Depressed individuals have a shorter life expectancy than those without depression, in part because depressed patients are at risk of dying by suicide.1 However, we also have a higher rate of dying from other causes.2 Some researchers conclude that we may be more susceptible to medical conditions such as heart disease.3 I had an experience that might point to another cause that we need to address: we don’t treat many health issues because we think they are just symptoms of depression.

Last winter, I went through one of the deepest depressions of my life. It was very intense physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It was a beautiful experience, but that is for another article. The physical aspect is what I want to focus on here.

My physical experience this time was far more intense than any other depression. I was in tremendous pain throughout my body, but especially in my digestive track and chest. I was also completely drained of energy. It took a tremendous act of will just to get out of bed. It was so intense that I found myself reviewing my life in search of any other time that I had similar experiences.

There was a demo of a video car racing game at the mall the other day and I became fascinated by the reactions of the people who were trying it out. I stayed around for a couple of hours and did an informal study of the phenomenon.

I watched almost 100 people drive into walls and other cars and asked 25 of them what they thought was the reason for so many crashes. Almost to a person, it was the fault of the car. Although they sat in seats that were identical to those in a race car, they said it was too twitchy, loose in the corners, and was nothing like driving a real car.

I was ready to conclude that the game was not very good when a man came along who drove incredibly fast without crashing at all. I asked him his secret and he said that he had taken driving lessons at a race track and practiced often in a real race car. He concluded that the game was very realistic and those who thought otherwise were trying to compare it to a normal car. He said the problem is they don’t know how to drive and the game is not at fault.

I gave a talk the other day for NAMI Santa Rosa about my next book and a woman remarked how different it is from my previous ones. I said that my first three were about me being the black swan.

She asked if I was referencing the movie called Black Swan and I have not seen it yet, so I do not know if it is related at all to Karl Popper’s concept from the 1930s that I was referencing. Have you seen it? Does it mention Popper? Should I see it either way?

Popper suggested that if you observe only white swans, you are using inductive reasoning to extrapolate that all swans are white. This was falsified when black swans were discovered by the English naturalist John Latham in 1790. Science was forced to change the hypothesis that all swans are white by the new evidence.

I noticed it when I was first diagnosed, but have been watching the phenomenon ever since. I have seen it happen in so many people that it might be true in three quarters of the cases. What is even more amazing is how fast it happens. Bipolar may be the fastest path to perfection known to man!

I have been working on more thorough assessment programs for my new book and think that I have found a breakthrough. Through the assessments I have it traced to the exact moment that it happens. I wonder if you can help me verify my research with your own experiences and share your ideas on how to improve upon it?

We often hear people make the distinction between HAVING Bipolar and BEING Bipolar. Rarely, do we hear a distinction comparing Bipolar to Bipolar Disorder. I coined the term Bipolar In Order ten years ago to help make the distinction, but wonder what it means to you?

Bipolar used to be called Manic-Depression. Mania means that we are elevated. Depression means lowered. Bipolar means that we have two poles (high and low), so it is meant to replace manic-depression as a more acceptable way of describing the same thing. Or, is it just more marketable?

One of my earliest memories is of learning to ride a bike. I remember the fear, exhilaration, and hyper-awareness, along with the tension in my body and how my breath became both more rapid and shorter. I was outside of my comfort zone and challenging myself to grow. It was also a blast!

My father had a wisdom common with most dads. He didn’t push me down a steep hill and hope I survived; he ran along next to me making sure I was not too far outside of my comfort zone as to be incapable of handling it. He taught me one of the most important lessons that day about what it is to be human. We need to challenge ourselves to grow, while at the same time making sure we don’t go too far outside of our comfort zone.

The thrill of learning something new and challenging myself to grow has been a constant companion ever since my first bike ride. On too many occasions, I took on challenges far outside of my comfort zone and was either debilitated by the fear and lack of skills, or took risks that caused more harm than the potential reward from succeeding.

Another notion that needs to be challenged is that depression and bipolar are “mood disorders,” while hallucinations and delusions are “thought disorders.” There is nothing wrong with having moods, thoughts, feelings, visions, delusions, or any other experiences. The problem is our behavior.

Mood is “a conscious state of mind or predominant emotion.”1 Psychology likes to add disclaimers to it like long lasting or long term, but the essential element is not how long it lasts, it is the emotional feeling that we have.

Behavior is “the manner of conducting oneself, anything that an organism does involving action and response to stimulation, and the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment.”2 I would include our thought process as part of the response.

It is interesting that bipolar is called a “mood disorder” but is treated at a behavioral health clinic. If you think about what the “disorder” is for people around a person with depression, mania, hallucination, and delusion, it is the behavior that is the problem. Does it matter if I hallucinate all day long if my behavior does not bother anyone or myself? Does it matter if I am manic or depressed if my actions are completely under self-mastery?

John Grohol wrote an essay the other day called Psychology Secrets: Most Psychology Studies Are College Student Biased. It is one of the many must-see articles that John has written, but my personal favorite.

John mentions that 67 percent of the people in the studies of mental illness are undergraduates studying psychology. This presents a picture of mental health that may be way off base from what actually exists.

When I started speaking and doing workshops, I went to support groups, organizations like NAMI, county mental health departments, clinics, colleges, and other groups focused on bipolar and depression. I thought that I was getting a picture of the “real” bipolar population. As it turns out, those groups are even more skewed than the studies John mentions.

My post about mindfulness not resulting in happiness got some interesting responses. One in particular on LinkedIn got me to finally come out about what depression can look like when seen from a different perspective. Since LinkedIn discussions are restricted to group members, below is my reply:

I have been thinking a lot lately about depression since I have spent the last few years in the deepest states of my life. Your comment gets right to the heart of my thoughts when you say, “I don’t know if I can say that mindfulness intensifies depression.” I very much appreciate your bringing it up.

In conversation with others who have pursued a similar path as mine, we have been exploring what depression means and whether we may be cured. We experience the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pains, but not the normal reactions to them that get combined in the normal definitions of depression. We actually feel the “pain” more than we ever have, but act normally because the pain no longer controls our choice of how to act.

I was recently coaching a couple that had taken our Bipolar In Order workshop when the man said he was depressed. The woman asked for a better description, but he had no words to describe his emotions. I was reminded of how my wife Ellen used to ask me for more details when I said it was just dark. It seems that many of us can feel strong emotions, but have no words to describe them.