over it.

I was wrong. Understanding is the beginning. Ownership is the work.

The Trigger Is Not the Enemy

Here's what I had to learn — both as a clinician and as a patient of my own life:

Triggers are not attacks. They are data.

In the clinical world, we don't ignore a patient's pain response. We assess it. We ask what the body is communicating. What does this reaction tell us about what's happening underneath?

Your emotional triggers deserve the same clinical respect.

Every time something sets you off — a tone of voice, a feeling of abandonment, a sudden shift in energy — your nervous system is flagging something real. Something unprocessed. Something that still needs tending.

The problem was never that I felt too much. The problem was that I hadn't yet built the internal infrastructure to triage what I felt.

In nursing, triage means you assess urgency and respond accordingly. You don't panic at every alarm. You learn which ones require immediate action and which ones you monitor. That skill applies to your mind just as much as it applies to a patient's vitals.

Being Bipolar in Healthcare Almost Broke Me — Until It Built Me

I will be honest with you.

There were shifts where I questioned whether I belonged in that uniform. When the hypomania made me feel invincible and I had to deliberately slow myself down. When the low came crashing mid-week and I had to dig for reserves I wasn't sure I had. When a colleague said something dismissive about a psychiatric patient and I had to hold my face still while something deep inside me quietly broke.

This career asked everything of me. And there were seasons when I wasn't sure I had it to give.

But here's what I found on the other side of those seasons:

The same sensitivity that made me vulnerable made me extraordinary at this work.

My patients feel seen by me in ways that go beyond training — because I know what it is to feel unseen. I recognize quiet desperation behind a flat affect because I've worn it. I can sit with someone in their darkest moment without flinching because I've been in rooms that dark myself.

Bipolar didn't disqualify me from this calling. It deepened it. 

The Job I Gave Myself

At some point I stopped waiting for my environment to become less triggering.

I stopped waiting for people to be more careful with me. I stopped waiting for the world to slow down enough for my nervous system to feel safe.

I gave myself a new job description:

It is MY job to no longer be at the mercy of my triggers. Not because I'll stop feeling — but because I will no longer let what I feel make decisions for me.

That is not suppression. As a nurse, I know the difference. Suppression buries. Regulation integrates. I chose integration.

I started treating my own mental health with the same clinical seriousness I bring to my patients. Consistent sleep. Movement as medicine. Boundaries designed not as walls but as care plans — protecting my healing environment so I can keep showing up for others.

I stopped romanticizing the chaos and started respecting the complexity.

What I Want You to Know

Whether you are a healthcare professional reading this and quietly recognizing yourself, or someone who has carried a bipolar diagnosis in silence for years — this is for you:

You are not too much.

You are not broken equipment waiting to be fixed before you're allowed to live fully.

You are a person with a nervous system that experiences the world at a frequency most people will never access. Yes, that comes with real challenges. I won't minimize them. I've lived them on 12-hour shifts with no breaks and a mind that wouldn't quiet down.

But it also comes with a depth of perception, a capacity for empathy, and a resilience that is forged — not assigned.

You don't need to earn your worthiness by being easier to handle.

You need to learn how to handle yourself — with the same compassion you would extend to a patient, a loved one, a stranger in need.

Start there.

I Am Not My Diagnosis. I Am Its Author.

I wear my stethoscope and I wear my story. Both are part of who I am. Neither cancels the other out.

Being bipolar in a world that misunderstands mental illness, while working in a field that treats it, has taught me something I could not have learned any other way:

The people who understand suffering the deepest are often the ones who were asked to carry the most of it.

That is not a punishment. That is preparation.

So no — I will not apologize for how intensely I feel. I will not shrink my experience to make others comfortable. I will not pretend that professionalism means emotional erasure.

I will regulate. I will reflect. I will lead with intention.

And I will keep showing up — for my patients, for my community, and for every version of myself that had to fight to get here.

To every nurse, doctor, healthcare worker, caregiver, or human being navigating a mental health diagnosis while still pouring into others — I see you. Your struggle is not your shame. It is your strength in progress.

Stay grounded. Stay regulated. Stay powerful.

— Ndabahaliye, D., CCRN (@RN_DuaneN)
Bipolar. Brilliant. Still here.
Founder, BOND (Brotherhood of Nursing Dedication)
@brotherhoodofnursingdedication