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bipolar disorder
November 2009 
Meditation for Bipolar Disorder Sufferers
Posted on Dec 16th, 2007
by 
The Poetic Terrorist
The Poetic Terrorist
For someone with a mental illness, meditation can be the key to survival. Thinking-lots can be a mood, the mood of 'intellectually stimulated' lets say, and whatever the thoughts are, depressed or manic, psycho-sensory distortions, your mind is in 'the mood' to think lots. Bipolar Disease is after all a mood disorder, not a thinking disorder. Thinking can be trained much more easily than mood (ie. for playing chess well, or for debate).
Emotions are thoughts also. Emotion-thoughts (moods) have more grip because they encourage the body to produce chemicals or release adrenaline or aphrodisiacs or whatever. So the thought takes up a more 'physical' spot, it builds itself a kind of fortress. Then, whenever you get in that mood you are in a 'mental state'. Anxiety is a mental state, so is relaxation. So is dreaming.
Things that you learn in a mental state are easier to recall while you are there. So when you are anxious, that is why everything that makes you anxious comes up all at once. You've trained yourself, unconsciously, to remain anxious and to behave a certain way while anxious. You may fail your final exam if you have a panic attack, because you were relaxed when you studied (and maybe you had a lot of coffee and smokes, which you now don't have while writing the exam, ingested things affect mood too). So when you freak out, suddenly the new mental state can't remember things from the one in which you studied.
This is why you can't remember your dreams easily too, and they don't seem to make much sense even when you do, although they did at the time. Even dreams are like moods -- your body is DOING something, so a mood takes hold, and certain thoughts are more learned in that state than others.
Meditation can be likened to a process of learning how to get into a certain mental state and staying there more abundantly. You can see how this 'anchored' state -- which you can learn to get to from any thought, any mood, any situation -- can curb the extremes and blunt the edges. Suddenly there is an 'eye of the storm', and that is the 'I', the Self that watches. Cultivating that eye of the storm will allow even hurricanes of mood to pass but not blow you around so much.
It's not as if you are not going to 'feel' emotion or 'think' beautiful/ugly thoughts anymore, though the mind might fear that meditation will shut it down. It's actually quite the contrary! You feel into emotions and witness your thoughts: all that really is happening is that they are no longer seen as entirely in control of your actions. Meditation after a while puts a 'gap' between the thought/emotion and what you DO because of that thought/emotion. It teaches the mind, like a good dog, to sit, stay, heel and follow your command.
What we DO, the behaviors we carry on with, have waaaay more affect on our mood and thoughts. You can't help WHAT you feel, and you can't help WHAT you think... but what you DO can help, and the consequences of what you do will affect mood (thought/emotion) inevitably and radically. For someone suffering from OCD, this realization is actually the key to recovery. It may help the bipolar sufferer too. Hell, I believe it will help anyone who is suffering from over-identification with emotion and thought.
Although it seems like you are doing nothing while meditating, just sitting there, breathing, waiting, watching... this is a tremendous doing. I'm sure you've already discovered that its hard to do, that the mind will come up with every excuse it can not to. So yes, DOING meditation is a behavior -- and consequently, it has profound (and in this case positive) effects on your mood.
I was wrong though when I said that to someone with a mental illness, meditation can be the key to survival. Meditation is necessary to live Life.
Emotions are thoughts also. Emotion-thoughts (moods) have more grip because they encourage the body to produce chemicals or release adrenaline or aphrodisiacs or whatever. So the thought takes up a more 'physical' spot, it builds itself a kind of fortress. Then, whenever you get in that mood you are in a 'mental state'. Anxiety is a mental state, so is relaxation. So is dreaming.
Things that you learn in a mental state are easier to recall while you are there. So when you are anxious, that is why everything that makes you anxious comes up all at once. You've trained yourself, unconsciously, to remain anxious and to behave a certain way while anxious. You may fail your final exam if you have a panic attack, because you were relaxed when you studied (and maybe you had a lot of coffee and smokes, which you now don't have while writing the exam, ingested things affect mood too). So when you freak out, suddenly the new mental state can't remember things from the one in which you studied.
This is why you can't remember your dreams easily too, and they don't seem to make much sense even when you do, although they did at the time. Even dreams are like moods -- your body is DOING something, so a mood takes hold, and certain thoughts are more learned in that state than others.
