Why I origionally came off of medication...

I will admit that the path I have chosen is not an easy road. My therapist supports my decision but she also has warned me of the possibilities of a life without medication. If it was up to her I think I would still be on meds though. lol.The thing is, I would never have learned how to do this without meds if I did not also have PTSD. The therapy I went through for that originally hit a brick wall . I was not progressing.  The BP meds numbed me too much and that caused me not to experience emotions the way that I needed to in order successfully complete the PTSD therapy. When my therapist and I discovered this. I, of my own will, decided to stay off the meds to fix the other parts of me. It had to be done because the two disorders were triggering each other and if I wasn't in a BP episode, I was having PTSD flare ups. Back and fourth, back and fourth. This was what my life had become. That is no way to live. At the time that I came off the meds, I had planned to go back on them. The therapy for the PTSD took 4 years to complete. During that 4 years my therapist gave me every behavioral tool that she could to help promote stability. Mood logs, and mood calendars, she taught me how to recognize when my episodes were starting, taught me to look for patterns, and how to challenge my destructive irrational thoughts to make them more bearable. We had a plan in place for suicide prevention and a call list and my fiance still has her number in his phone.  I researched alternative methods to help myself. And I made sure to surround myself with supportive people and have a back up plan in case it failed.
I chose to continue to stay off my medication after I completed therapy because I feel that I have proven to myself that I can manage this on my own. I also see it as a bit of a challenge because part of me still expects to eventually crash. I want to see how far I can go. Be it a few years or a lifetime. I have made a recent decision to get back on an anti anxiety medication, so I know that I am capable of recognizing when I do need to call it quits on doing this without medications.What does suck is that my choice has seemed to place me in somewhat of a stigma category. I have had people automatically assume that I am only saying no to meds because of Bipolar symptoms that make us think irrationally. People assume that I am doing this just because I don't like the side effects, which is a popular reason that a lot of bipolar individuals refuse to take meds.
I will see where this path leads me. I am okay with any consequences that may arise.