Being Bipolar

[Balthazzar]

Ok, so the Dr said I had a chemical imbalance and that meds would help stabilize my mood, so I start taking meds in the mid 90's. I decided I didn't like the meds, which is nothing new for people like me. Instead, I started utilizing coping skills and theory to combat the imbalance. I went from a one-sided religious man to a religious man who values both secular and multi hand non secular movements. I started focusing on balance in general, physical, spiritual, mental, intellectual, dietary, etc. I still take meds, but not often ... Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and allergy when needed. Beyond this, I don't do much aside from go through the turbulence associated with the condition in hope that I'll eventually become better equipped from the experiences.

The issue is typically from those who have different approach than I do. No left-hand path, just right or a disagreement with the instability endurance for the discipline and training, living with bipolar without mood stabilizers. I'm thinking about learning how to write music and play guitar. I stay busy with this condition. I'm extremely creative. It encourages a more studious approach to life and involves lots of effort in applying myself to the balancing, but that's being bipolar...at least for me.

 

[wellwisher]

When the brain writes to memory, emotional tags are added to sensory content. Our memory has both sensory content and feeling tags. This is why our strongest and most enduring memories have a strong emotional ambiance; marriage, first child, graduation, win the championship, trauma, etc.

This natural memory writing method has many uses and advantages. If an animal was to encounter something that triggers similar memory, he can act on the feeling without having to think. If the food item triggers a good feeling, he will eat. Animal instinct is based on emotional thinking.

The sensory content and the emotional tag combination also allows us to use both sides of the brain, at the same time, with the sensory content more left brain and emotional tag more right brain. This writing scheme also allows our memory to be stored in layers organized by the emotional tags. For example, if I asked you to list your 10 favorite foods, these will also have the same or similar enjoyment tag. This request triggers a specific memory layer, that organizes all similar data, based on the same or very similar feeling tags. This help to narrow memory while allowing your full brain to be available to work within the layer.

Also since we have two sides of the brain and the memory combo is designed to bridge the two sides, we can approach our memory from either the left or right side and get two different expressions. In the example of the 10 favorite foods, is we approach from the right brain and feeling tag, the same tag for all 10 foods will amplify the hunger/enjoyment feeling; integration. If we approach from the Left brain, we can separate this into 10 different and distinct foods and examine each in more detail; differential, with each, by itself, having less tag value. Mr Spock will stay left brain and differentiate until the feelings tag is almost mute.

Each pole of the bi-polor, has its own layer. Bi-polar used to be called manic-depression, where one goes from excessive enthusiasm to depression. These are emotional driven expressions; layer tags. These are two distinct and extreme feeling tags, which once are active, bring up a memory lawyer and even start to stamp new real time memory, thereby reinforcing and even adding to the layer. The drugs can help lower the output of the neural chemicals that parallel the feeling tags.

You, by keeping yourself busy in creative pursuits, is a way to distract your brain and turn on other layers, so you do not always reinforce one of the two bi-polar layers. But also, since our memory uses both sides of the the brain, rather than let the mood drive you; emotional tags or emotional thinking, you are using more left brain and sensory content side; rational thinking, which makes the emotional tag softer and easier to control. Keep up the good work. Hopely, being able to visualize the above will make it logical and easier.

 

[Kathryn]

Are you Bipolar One or Bipolar Two?

 

[Balthazzar]

Are you Bipolar One or Bipolar Two?

II

 

[Balthazzar]

When the brain writes to memory, emotional tags are added to sensory content. Our memory has both sensory content and feeling tags. This is why our strongest and most enduring memories have a strong emotional ambiance; marriage, first child, graduation, win the championship, trauma, etc.

This natural memory writing method has many uses and advantages. If an animal was to encounter something that triggers similar memory, he can act on the feeling without having to think. If the food item triggers a good feeling, he will eat. Animal instinct is based on emotional thinking.

The sensory content and the emotional tag combination also allows us to use both sides of the brain, at the same time, with the sensory content more left brain and emotional tag more right brain. This writing scheme also allows our memory to be stored in layers organized by the emotional tags. For example, if I asked you to list your 10 favorite foods, these will also have the same or similar enjoyment tag. This request triggers a specific memory layer, that organizes all similar data, based on the same or very similar feeling tags. This help to narrow memory while allowing your full brain to be available to work within the layer.