Meditation can be likened to a process of learning how to get into a certain mental state and staying there more abundantly. You can see how this 'anchored' state -- which you can learn to get to from any thought, any mood, any situation -- can curb the extremes and blunt the edges. Suddenly there is an 'eye of the storm', and that is the 'I', the Self that watches. Cultivating that eye of the storm will allow even hurricanes of mood to pass but not blow you around so much.
It's not as if you are not going to 'feel' emotion or 'think' beautiful/ugly thoughts anymore, though the mind might fear that meditation will shut it down. It's actually quite the contrary! You feel into emotions and witness your thoughts: all that really is happening is that they are no longer seen as entirely in control of your actions. Meditation after a while puts a 'gap' between the thought/emotion and what you DO because of that thought/emotion. It teaches the mind, like a good dog, to sit, stay, heel and follow your command.
What we DO, the behaviors we carry on with, have waaaay more affect on our mood and thoughts. You can't help WHAT you feel, and you can't help WHAT you think... but what you DO can help, and the consequences of what you do will affect mood (thought/emotion) inevitably and radically. For someone suffering from OCD, this realization is actually the key to recovery. It may help the bipolar sufferer too. Hell, I believe it will help anyone who is suffering from over-identification with emotion and thought.
Although it seems like you are doing nothing while meditating, just sitting there, breathing, waiting, watching... this is a tremendous doing. I'm sure you've already discovered that its hard to do, that the mind will come up with every excuse it can not to. So yes, DOING meditation is a behavior -- and consequently, it has profound (and in this case positive) effects on your mood.
I was wrong though when I said that to someone with a mental illness, meditation can be the key to survival. Meditation is necessary to live Life.
Access: PublicTagged with: journal entry, bipolar disorder
James, thanks for this exposition on meditation. Yes, just sitting in meditation is a feat. But one notices the comings and goings of the mind, thoughts and emotions. And untilmately what I have noticed after years of meditation practice is that meditation and life are now so married that they are not separate. Meditation is not just necessary to life, but life is a meditation.
James–I'm reading Andrew Storrs' Solitude and was thinking of your blog here. It would be a great read for you, I think. He tackles many of the issues you touched on, and connect it with his thesis that society considers those who choose solitude as mentally ill, and how wrong that is.
Shawn
I'll keep a note about it, Shawn. My readinglist is quite intimidating and long (I've worked it down to about eight books now, mostly to do with research for my novel). But finish the book and tell me what you think.
I actually originally posted this on the site of a bipolar sufferer who has made a blog to do with his experiences of the illness. Please, by all means visit this guy's site and take a look. Lots of people here on Zaadz share or have shared his trials, and it wouldn't take much to 'virtually' aleviate his feeling of isolation.
I'd love to see more people meditate. I'd like to see more people do more things to improve their health, both physically and mentally. There are so many different things out there for us to use……eastern medicine too, I'd like to see more of that.
For some unfortunate people however, who suffer from serious mental issues…….bipolare being one of them, some of these people can have fantastic improvements in their lives with medication. For others, like paranoid schizophrenics……..medicine can be a lifesaver.
Absolutely, medicine is essential. It's my understanding with this post that medical solutions have been attempted but need to be complemented. I began using meditation along with the medicine.
James have you ever heard of EMDR? eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. http://www.pshrink.com/emdrfile.html this is a brief description, I like the simplicity of his description. Essentially you put on headphones and it clicks left then right, like a metronome, rhythmically. The theory is it allows the brain to process things that are overwhelming. I was so skeptical at first, my very angry mildly autistic son had this therapy and it changed his life…He is no longer angry and has developed many coping skills since he had this type of therapy. He is still mildly autistic of course, the nutty professor geeky kid, but gone is the uncontrollable emotional storming he used to do. Meditation is something I taught this child to do by age 11 using visual imagery and it helped, but he is more able to get to 'that place' than ever before having flushed out so many of the negative things/ traumatic things he has had to deal with in his brief life. EMDR is a very effective treatment for PTSD as well.
