Support Groups

I think I'm going to be managing my bipolar for the rest of my life.

I've been incredibly fortunate to have the friendship and strength provided by my support group to help me do that.

Even with a correct diagnosis and having found a good psychologist, psychiatrist, medication and a support group, I face a struggle. A struggle for normalcy, or at least efficacy.

But I want more than that.

I don't want to be just well enough to rub along despite issues I learn to live with. I want to be truly well. To have a rich, healthy and rewarding life filled with good friends, love and happiness.

I was talking to a friend at work the other day about chiropractors. He'd had a bad experience going to one who kept him coming back again and again. I think you get the same with good and bad psychologists too. I've been fortunate to have found some good therapists over time whose attitude is 'my goal is to get you better and then not see you again'. I was thinking that we should take the same attitude with our support groups too. I sincerely hope within my group we'll be friends and support one another for the rest of our lives, but I think the goal of the group should be for all of us to become well and not to need the group support any more, rather than for it to become a crutch that ceases to make real movement toward that end.

I hope we can keep working hard together on our recovery and increasing well being.

Why you shouldn’t Judge Yourself

You shouldn’t judge yourself for the same reason that BP shouldn’t run an environmental impact study on oil drilling.

You’re not qualified, because you’re biased.

You also don’t have enough data.

If you were really to have a chance at judging yourself accurately, you’d need a large enough sample set of other people to compare yourself against, from a range of social groups. You’d need to use some kind of objective set of criteria to choose data points, and then have the information collected scientifically.

Are you fat?

Are you attractive?

Are you smart?

Did you perform a certain task well?

How would you know? How could you know?

Unless you have a team of scientists on hand to do the research and comparative study, you just have two choices:

1) Keep an open mind

2) Judge yourself, inaccurately

So how do you know what you’re like? You don’t, and no-one else does either.

The truth is interesting, unusual. It’s doesn’t fit into neat little boxes. How you perceive things can change. Things you perceive can change. You probably have an idea, but it’s not the truth, just one version of it.

If you’re like me, interested in self discovery, then the idea that you can’t really judge yourself objectively is a bit scary. But I believe it’s true that you can’t. I hope this idea will help me be more fluid, and less judgemental.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

The narrative in my head is sometimes a friend, optimistic, encouraging and helpful. At other times it's my worst enemy, driving my anxiety up and my mood down.

Your mood is a bit like the musical score to a movie.

Have you ever watched a scary movie with the sound muted? It can weaken the effect to comical proportions. The suspense and the drama is built up by the music. You're informed by the music whether current events and events about to occur will be happy or sad, scary or bland.

What might normally have seemed a mere trifle to be laughed off might appear to be a nightmare when your mood is black.

So how to change the score, to keep it bright more of the time?

For a person with a chemical imbalance, medication could be the answer. If you're at the mercy of your genetics and neurochemistry you may need some medical help to redress that balance and bring you out of a depression that sends your inner narrative down dark paths.

But genetically affected or not, good mental health and well being isn't as simple as swallowing a pill.

The mood of the story you tell yourself is affected by real events. By misperceptions about real events. By the coping mechanisms you use to escape real events.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, can be a great tool to instigate change.

The essence of it is to break down the negative thought patterns that we all have, analyse them and ultimately change them for the better.

The main feature of analysis is to try to be unbiased, logical and reasoned. Similar to muting the sound on the scary movie, you need to look at the thoughts you're having outside of the situation they occurred in and consider:
1) What happened
2) What you thought in response
3) Whether those thoughts were helpful or unhelpful to you
4) If they were unhelpful to you, how you could have thought about the event more usefully
5) The outcome of thinking the way you did
6) The outcome of thinking the more useful way

As an example:
Suppose you were at the gym. An attractive girl walked passed you, glanced your way and for a moment her eyes flicked down to your belly. She walks on.

What did you think, how did it make you feel, what did you do as a result?

Let's walk through the six points for this example:

1) What happened

- a girl got your attention

- she noticed you

- she looked at your belly

2) What you thought in response

- I'm fat. 

3) Whether those thoughts were helpful or unhelpful to you

- probably not :(

4) If they were unhelpful to you, what a more useful way of thinking could be

- she's hot, and she noticed me :)

- maybe could stand to lose a bit of weight there :(

- still she did look my way :)

5) What the outcome was of thinking the way you did

- made me feel unhappy

- made me go home and eat comfort food

- didn't help my waste line :)

6) What the outcome would have been thinking the more useful way

- stayed a bit more positive (or perhaps ambivalent) about the experience

- motivated me to do a few more crunches

The real trick with it is catching yourself thinking the negative thoughts. As you get better at it, you can see yourself about to have the negative thought and override it with the positive thought you worked out earlier.


Further reading:
http://au.reachout.com/find/articles/cognitive-behavioural-therapy-cbt
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinfo/treatments/cbt.aspx
http://www.coldcreekwellness.com/addiction-treatment/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-cbt/
http://www.slbmi.com/anxiety_center/cognitive_behavior_therapy.htm

Marilyn Monroe's Vulnerability

I watched a movie recently 'My Week with Marilyn'.

I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe the first time I saw her in 'Bus Stop' years ago. I realized this week what it is that makes her so attractive.

It's her vulnerability.





I think it takes a lot of character to put your vulnerability out there for others to see. But what it does is it allows others to see that you're like them, to empathize.

I also think it takes a lot of character to put your strengths out there for others to see. Because it allows others to test them.

I think the ideal outward face of a person would portray some vulnerability, and some strengths. It would engage other people's respect at seeing your strengths, and their fellow feeling with their own (perhaps hidden) vulnerabilities.

Thoughts about letting go.

I have a problem with the way I think.

Everything good I ever had I still keep.

All the friends, the lovers, the journeys live on, like hundreds of threads clung onto and gathered and clutched at.

Why hold onto all these things?

Like a complex lie, that spirals out of control until you're juggling too many conversations and caught up in your own webs. Holding onto the past is a trap.

My head is too full of things unresolved. Not let go of.

It's only really now I'm starting to realise the value of letting go. To think about what it would be like to have fresh thoughts. To go out without comparing, or trying to join the future to these threads of mine.

To let the future be what it is, and have a space in my mind for it to abide.

But how to let it go?

I realise there is part of me that thinks holding onto everyone and everything is a loudable attribute. Being a fierce friend. Someone who will be there to the end. Keeping promises.

But what if the other people involved don't want to be held onto?

Is it noble to cling onto unrequited love forever? Is it poetic? Romantic?

Or is it just a stupid waste of time, energy and life?

I think the way to let go is to take each thing that is held onto one by one.

- decide consciously whether to keep it.
- if not why not?
- every time it comes to mind from then on, remind myself why not, and therefore why it's not worth thinking about.