Also since we have two sides of the brain and the memory combo is designed to bridge the two sides, we can approach our memory from either the left or right side and get two different expressions. In the example of the 10 favorite foods, is we approach from the right brain and feeling tag, the same tag for all 10 foods will amplify the hunger/enjoyment feeling; integration. If we approach from the Left brain, we can separate this into 10 different and distinct foods and examine each in more detail; differential, with each, by itself, having less tag value. Mr Spock will stay left brain and differentiate until the feelings tag is almost mute.

Each pole of the bi-polor, has its own layer. Bi-polar used to be called manic-depression, where one goes from excessive enthusiasm to depression. These are emotional driven expressions; layer tags. These are two distinct and extreme feeling tags, which once are active, bring up a memory lawyer and even start to stamp new real time memory, thereby reinforcing and even adding to the layer. The drugs can help lower the output of the neural chemicals that parallel the feeling tags.

You, by keeping yourself busy in creative pursuits, is a way to distract your brain and turn on other layers, so you do not always reinforce one of the two bi-polar layers. But also, since our memory uses both sides of the the brain, rather than let the mood drive you; emotional tags or emotional thinking, you are using more left brain and sensory content side; rational thinking, which makes the emotional tag softer and easier to control. Keep up the good work. Hopely, being able to visualize the above will make it logical and easier.

The emotional tags are often enough triggered by thought, which can end up creating a great deal of emotional unrest. Other times, they create a warm fuzzy sensation, but again, the balance requirement compels me to limit the warm fuzzies, so I find other things to pursue and keep me busy. I do this, because I have also had some experience in abusive (addictive) types of behavior like drug abuse, so I limit the relief association and force myself to other efforts less desirable, but more beneficial. I do think an addictive personality can be of great benefit when directed and focused in a way that would enable a master skill set like maybe music, or karate, or something of this type.

“They are an intriguing people. From the moment they wake they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue. I have never seen such discipline.” From "The Last Samari"

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Ok, so the Dr said I had a chemical imbalance and that meds would help stabilize my mood, so I start taking meds in the mid 90's. I decided I didn't like the meds, which is nothing new for people like me. Instead, I started utilizing coping skills and theory to combat the imbalance. I went from a one-sided religious man to a religious man who values both secular and multi hand non secular movements. I started focusing on balance in general, physical, spiritual, mental, intellectual, dietary, etc. I still take meds, but not often ... Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and allergy when needed. Beyond this, I don't do much aside from go through the turbulence associated with the condition in hope that I'll eventually become better equipped from the experiences.

The issue is typically from those who have different approach than I do. No left-hand path, just right or a disagreement with the instability endurance for the discipline and training, living with bipolar without mood stabilizers. I'm thinking about learning how to write music and play guitar. I stay busy with this condition. I'm extremely creative. It encourages a more studious approach to life and involves lots of effort in applying myself to the balancing, but that's being bipolar...at least for me.

I cannot speak to your experience, but I'm certainly going to share mine.

Bipolar Disorder has shattered my life, and I still can't pick up the pieces. I am a real life Sisyphus. Every time I try to regroup and start again, new job or whatever, I would do well for a while, and then either my depression would kick in and I would be unable to do what my job required or even take care of my kids, or my mania would kick in and I would say and do stupid things that would get me fired, overwhelmed by debt, ruin my relationships... Every time I get the boulder close to the top of the hill, I lose my grip and it crushes me again on its way down.

After first being diagnosed in 1980, my psychiatrists looked and looked for that combination of meds that would be helpful, and it really wasn't until I was in my 50s that we found a combo that worked. I tried all sorts of different therapies, including CBT and DBT, none of which really made a dent. When you've gone for days and days without sleep and can't stop crying, therapy is just inadequate to the task.

Like many before me, I went through the usual, "Oh, I feel so much better now. I don't need this medication anymore." It took a great many relapses for me to finally learn that, like a diabetic, being on meds needed to be something permanent.

I am very grateful that we have finally found a combination of medications that works for me.

