How Everything Everywhere All at Once portrays Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder

Guest Post by Kathryn Lampe  

My manic episodes are hard to describe.

When I watched Everything Everywhere All at Once, I finally saw a manifestation of what goes on in my state of psychosis.

I went to see the film expecting an epic tale about multidimensional travel, love, martial arts, hot dogs, and bagels. That was what my friends shared while convincing me to go see this movie. Indeed, I was not disappointed.

In fact, I was overcome with love for this movie. What I didn’t expect, though, was to be moved to tears—a lot of tears—by the film's most visceral narrative for me, which was mental illness.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a delicately constructed story. It is ridiculously complicated yet beautifully simple.

The story follows Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant who is navigating tricky relationships with her husband, Waymond, her father, “Gong Gong,” her daughter, Joy, and her business, a laundromat. The film starts out slow, setting the scene and conveying the monotony, depression, and burnout Evelyn currently feels.

Soon, though, as all these struggles come to a crux, Evelyn is thrust into an alternate universe where she is told by another version of her husband that she must save the multiverse.

Things pick up from there as she frantically travels between worlds. She soon discovers that the threat to their world is her own nihilistic and chaotic daughter, Joy (or at least, one version of her). As the title implies, the movie wizzes through everything that happens in all the dimensions in one instance.

I was instantly swept up into these worlds. As the film went on, I realized: this is exactly what mania feels like to me.

I have bipolar I disorder, which means that I am affected by depressive episodes and particularly intense manic episodes. In those moments, I feel like someone is whispering how to hack into saving the world, just as Waymond does to Evelyn. I feel like I have superpowers, like Evelyn’s sudden mastery of kung-fu.

I feel myself going a million miles an hour and experiencing everything infinitely, like Evelyn does as she shuffles between worlds. Then, whenever Evelyn snaps back into her “normal” self and world, she seems maniacal from an outsider's perspective. She lashes out violently and everyone is worried about her. I anxiously wondered if that was how people saw me when I was manic.

Another heart-wrenching layer to the story is a look into Joy’s world. Though her name means happiness, she is deeply hurting and can’t seem to find meaning in her life. Suicidal thoughts tempt her to tumble into a black hole abyss (in the middle of a bagel).

Her mother guides her toward embracing life despite the meaninglessness she sees. All they come to know is that there are people they love and that is enough to live.

What was most moving to me was the support that got Evelyn back to who she really was, with a new gratitude for her life and the ones she loves. Waymond especially stuck by her and guided her through the absurdity, the confusion, and the urgency.

Mother and daughter reconciled their tense relationship and began to empathize with each other. Even her nagging accountant came out on the other side realizing how badly Evelyn was struggling and gave her another chance to sort out her taxes.

Mental disorder is frightening. When I am manic, I am taken out of reality.

I don’t know how to be myself anymore. I was hospitalized last year when I got out of control and could not function normally.

This led to my diagnosis, but it also led to intense depression. I had to confront all these overwhelming sensations as Evelyn, as well as Joy, did. Seeing them go through this was unbelievably cathartic and even triggering, but it was necessary and it was wonderful.

We—Evelyn, Joy, I, and so many others, I believe—realized that it would be okay once we did work through those immense experiences because we came out on the other side.

We didn’t and never would completely understand the insanity that had happened to us, but in everything, everywhere, all at once, we felt unbearably loved.

Guest Post by Kathryn Lampe