Posted on 07/22/2009 5:49:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s getting old, isn’t it? Everyone these days is bipolar or has some other chic mental disorder that he feels excuses his self-centered conduct. Like the guy who once walked into my class twenty minutes late. I told him it was his last time to come in late. He said, “But you don’t understand, I’m bipolar.” And he said it in front of the whole class.
Having a mental disorder used to be a source of embarrassment. But, now, it’s often a request for special treatment, which, when granted, fuels self-centered conduct. That’s why a pastor friend of mine now hears the claim “But, I’m bipolar!” in approximately 80 percent of his marital counseling sessions. This means that approximately 40 percent of the people he counsels are claiming to be “bipolar.”
Is there something in the water that is causing a massive outbreak in manic-depression and other mental disorders? Or is it possible that we live culture of entitlement, which gives us strong incentives to claim some sort of disability rather than face the consequences of our freely chosen actions?
Just about everyone who really suffers from some form of depression (manic or otherwise) has something in common: He is engaged in self-centered conduct, which either a) actually caused the disorder (real or perceived), or b) greatly exacerbates the disorder (real or perceived).
People who suffer from, or claim to suffer from, some form of depression usually respond in one of two ways:
1) They seek psychological counseling, which focuses largely on “talk therapy.” During these talk therapy sessions the patient pays a doctor to listen to him talk at length about himself and his problems. Since this is just another exercise in self-absorption, it rarely works.
2) They seek psychiatric care, which usually results in a drug prescription. Paying someone to give you mood altering drugs, rather than addressing your behavior, involves a degree of self-absorption that simply cannot be ignored. But it usually is ignored. And that’s why the drugs usually don’t do the trick. In fact, they often lead people to suicide.
Behind the two generally misguided approaches to curing depression is the common fallacy that our emotions are usually the causes, not the effects, of our behavior. But, in reality, it is our behavior that usually shapes our attitudes and our emotions.
If you don’t believe what I’m saying I want you to try a little exercise the next time you wake up in a bad mood. All it involves is simply forcing yourself to smile and exchange simple pleasantries with every stranger you see during the morning hours. That simple act of saying something nice and seeing a return smile will kill any bad mood in less than half a day. It has a success rate of about 100 percent. And simple variants of the exercise work for more prolonged cases of the blues. Let me provide an example.
A few weeks ago, I had a strong compulsion to ask a neighbor to church. He was going through serious legal and financial struggles. I kept hearing that “you should” voice telling me to ask him to attend church with me. On July 4, the voice was really strong. But I ignored it and simply waved at my neighbor as I drove by his house.
On July 6, police cars surrounded his home. Just before noon they carried his lifeless body out on a stretcher. I was simply devastated by the thought of how things might have been different had I acted.
The next week was one of the saddest I’ve had in many, many months. And it was brought on by the same thing that always brings on sadness or depression. I had acted like a self-absorbed jerk. Rather than reach out to someone who was suffering I went on about my business. I was more worried that having a talk with him might be awkward or might cut into my time smoking cigars with my friends.
And this is where things begin to get dangerous. When we screw up - due to our own self-absorption – the chances are that we’ll screw up again by allowing the negative energy of one bad decision to fuel another similar bad decision. That’s often the way mild depression turns to serious depression. It is an unhealthy cycle that must be broken.
After a few days of kicking myself, I took out a sheet of paper. On it, I wrote the letter “A” and stared at it until I could think of someone who was hurting whose name began with the letter “A.” After a few minutes, I remembered a woman whose husband died of a heart attack last spring. I picked up the phone and called her and told her a funny story about her husband. I shared some things about him that brought back some memories and made her laugh out loud. Before I hung up I told her that many people loved her and were praying for her. The call made the day brighter for both of us.
And then I picked up my pen and wrote down the letter “B.” I don’t have to tell you that by the time I reached the letter “F” I was feeling like I was on top of the world.
