Hey I'm a 22-year-old male in California.

     I was diagnosed with BP when I was ~16. I had tried to hang myself in elementary school, gone through several years of depression, was prone to severe mood swings, and for years was obsessed with suicide. I was prescribed a couple of medications with limited effect, celexa, lexapro, prozac, and lamcital. However, I always had qualms with what I perceive to be a symptom oriented approach to BP treatment, and a general mistrust of being permanently put on medications. With a little more than a decade of evaluating my depression, my life, my self, and my thought patterns, I have reached some important personal conclusions that I hope will benefit some of you out there, but would not like to project the idea that I believe that these conclusions apply to everyone.

     Now I believe most everyone who reads this will be familiar with what I call a thought-loop. That is that terrible loop of depressed thoughts that reinforce each other while spawning a line of thinking geared toward depressing/depressed thoughts. For instance mine used to go something like this: I'm so depressed, I'm so weak for being depressed, follow memories of personal weakness/ ideals which I have not lived up to, wow I'm a piece of *%$@, follow memories of dickishness, wow I don't deserve happiness, why would ever think I even deserve happiness when I'm such a piece, I'm depressed... And the loop continues till I would likely cry myself to sleep. Charming I know, but the point is these loops feed themselves, and share a common theme, reinforcing either two things: I'm depressed, or this is why I don't deserve happiness. The most important thing to remember is that to stop the loop you have to challenge your inner-monologue within the loop. This is hard but hence the title "Strength Through Self Discipline". But it comes down to the question: If you don't like being depressed, do you really want to be happy?

     What I've found helpful is to challenge each line of that inner monologue as they spew from that dark place. I'm depressed...this one is hard to counter with an opposite positive because I'm not a big fan of "fake it till you feel it", but I will say that remembering that of "state of being" phrases, are just that, and emotional states of being are not permanent helps immensely.

     SO, you say/think "I'm Depressed"...(challenge) but that's ok, its a normal human emotion that I'm feeling and not my permanent state of being, thus I'm not always going to be depressed. The first step to the light at the end of the tunnel is recognizing there is one. So we've now score one hard won point in this game. But depression isn't finished, it wants blood today. It hurls your past wrong doings at you, the pain of reliving your failing brings you to your emotional knees. You can't take an emotional breath you feel yourself slipping, but as you go down and depression looms over you, you remember, "I deserve and want to be happy! I answered that question with a F*cking Yes!" and you surge up and swing a right hook into the jaw of depression by remembering all the times you were good, the times you acted in kindness, in honesty, in compassion, in empathy. Depression staggers back, hanging on the ropes, you got to finish this quick, because it could be a long fight, drooling depression slurs that you better give up now, because no matter how hard you fight, you don't deserve to be happy, you don't even deserve to be alive. This is when your rage to live, your love of life, your love of beauty, of a gentle wind on your cheek, the purr of a cat, the way sunlight dances off leaves in a summer wind, the love of human ambition and accomplishment, the love of the things that are good and right. Your heart swells with your long sleeping passion, but this passion has been jerked awake like a hibernating bear, and comes forth at your depression like a very, very, very grumpy bear. With this rage you tear forth at depression, giving not an inch, and accepting no white flags from that demon, who has taken so much. The air that heaves through your nostrils is sweet with the realization that is life, your life, you're breathing. As depression is being carried away on a stretcher, don't get cocky, you've only won the first battle, and depression holds a grudge.