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.

The central principle of mindfulness is to look at things without judgment. As applied to depression, this means to just look at the various physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects as if you were just an outside observer. Adherents of mindfulness often speak of this as “The Watcher.” It is a wonderful practice that increases awareness of what is really happening.

Unfortunately, many claim that mindfulness leads to happiness.

“I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Everybody wants to be free. Freedom is touted as the most basic of human rights. The commonly understood definitions of freedom are “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint”1 or “the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity.”2 Yet, by the very definitions, none of us are truly free. We mistakenly limit freedom to a very narrow range of experience.

A child’s view of freedom is to be free from the direction of parents, teachers, and other people of authority. Even when we become adults, we often cling to the same narrow definition: freedom from coercion of others. But there is a much greater freedom that most of us have never even considered: freedom to choose how to react to every stimulus.

“The old paradigm is for us to avoid emotional pain at all costs while remaining ignorant of the lessons that are available to us.” – The Depression Advantage1 The medical definition of “insight” reads, “understanding or awareness of one’s mental or emotional condition; especially: recognition that one is mentally ill”2 By that definition I have no insight because I don’t recognize my condition as an illness.

Allow me to suggest that insight is the ability to recognize my condition and all of the aspects associated with it. It means not only recognizing the cause of the condition, but the whole experience.

My anti-psychiatry friends ask me why I work with doctors and therapists. Some accuse me of being a sell-out or a stooge for the pharm industry. They think that the way to change the system is to oppose it completely.

I don’t agree. I think the way to change the system is to work with it, not against it. If we can find ways to influence the thinking of those who are working with the greatest number of people, we will have the greatest effect. Communicating with them as a partner is the way to do that.

My daughter Kate and her friend Kelsey are in medical school. They have not decided yet what to specialize in, but if they choose to be General Practitioners they will be the front line in catching mental conditions. They are taking a class now about psychiatry and have been learning about suicide. Their assignment is to interview several people so they can get a first hand feel from those of us who have attempted or seriously thought about it.

It happened several years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My depression was too much for me and I tried to end it by taking my own life. The physical sensations, mental activity, emotions, and spiritual desolation were the deepest I had ever experienced. I thought it was the deepest anyone could go and the only way out was suicide.

I was wrong. I have since been much deeper in every way – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I am currently in the deepest depression of my life. It has been going on for five months now, yet I don’t feel overwhelmed at all. The level of depression that once almost killed me now seems like a walk in the park. So does this one. Since it doesn’t overwhelm me or control my reactions to it, I wonder: Am I even depressed at all?

I facilitate a support group for people with mental conditions along with those who love and support them. Several of us have years of experience of functioning while depressed. The other day we were exploring what it feels like to be deeply depressed instead of making it go away. We were describing depression much like my “Art Of Seeing Depression” article when the topic of watching movies while depressed came up. It brought up interesting ideas that I hope you will share your insights about.

We started calling out favorite movies to watch while depressed, like The Hours or What Dreams May Come, and started joking about why would we want to watch comedies during depression. Somebody said that if others heard us they would be shocked. When asked why, the conversation turned to what we thought most people would think.