In this episode of Bipolar She, Janine talks with Betsi Werling about becoming a mom with bipolar I disorder. The general thinking fifteen years ago, was that pregnancy was too risky for women with mood disorders. Although Betsi and her husband decided they would not have children, a surprise pregnancy turned into quite a harrowing tale.

What followed was one challenge after another: a manic episode during pregnancy with a 14-day psychiatric hospitalization, medication changes including lithium, preeclampsia, undiagnosed gestational diabetes, an emergency C-section six weeks early, and weeks of watching her newborn daughter struggle in the NICU.

Betsi’s story is not a simple “everything turned out fine” story. It is a story of fear, trauma, faith, marriage, community support, and extraordinary courage. She talks honestly about PTSD from the birth experience, the toll pregnancy took on her and her husband, and the arrival of her daughter that made every terrifying moment worth it.

This is a powerful episode for women with bipolar disorder, mothers with mood disorders, and anyone who has wondered whether mental illness, pregnancy, stability, and motherhood can coexist.

Topics include: bipolar I, pregnancy, mania, lithium, psychiatric hospitalization, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, premature birth, NICU, PTSD, motherhood, marriage, faith, and support.

Content note: mania, psychiatric hospitalization, pregnancy complications, emergency birth, NICU, and birth trauma

Betsi's Talk For Her Faith Community

Support the show

Help Bipolar She Today! Buy Me A Coffee is a platform for podcasters to receive support, even if just a micro-donation. It's finally time to grow! Let's amplify voices of mental illness in all their raw details.

Bipolar She is dedicated to real conversations for women living with mental illness. Hosted by Janine Noel, the majority of episodes give voice to a woman who has lived-life experience with mental illness--or who has experienced the illness of someone close to them. Along the way, I interview experts in the field that address additional mental health concerns.

Frankly, coping with a mental health condition can be exhausting. Here's a place where you can land and find an episode that resonates with you. Some topics we've covered: being a bipolar mom or having a bipolar mom. Anxiety, agoraphobia, chronic depression, ECT, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, a psychiatrist that breaks your trust. A therapist who goes above and beyond to help you. The impact of trauma on your brain.

Bipolar She couldn't have thrived without guitarist, JD Cullum's original music.

Editor Brandon Moran makes everyone's voice sound both crisper and smarter.

Sponsored by Amy Vincze's Emotional Freedom Technique App: Soar With Tapping.

Today on Bipolar She, Janine looks at how mental illness shows up on screen from the neurotic, quirky TV musical Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to the critically acclaimed Silver Linings Playbook with Bradly Cooper’s pitch perfect bipolar performance, to Taylor Tomlinson’s bold comedy special Look at You that dives right into being a bipolar millennial, and the deep psychological trauma revealed by creator Richard Gadd in the haunting Netflix original Baby Reindeer.

This episode moves from the psychologically light content to psychologically dark and asks: What screen stories get mental illness right? What can we see differently now about the public’s perception of mental illness on screen? Has anything changed?

Bipolar She is an independent mental health storytelling podcast. To support the show and help keep Janine and her editor afloat, help with a micro-donation at Buy Me A Coffee

Have a mental health story you want to tell? Whether it becomes a journal entry, essay, memoir, podcast episode, or something you say out loud for the first time, it starts with story. Janine is preparing a storytelling class for people ready to write and speak about the hard stuff. Visit BipolarShe.com and sign up for updates.

Support the show

Help Bipolar She Today! Buy Me A Coffee is a platform for podcasters to receive support, even if just a micro-donation. It's finally time to grow! Let's amplify voices of mental illness in all their raw details.

Bipolar She is dedicated to real conversations for women living with mental illness. Hosted by Janine Noel, the majority of episodes give voice to a woman who has lived-life experience with mental illness--or who has experienced the illness of someone close to them. Along the way, I interview experts in the field that address additional mental health concerns.

Frankly, coping with a mental health condition can be exhausting. Here's a place where you can land and find an episode that resonates with you. Some topics we've covered: being a bipolar mom or having a bipolar mom. Anxiety, agoraphobia, chronic depression, ECT, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, a psychiatrist that breaks your trust. A therapist who goes above and beyond to help you. The impact of trauma on your brain.

Bipolar She couldn't have thrived without guitarist, JD Cullum's original music.

Editor Brandon Moran makes everyone's voice sound both crisper and smarter.

Sponsored by Amy Vincze's Emotional Freedom Technique App: Soar With Tapping.

What Happened to You? The Neurosequential Model With Diane Vines

In this powerful conversation, Janine sits down with Diane Vines, a seasoned clinician and Neurosequential Model practitioner whose work bridges trauma, brain development, family systems, and real-world healing.

Diane has worked with childhood abuse victims and subsequent developmental trauma since 1988. Her approach is far from prescriptive, and she is an innovator when it comes to creative and specific therapeutic treatment.

At the center of this episode is the Neurosequential Model, developed by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Bruce Perry. Perry’s groundbreaking work helped bring a crucial question into the mainstream: not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?” His research and clinical model connect early experience, brain development, stress response, relationships, and healing.

Diane explains why the Neurosequential Model is not a treatment by itself. It is a framework. It helps clinicians understand what parts of the brain and nervous system were shaped by early life, what remains disorganized or underdeveloped, and what kind of support may help create new pathways. For Diane, a once-a-week approach with talk therapy seems like too little time to change your life. So she deeply questions how to keep her patients learning the other 167 hours in a week.

Diane talks about the brainstem, limbic system, cortex, and the importance of working from the bottom up in therapy contexts. She brings new tools to therapy to prevent dysregulation. She also describes how a person’s survival tools may look like symptoms later in life, even though those tools once made perfect sense.

Janine and Diane also discuss dissociation, psychosis, bipolar disorder, shame, developmental trauma, and the hope of neuroplasticity.

Inside the conversation:

Why the brain is a survival organ

• How early stress shapes later functioning
• Why “regulate, relate, reason” matters
• Why talking may not work until the body feels safe
• How trauma can affect trust, empathy, connection, and isolation
• Why relationships are central to healing
• How therapeutic support can include rocking, rhythm, animals, movement, weighted blankets, occupational therapy, family mapping

Support the show

Help Bipolar She Today! Buy Me A Coffee is a platform for podcasters to receive support, even if just a micro-donation. It's finally time to grow! Let's amplify voices of mental illness in all their raw details.

Bipolar She is dedicated to real conversations for women living with mental illness. Hosted by Janine Noel, the majority of episodes give voice to a woman who has lived-life experience with mental illness--or who has experienced the illness of someone close to them. Along the way, I interview experts in the field that address additional mental health concerns.

Frankly, coping with a mental health condition can be exhausting. Here's a place where you can land and find an episode that resonates with you. Some topics we've covered: being a bipolar mom or having a bipolar mom. Anxiety, agoraphobia, chronic depression, ECT, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, a psychiatrist that breaks your trust. A therapist who goes above and beyond to help you. The impact of trauma on your brain.

Bipolar She couldn't have thrived without guitarist, JD Cullum's original music.

Editor Brandon Moran makes everyone's voice sound both crisper and smarter.

Sponsored by Amy Vincze's Emotional Freedom Technique App: Soar With Tapping.