| Psychology and Mental Health Forum | |
https://www.psychforums.com/blog/halcatalyst41/index_sid-a3ddf517b2946ee2e5afa79578e2135a.html |
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| Author: | halcatalyst41 [ Thu Feb 11, 2016 5:05 am ] |
| Blog Subject: | Bipolar Mania |
I may be the world’s leading expert on being manic. I’ve had bipolar disorder for at least 50 years (it was correctly diagnosed 40 years ago). During that time I’ve experienced dozens of manias. I’m the introspective type: I think about what’s happening to me, how it differs from my ordinary thoughts and feelings, and how I behave differently. Especially in the last year I’ve become aware of how I perceive and act during manic episodes. Although we have many things in common, I’m sure my experience differs from that of other people with bipolar disorder. Why wouldn’t it? We are all individuals. So what I describe is my own experience. Mania is magical at the beginning. Euphoric. I’m filled with energy, full of ideas and ambitions, afraid of nothing, happy with everything. I should worry, not for nothin' Everybody loves me, yes they do And I love everybody Since I fell in love with Fell in love with Fell in love with you... Bipolar mania has many excesses. I give two cheers to the movie “Mr. Jones” (1993). In it Richard Gere plays a bipolar man, a construction worker who fantasizes about flying. He works on a roof with very step sides and a projection off the ridge that looks very much like a diving board. Of course he mounts it, and the audience waits anxiously to see if he will jump off. See Roger Ebert’s review at http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mr-jones-1993. The movie is a bit over-the-top, but at least it treats its character sympathetically. In real life, severe mania can lead to all sort of problems. People engage in reckless behavior such as dangerous sexual liaisons and lavish spending sprees. They may make disastrous business decisions or impulsively quit their job. They have inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, unrealistic beliefs in their ability, intelligence and powers, and may be delusional. They sleep very little. Sleep may be the most important factor in curbing bipolar mania. For an excellent discussion of sleep as a primary biological need, see “Sleep On It” in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American. A milder form of the disorder is called hypomania. It is characterized (usually) by euphoria. Bipolar disorder has been called the only mental disorder people actually enjoy. . . for a while. Thoughts come racing and you want to follow up on all of them. You talk rapidly and probably excessively and, again, you sleep maybe 2-3 hours a night. You’re interested in and maybe amused by practically everything. You do routine tasks differently and are convinced that way is better. Your judgment can be impaired. But you have unusually high energy; your perceptions are enhanced; your thinking seems clearer; and you feel more creative. And you very well may be. Bipolar mania correlates strongly with artistic productivity; see Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, and also her fine autobiography, An Unquiet Mind. Jamison herself has bipolar disorder. She is a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Based on my own experience, I would say that that high energy is the key experience that distinguishes mania from ordinary states. And of course lack of energy characterizes depression. This may be a factor that has generally been overlooked. As I always do, I went to the Internet to find out if this idea had been expressed by others. It wasn’t hard to find good material; with little effort, I found two excellent articles. The first one began: “Although popular culture tends to equate mania with happiness and depression with sadness, this isn't really the best way to think about what is happening in bipolar disorder. [It] involves not so much a swing between happy and sad states, as it does a swing between high and low energy states. When in a high-energy state, people appear happy because they are motivated and excitable, whereas in a low energy state, people feel sad, and lack motivation and enthusiasm. As the energy level... [ Continued ] |
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| Author: | halcatalyst41 [ Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:54 am ] |
| Blog Subject: | The Second Coming |
I just like this. The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989) |
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| Author: | halcatalyst41 [ Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:34 pm ] |
| Blog Subject: | Hell Week |
I’d been experiencing an intermittent “mystery” illness for some time: weak, foggy, unsteady, slow, and sluggish, I would stumble and lurch, lose my balance, lean against a wall or sink into a chair, sit and put my head in my hands. It happened usually in the morning and then would disappear in a couple of hours. Earlier that week I was having digital problems, but finally Verizon recognized that my new smart phone was defective and had ordered a new one for me; and Best Buy had looked at my laptop’s power problem and made a few adjustments that might work. I was feeling good. Next day the computer worked for a few hours and then died. I’d have to order a new one, and in order to keep up with my web obligations I needed it as soon as possible. In the morning the full consequences hit me: I had no computer, no files, and no access to the Internet except through my wife’s 10 year old XP desktop. Lying sick on the couch with my unfamiliar smart phone, I