Depressive Episodes, Work-Life Balance, and Using Struggles as Strengths (and more!)

The newest content from the week ending June 8, 2024, and Scott’s weekly update

Scott Ninneman

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Speaking Bipolar

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5 min readJun 9, 2024

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Links to last week’s content are at the bottom of the newsletter.

New Writers

I finally got caught up on processing writer applications. Welcome to our newest writers!

Kassey Rohrscheib: “Writer | Poet | Survivor. Crafting poetry, weaving short stories, and exploring diverse themes. Passionate about creativity and resilience.”
Nanette Davis: “Nanette is a retired sociology professor, whose compelling interest, Mental health and illness, is demonstrated in her 2023 nonfiction book, ‘Raging Currents: Mental Illness and Family.’” (affiliate link)
Stephanie Ann Grant: “Greetings, I am a 47-year-old mom, grandma, and wife, married to my best friend. I’m also a veteran of the U.S. Army and have a bachelor’s degree in mental health.”
Tereza Kleovoulou: “I do photography combined with texts. I write to heal and I photograph to feel alive and in touch with reality.”
Ticiano Gonzalez Morillas: “Hi everyone! I inspire to reflect upon characteristics which I think are heavily misconceived or ignored in our society. Let’s look behind our facades and grow together.”

June 2024 Writing Prompt

Is self stigma part of your mental health journey? How does it affect you? Have you learned to control it? Prompt inspired by Josh Feinberg’s How Society’s Wrong Views on Bipolar Affect the Afflicted.
May 2024 writing prompt replies
Please tag me (@speakingbipolar) in your response and mention this prompt, so I know to add your story to the list. Thanks!

Announcements

Congratulations to odawni for 16,400+ reads for the story, Suicide is About Wanting to Live! This is officially the most-read story in the publication ever.
I started a new list (to be updated monthly) showcasing the top 10 most-read stories in the publication.
Are you looking for an easy way to add emojis to your stories or comments? Check out this free site.
I share links for many of your stories in my Sunday off-Medium, All Things Bipolar Newsletter.

Scott’s Weekly Update

Have you seen Medium’s homepage lately? Here’s a screenshot.

Medium’s management team is steadily pursuing their goal of making Medium a place only for human stories.

The first step was to remove a lot of the AI-generated content or make it ineligible for the partner program. I expect the ultimate goal is to have no AI-generated text content on the site.

Focusing on human stories is about more than just removing AI-generated posts. It’s about having stories that matter to readers.

The stories that are about real people, happy and sad times, failures and triumphs, have value. Those are the stories you remember and keep coming back to.

Earlier this week, Medium added new stats features for publications. Editors can now see stats similar to what you see on the writer side. The better metrics will help us see what’s doing well on Medium and what’s not.

I spent some time this week going through the top content in the publication. I noticed two important things.

One, looking through the 25 most-read stories in the publication, every one of them has a human element. Each story tells the tale of how mental illness has affected a life and the steps the writer (or their loved one) took to improve.

Clearly, these are the stories that are resonating with readers.

Two, I reviewed Boosted stories. Speaking Bipolar has been taking part in the Boost Nomination Program for 3 months now. Every week, I’m learning more about what Boosters want to promote: stories about humans and their problems and solutions.

The direction Medium is going is great, so I’m going to follow their lead.

What does that mean for you?

If you’re a reader here on Speaking Bipolar, you’ll find more stories that you’ll connect with.

If you’re a writer, you may find that I reject more of your stories. These rejections may not be because your stories are written poorly or full of grammar or punctuation errors. (Though I also reject for these reasons.)

Instead, I’m rejecting general stories. If it’s the same thing I could read on any other website and has no human element, I’m going to pass on it. I want to read your stories.

How did the topic affect you? What steps did you take to improve? What do you wish you would have done differently? Why?

When I started Speaking Bipolar, my goal was to share the horrors of mental illness from the inside. I also wanted to show the steps I took to maintain stability so I could help others. I knew it was important to share my story, warts and all, to help as many people as I could.

I started the original blog in 2018, and one thing is consistently true. The posts where I share things from my heart are the ones that always do the best.

In fact, one early story, is still the most-read post every month, even though I published it in 2019. Readers write to me often to say how they connected with the frustration and anger I felt while writing the story.

There’s a reason why people have been telling stories around campfires since the days of cavemen. Stories matter. Stories have value. Stories are how we find validation and encouragement to keep going.

So tell your stories. Share you wins and your losses. Open your heart and let the world in through your words.

I look forward to publishing many more of your stories in the months and years ahead.

Until next time, keep fighting.

Scott Ninneman

Last Week’s Content

Best of Speaking Bipolar

Top 10 Most-Read Stories (Updated Monthly)
Boosted stories on Speaking Bipolar

New writers welcome. Share your mental illness journey, poetry, and mental health tips by writing for Speaking Bipolar on Medium. Click here to find out how.