Trudeau shares journey with suffering from bipolar disorder 57<\/p>\n
Mental health issues advocate Margaret Trudeau engaged a crowd at Northern College in South Porcupine, sharing her journey with being bipolar. Afterwards she signed books and met with people. <\/p>\n
The mental health issues advocate shared her story with more than 500 people at Northern College in Timmins Feb. 13. The night before, she spoke at the college\u2019s Kirkland Lake campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why I\u2019m bipolar,\u201d she told the crowd, light-heartedly singing that maybe it\u2019s like Lady Gaga says and she was born this way.<\/p>\n
Sharing her journey, she engaged the room with stories about her family, including her son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and first husband, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Afterwards people lined up to have her sign a book or take a photo, with Trudeau staying longer than the allotted time to meet everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have obviously some great stories and people know my stories, so that works as a good vehicle, but I\u2019m giving a mental health message. I\u2019m trying to teach people from my terrible experiences of what not to do, and I know what the proper way is to have recovery from mental illness,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While she chooses to live a private life now, the choice wasn\u2019t always hers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was living Pierre\u2019s life, I did not really choose it. I chose him but not the life so I never wanted to be in that kind of spotlight. But this kind of spotlight where I can help people is good for me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
With bipolar, Trudeau would go from depression to mania, all in the public eye.<\/p>\n
The depression, she says, is a thief; taking your life away from you and when you\u2019re out of it there is a lot of brick-building to do.<\/p>\n
In mania, she describes feeling powerful, enlightened and having a busy brain.<\/p>\n
There is a third stage of the illness she said nobody told her about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pushed myself into insanity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The illness has meant two stays in a psychiatric ward. The first, she describes as the worst time of her life. The second, which came after her son Michel\u2019s and Pierre Trudeau\u2019s deaths about two years apart, saved her life.<\/p>\n
When her mental health journey started, she said she was well-educated, but didn\u2019t know anything about psychology.<\/p>\n
With the knowledge that there is about it today, she believes it can help break the stigma around mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause stigma is based on fear, on not wanting to be humiliated, not wanting to be ashamed,\u201d Trudeau said. \u201cAnd yet everything has shown me that the shame that I should have carried was not for the mental illness, but having one and not getting accepting and getting help so that my family and my friends and everyone we could have a good life, because you cause a lot of collateral damage by not getting treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no cure for bipolar, but there are ways to deal with it.<\/p>\n
Today, Trudeau has the illness under control and proactively manages it.<\/p>\n
She said she works every day, one day at a time, to keep herself out of mania.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m living with it, but I\u2019m not letting it control me anymore. I want to be the one in charge of my emotions, I don\u2019t want them to be in charge of me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Part of tackling it is being mindful.<\/p>\n
If she has a bad day and needs to take a higher dose of pills, she\u2019ll take a \u2018healing day\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to do it very often, sometimes if I\u2019ve been out on the road for five or six days, you know doing a lot of events and I\u2019m tired, I can feel it happening and I say \u2018oh I\u2019ve just got to go down\u2019,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
With the knowledge of hindsight, Trudeau knows now that being in the spotlight was a trigger.<\/p>\n
At the same time, she said she was a young woman and mother trying to find her way.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs well, I was a little bit of a revolutionary, or so I thought in my own mind. I wanted love, peace and happiness to reign, and flowers in our hair,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For people who think they are dealing with a mental illness, she encourages going to the Canadian Mental Health Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet your courage and walk through the door,\u201d she said, adding they can do an assessment to see if you need the hospital or, maybe, just a friend.<\/p>\n