Psychology Today | 11.11.2026 18:29
Two years ago, I found myself locked in a county jail for four months because of threats I made while in a manic psychosis. I had spent almost a decade eluding treatment for my bipolar I disorder, and the consequences of that circumvention had caught up with me. Behind bars for the first time in my life, and surrounded by beige concrete, I took cold comfort in Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati, or love of one’s fate. Instead of accepting my fate, I thought of counterfactuals: What if I had accepted my diagnosis earlier? What if I had gone to the hospital instead of insisting I was fine?
