I figured this was the best place to ask this since some of you may have experience with bipolar work accommodations. I’m diagnosed with bipolar 1 and working from home has been an absolute godsend. It has really helped my depression and anxiety, which in turn has decreased the frequency of manic episodes for me. 

Starting tomorrow, we’re going back to working in the office and it has caused me such debilitating dread and anxiety to the point of throwing up. I’m relatively new to the company and workforce in general, as I graduated college in January. I thought I was really lucky finding a job that I can work from home and be able to sustain myself financially. I was really shocked when I heard that we were going to go back to the office soon, as I took this job thinking I was only going to be working from home. 

I want to ask my boss if I can continue working from home rather than going to the office, but I am having a lot of anxiety about it. For one, it’s a really small and kind of old fashioned company so they’re big on the whole office thing, even though I can do all my work from home, and probably do it better at home than in the office. I’m just not sure how to go about asking for this, as I’m not super familiar with mental health work accommodations as I’ve never asked for something like that before. I’m really nervous about having to disclose my bipolar diagnosis, as again it’s a very small and old fashioned company and I’m nervous there’ll think I’m just being a lazy 20-something year old. 

If anyone has any experience with this, please let me know how I should go about it. I’ve gotten to a decent place mentally and I can feel the dread and anxiety of having to go into the office potentially destroying that.