tried to research and order a laptop I could get by the next day. My GOD, that was maddening. I don't swear, right? But this time the air was dark blue. I was encountering a self I had never met. I burst into tears. My wife asked, “Are you depressed?” “No, I’m FRUSTRATED!” I did order a new computer and it came the next day, but the first restore from backup failed to complete after 30 hours, and in the next one files were missing, including some which were very important to me. But I had work to do, so I forged ahead. Then my email failed, or almost: it was intermittent. Three support techs offered the same solution, which didn’t work. But I still had occasional access, so I abandoned that particular problem for the moment. About ten years ago I was diagnosed with myoclonus, a movement disorder like hiccups, but which can affect the whole body and is quite a bit more serious. It’s intermittent and usually relatively bearable, but the following night, at bedtime, it was worse than it had ever been: continuous jerking for some twenty minutes. I fell asleep, exhausted. The very next night, as I was watching TV, the myoclonus started up again and got worse and worse until I was having 15-20 violent jerks a minute, as well as the twisting, writhing motions called athetosis. Strange thing: I could just lie there and watch it; my consciousness and alertness were not affected. No pain, just the pounding and being thrown about. The worst contortions lasted about 10-15 minutes and the entire episode about two hours, with some letups where I could walk around and even try to do things. The myoclonus came back in force at bedtime, but eventually I got to sleep okay. The episode was WAY scary. I cried again, this time from FEAR. It so happened I had an EEG scheduled two days later, for the mystery illness. Part of that process involves a camera and microphone. As they settled me in, I was having some mild myoclonic jerks, but when the EEG started the jerks intensified, worse than the time before. Of course the staff observed it all. Later that day I got a call: the EEG was fine; and the clinic was scheduling an appointment for me at the university with a movement disorders neurologist. That made me happy; I hoped the specialist would find something, because in such a case bad news is good news: there may be a treatment and, even if not, I prefer to know. But then, when I went back to my attempts to restore my system, I spilled tea on the computer keyboard. Back to Best Buy. The keyboard was inoperable. My new computer was worthless. I cried, I wailed, I sobbed. DESPAIR. Rousing myself from inaction, I tried again to get the email problem fixed. I got no satisfaction from an unpleasant, unhelpful tech, but when I asked to speak with the supervisor he not only came to the phone, he spent more than an hour with me trying to resolve the issues; but we failed. Then, unexpectedly, I lost access to the web itself. The manager sent a technician to my home who fixed the access problem in a few m... [ Continued ] |
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| Author: | halcatalyst41 [ Sat Oct 31, 2015 11:43 pm ] |
| Blog Subject: | Free-RangeTurkey |
Turkey, in a way, it's not only the most surprising but the best trip I've been on, and it's really too bad that they're having such troubles now. It's all part of the Mid-East situation that more and more countries are getting involved in. Really terrible, complicated, oh my god. So Turkey's now joined, Russia has now joined, who else is new? Syria, no, Syria's been involved the whole time. Centers around Syria right now, although that's not the only center, it's just the major center. The new players are Turkey and Russia and Saudi Arabia in this year, I think, and, let's see, any other troops or airplanes involved? Not that I can think of, but, anyway, about Turkey, it's too bad. A terrible massacre, 97 people killed yesterday. But my vacation there was wonderful, and I was just thinking about Antalya because I'm sitting here by the bank on one of their benches. And I remember sitting on benches in Antalya when we walked around that Sunday morning. Really nice, nice day. Antalya is a nice city. The hotel was very unusual but very nice, except for the room. I didn't like the room, too big. Didn't like the tile in the room; they ran away with their imagination on the rooms. The buffet was good, and that whole area there was good, and the garden in the back with the steep precipice down to the ocean, down to the Mediterranean Sea, the Cote d'Azur, no, the Turquoise Coast. There you go, so that was really nice. I enjoyed that city, and next thing that comes to mind is the city where Rumi lived, or at least where he's buried, and his Mosque there in that museum. Looked forward to that because I knew a little bit about Rumi. Anyway, Cappadocia, and, of course, the underground cities, and that was very interesting. Not exactly the way I had imagined it, but to think that people lived there, maybe 20,000 people lived in underground cities. And then, the other things I liked were the porcelain guy, the potter, and the restaurant inside one of the little things. [LAUGH] I don't even remember what they are. The volcano-like things. Well, you can't expect me to remember everything. Moving on to Hittite land, and that really fired me up, and then Ankara. And then, it was in Cappadocia that I had that brief chat with the woman who was a kind of a New Ager and we compared notes spiritually. She fired me up into mania, so I came home manic. And that was the trip where we got home, and the flight had been cancelled. You couldn't get on another flight, and the last flight