My problem is this: due to the extreme instability of my past, my resume is so destroyed that no one would hire me even if I were the last worker on the planet. I have no savings for my old age due to long periods of unemployment, long periods of underemployment, and wasting away at what savings I could manage with my stupidness spending during my mania. I have managed to get myself out of debt, but that will be of little comfort as I go into old age and don't have money for basic food, housing, and clothing.

Have there been any benefits to being bipolar? Yes. All my senses are incredible. Whether it is art, or music, or dance... I simply experience heaven where others experience, "Meh, that's okay." There simply is nothing more wonderful than listening to Tchaikovsky and being moved to tears. I am an incredibly creative person who not only thinks outside the box, I don't even know where the box is. I have a wealth of short stories and poems to leave to my children and grandchildren. And most of all, I have many treasured memories of music composition, directing a middle school orchestra, playing the piano along with a flautist friend at weddings, and being a Director of Music. My empathy is sky high (I literally feel pain when I see others feeling pain. and no, I'm not being hyperbolic), and I believe this has made me a very caring person who chose careers that served others.

Do those benefits make it worth it? No. Not even close. When the time finally comes that I finally go into that good night, I will be so relieved. So relieved.

Porcelain People
Delicate and fragile
Their faces chipped
Cracked and glued together again
And again, and again
They lack the resilience of rubber dolls
But oh, for that cool smoothness of their fair skin…

 

[Balthazzar]

I cannot speak to your experience, but I'm certainly going to share mine.

Bipolar Disorder has shattered my life, and I still can't pick up the pieces. I am a real life Sisyphus. Every time I try to regroup and start again, new job or whatever, I would do well for a while, and then either my depression would kick in and I would be unable to do what my job required or even take care of my kids, or my mania would kick in and I would say and do stupid things that would get me fired, overwhelmed by debt, ruin my relationships... Every time I get the boulder close to the top of the hill, I lose my grip and it crushes me again on its way down.

After first being diagnosed in 1980, my psychiatrists looked and looked for that combination of meds that would be helpful, and it really wasn't until I was in my 50s that we found a combo that worked. I tried all sorts of different therapies, including CBT and DBT, none of which really made a dent. When you've gone for days and days without sleep and can't stop crying, therapy is just inadequate to the task.

Like many before me, I went through the usual, "Oh, I feel so much better now. I don't need this medication anymore." It took a great many relapses for me to finally learn that, like a diabetic, being on meds needed to be something permanent.

I am very grateful that we have finally found a combination of medications that works for me.

My problem is this: due to the extreme instability of my past, my resume is so destroyed that no one would hire me even if I were the last worker on the planet. I have no savings for my old age due to long periods of unemployment, long periods of underemployment, and wasting away at what savings I could manage with my stupidness spending during my mania. I have managed to get myself out of debt, but that will be of little comfort as I go into old age and don't have money for basic food, housing, and clothing.

Have there been any benefits to being bipolar? Yes. All my senses are incredible. Whether it is art, or music, or dance... I simply experience heaven where others experience, "Meh, that's okay." There simply is nothing more wonderful than listening to Tchaikovsky and being moved to tears. I am an incredibly creative person who not only thinks outside the box, I don't even know where the box is. I have a wealth of short stories and poems to leave to my children and grandchildren. And most of all, I have many treasured memories of music composition, directing a middle school orchestra, playing the piano along with a flautist friend at weddings, and being a Director of Music. My empathy is sky high (I literally feel pain when I see others feeling pain. and no, I'm not being hyperbolic), and I believe this has made me a very caring person who chose careers that served others.

Do those benefits make it worth it? No. Not even close. When the time finally comes that I finally go into that good night, I will be so relieved. So relieved.

Porcelain People
Delicate and fragile
Their faces chipped
Cracked and glued together again
And again, and again
They lack the resilience of rubber dolls
But oh, for that cool smoothness of their fair skin…

Similar expereinces only I'm not allowing myself to give up the blessing aspect of the condition. It's an extra sensory overload sometimes, but the is benefit. I've been working on finding stability my entire, orsince my early 20's, I'm off medsand I still get a little too emotional, but it helps me develop greater self control ... I try to stay out of jail. Typically, I remove myself from situations prone to get me too worled up. This isn't always [ossible, but It is sometimes, so i keep trying and intend to increase my abilities.