The truth is that changing one’s behavior with an exercise in other-absorption, rather than self-absorption, will cure what most people label as depression. If that fails they should talk to a professional. If that also fails they should consider an experiment with prescribed medication.
But people who shout “I’m bipolar” usually don’t want to be helped. And if we feed their sense of entitlement we hurt them very badly.
It’s true. One cannot set about to help your fellow man and be self absorbed at the same time.
Finally, one of the outspoken ladies in the group of 8 told the bi-polar that she was a jerk, a B$tch and a loser who turned off her family and now her friends.
_________
Speaking as the son of a bipolar woman (in the hospital now for said disorder), what your wife’s outspoken friend said is quite true.
A person in the midst of a manic episode is all that and more. Oh, and not in control of it, either.
The stories I could tell would curl your hair.
I have seen this same thing up close and personal. Since my dad passed last year, and with my mom having alienated just about everyone she was ever close to with her extremely erratic behavior (while off her meds), my sister and I are about the only people she has left, other than the complete strangers in the bars, restaurants and churches that she wanders into.
All it takes is a couple of days off the meds, and the damage is done.
No, it doesn't.
Cordially,
> The problem with people being bipolar is that so many of them like to add alcohol to the problem.
Excellent point. That happens alot. Or illicit drugs. People with Depression sometimes do it, too. Anything to “feel better”.
And, such as it is, alcohol is a fantastic — if crude — rudimentary short-term medicine: one of the best, cheapest, and easiest to obtain and administer. If we were living 200 years ago it would be what most doctors would prescribe for these disorders, because there would be nothing better.
But we live in the 21st Century and — as good as alcohol is as a medicine — its negative side-effects vastly outweigh any benefits that it can provide, given that there are much better alternative medicines.
There is come considerable speculation that many “alcoholics” aren’t actually physically addicted to alcohol at all (and thus not properly “alcoholic” by definition) but rather have undiagnosed mental illnesses that they are self-medicating with excessive amounts of alcohol.
Which is just as serious a problem, only with a different root cause and potentially a different treatment path.
What does this tell us? Well, what we know already: the various 12-step programs for treating alcoholism will work for something like 8% of all those who try them. These people, typically, are “physically addicted” to alcohol.
The remaining 92%-ish of people with “alcohol problems” perhaps for which the 12-step programs don’t work ought to investigate whether their alcohol overuse might be attributable to self-medicating a mental illness instead.
yep. I was "over-prescribed" Xanax by a doc a few years back....told me to take that for insomnia (stress-based), when a mild sleeping pill would have done the trick. Side effects scared me so much that I tossed the prescription after two days and tried "Tylenol PM". Problem solved, and I found a new doctor to boot.
There's a girl in my office who bragged about taking "2 or 3" Xanax a day "for depression". I don't get in the car with her, if she's driving when we go to lunch, and I make sure that I'm not in the office alone with her either.
Bad thing is that I'm sure she's not the only person like that who I deal with.
bttt
folks would do well to read this post and Diehard’s posts earlier in the thread before commenting. JMO.
If you are bi-polar, the LAST thing you want to do is lower your inhibitions.
It is silly for you to take offense and start calling people names because it hits home for you.
_____
I think you got what’s silly backwards. It is absurd for folks with absolutely no experience with clinical diseases like depression and bipolar disorder to come onto threads and suggest that it is sin, or bad behavior, or the desire to be happy all the time that is the behind folk’s bad behavior.
There is a massive amount of mood altering chemicals being adminstered to a whole bunch of people that do not need it.
____
Agreed. But you might note that the tone of many of the posts on this thread just lump it all together, without any real sense of recognition that they cannot be all lumped together.
> If you are bi-polar, the LAST thing you want to do is lower your inhibitions.
Ttttrrrrruuuueeee... (hesitantly agreeing).
I think that would depend upon your cycle, wouldn’t it? If you were in the manic cycle, lowering your inhibitions probably isn’t a good idea from a personal safety viewpoint, but this might(?) be offset by alcohol’s depressant characteristics, slowing you down and mellowing you out.
