Widowed by Bipolar Disorder with Psychosis

This is my first blog for this website and my first blog as a widow. I decided to share something that I wrote on the last day of May, which was Mental Health Awareness Month. I think it’s an important post to the widow community and to survivors of suicide loss, because I have felt so alone as someone who has experienced this type of loss due to psychosis. My husband didn’t end his life because it was hard or because he was sad, he ended his life because his mind wasn’t his own. I hope this post finds those that need it, so they know they are not alone.

Trigger warning: anxiety, panic, trauma, bipolar, psychosis, suicide

I have had ‘generalized anxiety disorder’  (GAD) and ‘panic disorder’ along with phobias and borderline OCD (all things therapist diagnosed) for what my therapist and I think has been most my life, judging by the fact that I remember a panic attack in kindergarten. This means that I worry all the time about everything and when I can’t reel it in, I have panic attacks. I have obsessive thoughts that I think helps with the panic and anxiety (it doesn’t); intrusive thoughts where I see things as if they’re happening, but they’re not. I started going to therapy and was diagnosed at the age of 26. I have been with my current therapist now for about 9 years. I also have childhood trauma and relationship trauma, both of which have been treated with EMDR trauma therapy. I have been medicated for the better part of two decades. There have been brief moments where I have gone off medication for these things (pregnancy was not one of them, my therapist, doctor and I all felt it was in the best interest of me and my child that I stayed medicated). I will never go unmedicated again in my life. I am on Zoloft, formerly was on Paxil, and I take as needed anxiety/sleep medication. I am currently also diagnosed with acute stress disorder since Jonathan‘s death, and I have done EMDR trauma therapy already in the hopes that it does not turn into PTSD.

Jonathan knew all of these things and loved me, not in spite of them, but including them. He always made sure that I put my mental health first. He told me daily that he was not mad at me and that he liked me and that he loved me and that I was a good mama, because he knew that my brain told me otherwise every single day. And I returned the favor for him. We knew each other better than anyone ever knew us, and because of that, we learned to know ourselves better because of one another’s support and guidance.

That’s exactly why I know in my heart what went down the day he died. Because we knew each other as well as we knew ourselves.

Jonathan was diagnosed with ‘bipolar 1 disorder with psychosis.’ Many people have a basic understanding of what bipolar disorder is, but so few know that it can be partnered with psychosis, and so few know exactly how psychosis works. It can be its own disorder, it can be a one time thing that happens in a person’s life that isn’t diagnosed with any mental illness. Psychosis is so unknown in the general public and so little talked about. And yet, as my therapist said, they are much more worried about somebody with bipolar because of the psychosis component.

We talk about people taking their lives because they’re depressed or their life is hard and say they just need to reach out to somebody. But we never talk about how likely somebody with psychosis is to have suicidal ideations in a moment when their mind is not their own.

Almost 3 years ago, Jonathan went missing, due to getting rhabdomyolysis, which causes dementia like symptoms, and it triggered a psychosis episode. He believed that there were people out to kill him (Kanye West being one of them) and the only way he could save my life was to leave or to take his life. And that time, he left. He walked the length of a marathon, mostly barefoot, in his missing time. At the very end when the voices said he couldn’t keep going on, and that he needed to end his life, he took a small bottle of OTC meds, which thankfully proved to not be enough. And it was only a few minutes later he was found by a friend. He left to save my life. Let me say that again, he left because he thought it was the only way I could live. And in rational minds, we know that that is not true and he knew that when he finally remembered weeks later. But in that moment, his mind told him it was the only way to keep his new wife alive. This is how psychosis works, there is zero rational thought. He believed the irrational thoughts to be reality.

Because of a therapist Jonathan saw in the hospital almost 3 years ago and his psychiatrist and therapist before death, he was finally getting to the bottom of what was happening in his mind. He was finally starting to understand the psychosis component and how we could help it. He was finally correctly medicated (and it was not lithium, which everyone thinks is the only option and the best option for bipolar, but that is not always the case and there are newer medications out there). He was finally having the right things asked and was talking about the right things. Psychosis can so often be triggered by childhood trauma. And he had finally scheduled an EMDR trauma therapy appointment, the first one that would’ve taken place 7 days after his death, to help heal the traumas that triggered his episodes.

Having a psychotic/paranoid episode can mean different things for different people, but for Jonathan, it meant that he was not in reality. Not able to find his truth. And if it was bad enough where checking the facts didn’t help, when he finally came out of it, he did not remember for weeks or months what happened in that episode.

Just as Jonathan was there for me, I was there for him. We checked in every day. Every. Single. Day. On a scale of one to 10, where was his depression, where was his anxiety, where was his paranoia? Was he having mania? Was he having suicidal ideations? Did he have a plan? The day he died, they were all 1s or less. Above a 2, he would reach out to his psychiatrist, above a 5 he would go directly to the hospital. And the answer to the last 2 questions that day were no. They had been no for the better part of 3 years. We knew each other as well as we knew ourselves.

Jonathan knew his triggers. He was backing away from things that were triggers. He knew his usual plan, so all meds were locked up in our house with only me knowing the code. He went to therapy. He was going to start trauma therapy. He voluntarily told me when he was struggling, and also when I asked. He was taking his medication (toxicology proved that). He was working hard to heal. He told me often how he wanted to live. Let me repeat that, he told me that very week how he wanted to live a full life with me and our boys. He had plans with some siblings a week later; we had planned our son’s upcoming 1st birthday party and he had picked the theme; and we had plans he was really excited about to go to Montana to see our family in June. He was hopeful to go back to work at the middle school when our baby started preschool. We dreamt of the day of moving to Oregon from Minnesota. We talked about the future all the time.

