I have always known that I was different and gifted. Bipolar disorder is the gift but only a few learn to live with this gift, those who have the guts. You and I have the courage to live with this gift John. Many get burned by it.
I find the work of Teresa Descilo very important for an adequate understanding of mental disorders. She claims that trauma is behind much of what we call mental illness and I really agree with this. Teresa is an MSW and certified Trauma Specialist and the director of Victim Services centre in Miami.
I like what she writes and what she does in her work. Using her ideas and my ideas combined I have come to understand that people with mental disorders are more sensitive by nature and this may be an evolutionary mechanism to help humanity: at the same time this sensitivity and predisposition to creativity and art makes the person very vulnerable to life's negative events which often translate in trauma. No matter what the labels or the definition provided by the DSM behind most mental disorders there is trauma. Yet it is something that the medical and mental health communities don't often want to hear. We like to follow ideologies and the biomedical model has a strong hold. The sooner we change the sooner we will be able to help people.
Medication can only help to a certain extent: I would say 10% of what is required to truly help the person: the rest must come from other interventions knowing that all healing happens on a spiritual plane. Spirituality does not need to be affiliated with any particular creed: spirituality is something that humans need to help us cope with adversities. Spirituality can be linked to the creative process, to art, to consciousness and it can simply be the understanding that we are not just material bodies but also mental and spiritual and that many dimensions of being human are unexplainable by biology or medicine. We need a blalance but we have the tendency to be taken by ideology and at present we are going with the biomedical currents at our expense.
It is hard to truly understand mental disorders from a biomedical perspective. Bipolar is above all a spiritual and mental problem not just a physical biochemical one. That is my belief.
And that is why I struggle to get the message accross. It is like running up the hill and the hill becomes steeper and steeper. When are we going to wake up? Both sufferers and those who try to help are chasing the wind. To truly help the great majority of people we must expose the traumatic experiences and help people overcome their trauma.
Hey, Alfredo. I've had these discussions with various people. You definitely have a lot of support in your view, myself included. Basically, the same brain that is attuned to the most sublime in human nature is also vulnerable to the worst. We experience the most sublime and transcendent, even in the ordinary. But we pay a steep price in being vulnerable to the most mean and vulgar, even (again) in the ordinary.
I suspect a lot of so-called "normal" people may have numbed the perceptions and emotions they were born with just to survive in this world. Psychiatry would call this a successful adaptation, but it's one hell of a price to pay. The "maladaptors" like us also pay one hell of a price the other way.
So - we want to be who we are, but yet we have to survive. The biomedical model would turn us normal. But we need to find our own normal, not someone else's normal. Funny thing, society does value "good crazy." Successful artists and entrepreneurs and the like are "good crazy." "Normal" just doesn't cut it in these fields. But "good crazy" doesn't cut it in most paid employee situations.
I've made my choice. I don't do "normal" (but that doesn't mean I act crazy). But I also respect other people's choices. I think the trouble starts when the choices we make are out of alignment with what we want out of life.
I hope to pursue this discussion in future posts. Thanks for bringing this up.
Thank you for your reply John. And forgive me for miss-spelling the word "healing". I wrote heeling. Sometimes I get mixed up between writing in Italian, English and other languages. It gets confusing.
Yes I totally agree with you that we are normal in our own kind of way: a way that is very problematic in our society because it requires transparency, open dialogue and a more mature world based on emotions, warmth and spiritual understanding.
We can find our own normal but we can mostly share this normal amogst ourselves people who suffer and understand. The others may not always understand. I think that we need our humaness while others are becoming increasingly like robots and follow ideologies and rules. We question everything.
Featuring Content From:
By using this service, you accept our Terms of Use. Please read them. The consumer health information on is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment for any medical conditions. You should promptly seek professional medical care if you have any concern about your health, and you should always consult your physician before starting a fitness regimen. Copyright © 2013 Remedy Health Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
5 Rules for Bipolar Relationships 
Top 10 Ways to Support Your Partner With Bipolar Disorder 
5 Things to Keep in Mind in Bipolar Sexual Relationships 
5 Diet Tips To Help Manage Bipolar Disorder 
First of all, I'm sorry this is necessarily long. Sometimes you just can't leave anything out.
Oh yes. (I'm tempted to put that in caps.) The depression stated at age 8. Yes, I was talented, too. I started playing the piano on my own at age 5 and was soon composing my own music. I had a poem published in a national religious magazine at age 11. But I spent most of my time reading and drawing and messing around with art. By 16 I was a basket case mentally -- suicical (I turned the houe upside down and finanally found my dad's "midnight special" gun and held it in my mouth for about 30 min, really wanting to be rescued. And here I am today.) I was eventually treated for depression...and guess what? It sent me into a manic state for about 4 years (my first four years in college.) And I REALLY knew I was different in college. Mania is not so bad in college because I only needed 3 hrs of sleep a night and could study and work on projects almost non-stop. Made almost straight A's.
Everyone thought I had all the talents and brains I needed to propel me into success, while I was really going out of my mind. It got to the point where I was having to drop classes because I couldn't concentrate, I started exercising excessively and eating almost nothing. My fuel was mania! Underlying the mania was deep depression. Awful, horrible depression. And then the psychosis started. My dad told me to get my own place and finish paying for my own education. He wasn't paying for another year, said I should have finished in four. So I did. And eventualy finished college. I married on the spur-of-the-moment to a guy I hardly knew who turned out to be very controlling and abusive and just plain weird. We stayed together for 13 years with the mania gone but the depression alive and slowly removing the ground under my feet.
At age 35 I had a full-blown manic episode again. In and out of the hospital. Filed for divorce. They foreclosed on my house. I lost my fabulous job. Had to move back in with Mom and Dad. A lot of what happened during those years, I honestly can't remember, and that's a very good thing. I know I attempted suicide 3 times, almost succeeding once. A doctor had me on every mood stabilizer and antidepressant you can think of, one after the other. But it was years till the addition of an antipsychotic kicked in and I began to get better. After 12 years with my parents, I got my own place. I had to try living alone 3 times before it stuck. Ended up hospitalized 18 times, with 19 ECT sessions, and finally going on SSDI and a disability pension. I think Zyprexa probably saved my life. Calmed me down. No more mania. No more psychosis. And a couple of years later, the depression began to go away.
I've lived on my own for 3+ years now. I have an occasional hypomanic episode when I've tried to change medications. So I'm dancin' with the guy who brung me. Zyprexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Trazodone, Klonopin.
And there's still plenty of evidence that I'm "different." I've had to learn social graces, when to avoid stress, that I can't be perfect, all that kind of stuff. I can get along with people but it's like I'm seething inside all the time, not with anger but a kind of struggle to make everyday life work. I don't think it works for me like it does for other people, but of course maybe I'm wrong. It feels like I can't just go on with my life because there is that constant tug of low-grade depression and occasional hypomania. I never know what kind of day it's going to be when I wake up.
And people are still surprised if I ever mention I have had problems with mental illness. They say -- oh, but you seem so normal and happy! You learn to wear "the face" as the years go by -- the noncommital face that neither reveals that I am unhappy or super restless and anxious. My public face. Yes, there are good days. And I treasure them. And I'm beginning to wonder what is behind all the so-called normal people's "faces." Is it this hard for them, too?