In the depressed cycle, lowering your inhibitions probably wouldn’t be a bad thing, but slowing you down and mellowing you out would be the last thing you’d want or need.
Alcohol isn’t brilliant medicine for bipolar people. I find Lithium works great for me.
It’s not a disorder if it helps you get through the day. (She types compulsively.)
Thanks, Kaslin. My psych attendings in med school and residency loved to tweak meds. All but one of them used to get angry when I spoke to patients or them about changing/relearning behavior/habits in conjunction with medications.
Some people are just too crazy to reason with or to make and follow a plan. But most people are grateful for any ideas that help them “get through the day.”
Bi-Polar depression is directly linked to the mania, i.e., their uncontrolled behavior coming to an end and its consequences. They are inverse behaviors and wholly dependent upon one another.
Bi-Polar people are out of control. This is a completely different clinical depression albeit clinical depression frequently accompanies a Bi-Polar life.
And if you try really, really hard, you may find about 6 to 10 other people living in you that keep coming out, rofl.
And if that don't work, keep trying something else, autism perhaps.
Just keep trying until you find another symptom that the govt will subsidies. Works for farmers. lol
There is a lot to be said for behavior changes that allow depressed and anxious people to manage their symptoms. In fact, we stress “how have you coped, what has worked for you so far?”
Body and mind must both be addressed, if for no other reason than the fact that it will take some time for the medications to reach full effect.
The Lord offers grace.
Quite a few of us are peri- or post-AROWS*al (Age Related Ovarian Wastage Syndrome - my term for the hormonal changes of women of a certain age). (http://arowse.blogspot.com/ )
So watch it.
> The article references Bi-Polar disorder, not depression. Please focus upon the article and what posters are commenting on rather than knocking people from a tangental position thinking that is the article and thread’s area of discussion.
You are mistaken. Please read the article carefully before lecturing me on what I should/should not comment on. For your convenience please note the following extract from the article, where the author purports to address “depression, (manic or otherwise)”:
>> Just about everyone who really suffers from some form of depression (manic or otherwise) has something in common: He is engaged in self-centered conduct, which either a) actually caused the disorder (real or perceived), or b) greatly exacerbates the disorder (real or perceived).
I am all-too-well aware that the two conditions are different: for the record, I have both Clinical Depression and Bipolar Disorder, and am addressing both on this thread.
The author of this silly piece, however, is lumping the two together and, in my opinion, this is wrong.
> Bi-Polar people are out of control. This is a completely different clinical depression albeit clinical depression frequently accompanies a Bi-Polar life.
Bollix. I am not and never have been “out of control”, not even on my very worst manic cycle. I live a very normal and fully-functioning life, aided by appropriate medicine and therapy.
Kind regards
Before this woman started on her bi-polar civil war against her family and friends, she was a pleasure to be around.
Now she is like your mother. The women in my wife’s group, including my wife have gone out of their way to help this woman. She sounds very much like your mother.
If I know she might be at a function, I don’t go. My adult sons and DIL are like me in this sad situation.
We have wondered if her really bad behavior is when she is off her drugs.
> Body and mind must both be addressed, if for no other reason than the fact that it will take some time for the medications to reach full effect.
Yup — absolutely. If for no other reasons than physical activity releases endorphins and other useful brain chemicals. I like to do dangerous things, much like AppyPappy’s friend does. I get an amazing buzz out of adrenaline that lasts for many days, sometimes a couple weeks.
Each time I’ve changed meds it has taken a couple months for any noticeable change — as you have said.
> We have wondered if her really bad behavior is when she is off her drugs.
Hmmmm... If I had to guess (and I am guessing) I’d say probably not. It’s a common misapprehension that if you forget to take your meds you suddenly snap and go berzerk.
It’s not like that, at least not for anyone I know or have heard about.
For both Depression and Bipolar Disorder it takes many weeks, maybe a couple months, for the meds to have any noticeable effect at all. Similarly, it takes quite a long while to wear off: at least a few days.
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