On February 29th, after a week of very little sleep from being on call for work (and being called in many times at that), partnered with some drama in his personal life that triggered him, and partnered with the shooting of two police officers and one paramedic in our town, Jonathan was struggling with paranoia. We checked the facts many times a day, he had upped his medication which was allowed with his prescribed dosage, he had scheduled therapy. He had to get through one more night of being on call and then he could catch up on sleep, and hopefully his mind would be reset. That day he reported that he was feeling better, the paranoia was almost at zero with the depression only at a 1 with no other symptoms present, because he was relieved that he was on the last day of being on call and then it was family time. In order to celebrate, he wanted to go get donuts in the morning. I reminded him that I still worked the next day as it was Friday, and he forgot because our oldest did not have school. After we put the boys to bed, the first night of them sharing their room together and our oldest was so excited, we played Mario Kart and the Game of Life on Nintendo Switch. We held hands. We told each other randomly in the middle of the games, as we often did, “I love you so much.” It’s something we said to each other all the time, “I love you so much.” After we stopped playing and I was about to head to bed, he said he wanted to go to the store so he could see if they had day old donuts like they sometimes do so he could get them for the morning. My anxiety being what it was, he said I could call or text him the whole time. There will never be a moment that passes that I wish I didn’t text sooner or called him while he was in the store. But I know it may have changed nothing and that I did everything I could that night, and always. After about 20 minutes, I texted him and he said he was on his way home because they didn’t have donuts. He got home, he went to the fridge and got string cheese and asked if I wanted some, and he sat down next to me on the couch. I told him about my Game of Life, I was a brain surgeon. He laughed. I gave him a kiss and stood up, saying I was going to go to bed after I put clothes away. And then the rest of the story will always be with just me and whoever I’ve already told.

It was the worst night of my life. I sincerely thought he had a stroke. It was about a week and a half later that I got a call from the detective telling me what they saw on the surveillance cameras in the store. He had gone to the donuts, and almost as if someone snapped their fingers, he changed course and headed to the over-the-counter medications and headed to bathroom. Toxicology reports six weeks after death confirmed that it was an OTC meds overdose. And his death was ruled suicide.

He did not know what he had done when he came home. Let me say that again, he had no recollection that he took those pills. It took facts, logic, the certainty of me knowing him as well as he knew himself, my therapist telling me statistics, what he said to me in his last moments, and reprocessing it all again in EMDR trauma therapy, that confirms that. He did not remember. It was a psychotic episode. And something in that moment in the store triggered him, and he was alone and scared, and based on everything I historically know about him, he thought he was protecting me and our boys. I believe when I texted him, he was snapped back into actual reality.

So let’s start talking about psychosis when talking about mental health. So little is understood about it by the general public. It’s not talked about because people think it means you’re crazy. And it can be really dangerous even when you’re doing all of the right things.

Jonathan loved his life. He said it many times in the last year of his life, he was the happiest he had ever been in his life and he felt the most mentally well he had ever felt in his life. He was excited for his next journey of healing. He wanted to be vulnerable and heal generational traumas, and he did it all for himself and his boys. He was so proud to be a dad to his boys. And he was so proud to be my husband. He wasn’t sad. He didn’t hate his life. He was doing everything right and everything he could. Sometimes that just isn’t enough for mental illness. He was wonderful and loved and kind and funny and smart and handsome. And he was the best dad and husband there ever was. And those are the things that he should and will be remembered for. He will not be defined even in death by an illness that took his life. He died from bipolar 1 disorder with psychosis. And that is what I will always tell people moving forward, not what a piece of paper says that doesn’t understand mental illness and doesn’t understand the man he was. We love you, Jonathan, so, so much.

About Cassie Dockter-Reeves

Cassie Dockter-Reeves struggled to write this bio. Who is she now that her husband died? Sometimes she doesn’t know anymore. She is the mother of sweet Everest, her (currently) 15 month old. She is the Mutti to kind Jude, her almost 9-year-old stepson. She is the little sister to 2 awesome older sisters and 2 brother-in-laws. She is the aunt to 2 wonderful nephews and 1 amazing niece. She is the daughter to 2 loving parents who they are lucky to still have. She is the friend that is like family to several. But her favorite thing was being loved by Jonathan, she was most proud of (along with the role of mother) being his wife. His loving her helped her love herself. She doesn’t really know who who she is anymore as she has changed so much since her husband’s death, and it’s too fresh to know, it’s only been 4 months.

Cassie works a full-time remote job as a workforce management analyst. She loves photography and whales and the ocean and the mountains and has recently found the love of reading again. She has the most anxious dog who started her life as a stray and is a mutt (11 breeds in all, yes, she DNA tested her), named Livie after Olivia Benson on Law & Order SVU, because her husband knew her love of that character. They were together 6 years; were a family of 3 with his son Jude for 5 years; a family of 4 eight months after that when we adopted our dog; married in Cannon Beach, OR on July 26, 2021 (yes, because of The Goonies - Jonathan’s ring is engraved with GNSD - Goonies Never Say Die); and became a family of 5 with the unexpected early birth of their son, Everest, on March 24, 2023, who moved mountains to be here after infertility and a high risk pregnancy.

She is a newly single mom, and it’s challenging and rewarding and exhilarating and exhausting. She wasn’t supposed to do this alone. Her husband died from his bipolar disorder with psychosis at the age of 40 on February 29, 2024. And they are slowly learning to live again as a (smaller) family.

You can find her photography at: https://www.instagram.com/photographybycasandradockter?igsh=bGN1a3k4NzRhNTVr&utm_source=qr