The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar

Written by Terri Cheney

Narrated by Coleen Marlo

The New York Times bestselling author blends a pitch-perfect childlike voice with keen adult observation as she shares her heartrending, groundbreaking insider's look into the fascinating and frightening world of childhood bipolar disorder.

Starting with her first suicide attempt at age seven, Terri Cheney was held hostage by her roller-coaster moods, veering from easy A-pluses to total paralysis, from bouts of obsessive hypersexuality to episodes of alcoholic abandon that nearly cost her her life. On the outside, her world appeared perfect. She was pretty and smart, an academic superstar and popular cheerleader. Yet her inner world was chaos, a well-guarded secret too troubling, too painful to fathom even thirty years later in her bestselling memoir, Manic, which was lauded as "chilling" and "brilliant" by People. In The Dark Side of Innocence, her eye-opening follow-up, Terri shares her poignant and compelling journey from a childhood of disaster and despair to hope and survival, an informative first-person account of a dark beast that preys on a staggering one million children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781705291641

Terri Cheney

Terri Cheney, once a successful entertainment attorney representing the likes of Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, now devotes her advocacy skills to the cause of mental illness.  On the boards of directors of several mental health organizations, she also facilitates a weekly community support group at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute.  Her writings about bipolar disorder have been featured in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and countless articles and blogs.  She currently resides in Los Angeles.  

Reviews for The Dark Side of Innocence

[Deezadesigns · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved it, but didn't always love the writer of the book due to her brutal honesty about some of the thoughts and actions driven by bipolar disorder. As someone who has the same diagnosis, I am very familiar with the internal drama. And I applaud her for sharing the complex interweavings of her POV as the author, her young selves and that of the black beast and all the struggles between them.

One little but not so little critique - as the author may no longer hold onto this belief - are the final statements that bipolar is caused by brain chemistry imbalance which is a much debunked myth that can be googled anywhere - and not even the NIMH or CDC stands behind this statement. Brain chemistry is constantly shifting for everyone according to their stress levels that are highly variable according to environment of home, genetics of family, sensitivity of members of the family to stress. And medication cannot and doesn't address any of this. Meds are to quote Doctor Martin Seligman - one of the founder's of Positive Psychology - palliative rather than curative and have their own dangerous side effects.

SSRIs literally have the listed side effect of suicidal ideation and aggression, especially in teenagers. Anti-depressants have also been linked to brain damage in children, so the last message basically to get children diagnosed so they can be potentially drugged by medications that haven't been approved by the FDA for children is really disturbing.

I am not doubting Ms. Cheney's sincerity. And I understand her belief that drugs are the main answer for her stability, but as a health coach again with the same diagnosis who is recovered 5 years now without the use of drugs - I am thinking her dedication to finally being her authentic self, therapy, sobriety, her therapeutic approach to her own writing has probably done more for her than drugs have done in the long run. At the end of the day - we all should be the final arbiters of what is right for us medically. AND I respect anyone's decision to take pharmaceuticals as long as they are fully informed of the short and long term (often untested) side effects and are fine with whatever side effects show up for them.

But - the reality that MANY people have bipolar symptoms diagnosed or not and have also found a way to live a decent life without using them at all or using them for the long term. And it is truly disturbing to continuously be told that taking meds forever is the ONLY way to achieve recovery and the ONLY way to avoid suicidality. Which is a preposterous and illogical statement with no way of proving it to be true since plenty of people commit suicide without the diagnosis and plenty of folks who are taking meds commit suicide - especially when the meds are not taking away the pain, which is the only thing they are designed to do.

True recovery is based upon creating healthy coping skills and thought patterns and rebalancing hormones through diet, exercise, creative expression, social support. And repairing the damage done to us through belief systems that are stressful and oppressive.

Terri never held back on sharing the dysfunctionality of her family and how unsafe she felt regarding loving attachment to her Mom in particular as a child. Always worried about the dissolution of the family. Witnessing and even enabling her mother's paranoid jealousy. The shared family belief of stuffing emotions and truth underground and how false perfectionism was constantly rewarded. All the quiet toxic suffering that her sensitive self took as truth. This is a total recipe for mental health challenges. If there is ANYTHING a family should first do when they have a child who is having mental health challenges - is to go to FAMILY counseling. It is more likely their mental health is a product of their sensitivity to dysfunctions occurring within the family or pressures that the family is suffering like poverty, racism, being a single parent - which family members need extra support and coping skills for.

Mental health problems are a logical result of many potential imbalances in living life itself. And instead of encouragement to take drugs so one is less likely to feel or cognate what the problems and solutions to them are ... perhaps we should be a little more curious about FIXING the life problems and mental thought patterns that cause them in the first place - while also understanding that strong emotions and energies are NOT inherently bad, and that it is the choice of what we do with them that counts in the long run.