home from Chicago was nine o'clock in the evening, and it was full, so I wanted to go to a hotel because I was totally exhausted and Sharon wouldn't. She said, well, let's see if we can get on here, so we left our names as a stand by, and from the display, the stand by was filled, but the agent said, we might be able to get you on. We sat there and waited, and we did get on, and short flight back. I talked to a guy, very interesting guy across the aisle, because I was manic and I talk to strangers, right? Well, this guy turned out to be a young guy that works for probably some big financial company. I'm guessing financial company becausehe was talking about acquiring companies, and so it would have been a private equity company like Mitt Romney. He'd been to China and a lot of other places, and he was young, and he was from somewhere around here. Okay, that was the end of the trip. Beginning of the trip, trip to Turkey. Let's see. We flew into, oh, yeah. There were adventures there, too. So flying toward Munich, I got sick, and I had just had the small bowel obstruction thing and so I got sick. I vomited and had diarrhea and a pain in my stomach, I think. So I thought I needed to get off the plane and see a German doctor. Had to go to a German hospital rather than Turkey because I had no idea how advanced Turkey was. Found out later that they are quite advanced. They're really European, at least in the western part of the country, but anyway, so I got off the plane,... [ Continued ] |
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| Author: | halcatalyst41 [ Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:55 am ] |
| Blog Subject: | How Large is Your Tribe? Kindness. |
According to anthropology, a tribe is a collection of clans, which are groups of related people. Within a clan can be found smaller groups of relatives which, depending on the degree of cultural sophistication, are called bands, or extended families. In modern Western terms, the extended family breaks down into families, of which there are many varieties. All of us belong to families and extended families. We also belong to communities of many kinds: schools, churches, clubs, political parties, bowling leagues, and many others. “Community” implies a certain smallness, where most people know most others who belong to it. Probably 300 to 400 people is the upper size limit of a community in this sense. This can also be called a village. Beyond that, politically, there are towns, cities, states and countries. Parallel to these are local private bodies of all kinds, such as clubs and churches, which may be parts of national or even international organizations. All these are comprised of people, people related in many ways, people who are hurtful and helpful to one another. Kindness lies at the root of helpfulness. No one can be helpful without being kind. And while kindness may not always be materially helpful, it always consoles or encourages the person to whom it is offered. Then, to whom are we kind? It's easy to be kind to those we love, those closest to us, those in our literal or emotional families or communities. But what about those in groups farther removed from us, those in other clans and tribes? (I use this language deliberately.) “Clan” members are mostly our more distant relatives, our extended families. A “tribe” for us today is any group of any size with which we strongly identify. It may be something like Toastmasters, the Cubbies, a political party, or even the company we work for. It is a place where we belong. In the tribe, we are accepted, and to a tribe, we are loyal. It's easy to be kind to someone in our tribe, but what about anybody else? Is that important? This question lies at the root of all morality, I believe. And I also believe that morality is at the root of politics. Politics is nothing more than the way we agree to get along together in tribes. This is as true now as it was in primitive societies. So how can kindness possibly apply in politics? It is in the transition from one to many, from me to you, from us to others, to the family, to the clan, to the tribe, to the nation, to the world. The problem is where we stop: is it at the tribal limits? Kindness is an aspect of charity, which is far more than giving stuff to those less fortunate. Charity is love. Is it possible to express love through kindness outside our tribe? Let's look at those who take an opposite approach. Some would have it that government at all levels should be as lean as possible. People have the individual right to do what they like with their own property, and it is fundamentally unjust for the government to take it away from them, except under limited circumstances. Those who think this way might concede that kindness is okay if extended to members of their immediate social group, or maybe a little farther. With a little prodding, they might agree that kindness would be all right if given to some others higher up in the chain of individual to society. But I think this kind of person wouldn't really be much interested in that sort of discussion. So let's cut to the chase. Consider the extreme poor: the unworthy, extreme poor. Keep these people in mind, but think about everybody outside your tribe. How do you show kindness to them? You can do it alone or with others. Let's stick with you. You might do something, volunteer, or give something away. Anything, including money. You could do it privately or publicly, no difference. And you could try to be kind to the unworthy poor as well as to anybody and everybody else. Or is your largesse limited to your tribe? |
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