Yes Meditation is absolutely necessary. Do you think that if the whole planet did it we could stop the madness?
thank you for bringing up real topics of interest. You know I love you better than my luggage! You have a true talent in that brain of yours. I know there is a fine line between genius and madness. I know you know what it is like to teeter between those two. I think many of us sit on that fence hoping we don't teeter over the edge too far…
Meditation and duct tape can solve almost any problem…
Mistress Heather - Especially Duct Tape. I'd be interested in trying out that metronome therapy thing, just out of curiousity. I do know what it is like to 'teeter' between madness and genius. Then I have mindless days where I'd just rather get a couple levels in World of Warcraft or some other multiplayer game.
Thanks for chiming in, Heather. I love you too!
James– I recently posted something on a reply to someone's blog about my father's and then my own struggles with bi-polar disorder. My bi-polar tendencies have been mild compared to some, but I've found tremendous relief from my practice of yoga, as I'm sure you know, a form of meditation. I don't take any medication, though it was recommended by a psychiatrist 5 years ago, shortly before I started my yoga practice. I feel lucky to have found yoga when I did. My father is severly medicated and extremely violent if he misses a dose or two, though it doesn't manifest until a few days later— when he might be back on the medication.
I found your post fascinating. I haven't thought that much about how and why, my yoga practice has become so essential to my being, I just know that it works.
I'm going to go look at the link you posted. Thank you.
I have seen rage as the response to depression or mania, but you're probably aware that this kind of disquietude isn't across the board. I tend to drift into openness and everything hits my heart, and I let it. I'll laugh all my laughter and cry all my tears. I've never been violent because of bipolar. Moods tend to emphasize and exagerate something else that is there to begin with so be careful with what you label 'the illness'. I would not be as aware nor as awake as I am were it not for successfully USING my disorder to great affect, exploring regions of experience that most must wait until death or long years of meditation to gain, like satori.
Violence toward others is often self-hatred combined with a feeling of overwhelming helplessness. But we cannot help those who do not wish to help themselves, and much less those who do not ask for help. Medication has been essential for me… training wheels. I took my time and fulfilled my responsibility to deal with the disorder. Some of my peers think that it was the severity of my mania that actually helped a relatively quick turn-around.
I know better, that it will be with me forever. But, by now it is simply another aspect of my experience. Good luck! Don't ever lose hope – you're only responsible for not harming others. You can do nothing with those who harm themselves.
James – thanks. I don't have contact with my father anymore. though I've been thinking of checking in.
I've started reading a new book by the woman who wrote “an unquiet mind”, but I found it to be rather limiting and fatalistic, so I've stopped for now.
For me– I'll always do some type of yoga or meditation or breathing exercise when either depressive or manic tendencies hit. and I appreciate the natural rhythms too.
I, like you, don't believe in stifling emotions, but feeling them, observing them, allowing them, and not necesarrily acting on them.
I do have to say that I haven't said absolutely no to sleeping medication, though I need it less and less and less. and i've given up the prescription ones for 3 mg of melatonin when I absolutely need it. I'm a shift worker too, to make matters worse. :)
I wonder if mild bi-polar is really bi-polar or just “moodiness”
My Mom is bipolar, and has always refused to treat it……..and I've seen people who are REALLY bi-polar……one day they're dancing on bars and climbing out car windows proclaiming how they're on top of the world, and the next they're in bed under the covers convinced that life can't get any worse.
That's rough.
Thanks so much for your post. Meditation has always been a challenge for me. i was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, as have my father and one of my sisters. It used to completely control my life.
Since I started dealing with a bunch of undiagnosed food allergies and celiac I've been amazed to see my bipolar disorder shrink. I still cannot get myself to meditate.
I do especially like this sentence, “Meditation can be likened to a process of learning how to get into a certain mental state and staying there more abundantly.” Looking at meditation from that standpoint makes me think I need to suck it up and give it another chance…
Erika: It doesn't have to be as difficult as you're probably making it out to be.
Try to set aside 5 minutes every day. Sit in a chair in a quiet room. Close your eyes and follow your breath. You don't have to breathe a certain way, and you're only closing your eyes because visual stimuli adds to distraction – there will be enough distraction as it is!
For five minutes, just watch your breath. You'll get distracted, but the more you get distracted, the better it works. Cause then you have more chances to NOTICE you got distracted, and then gently return yourself to the breath. Listen to the silence, feel your fingertips and lips and wait.
Wait like you've never waited before. Wait as if you're going to wait like that for a month.
The five minutes will pass like the snap of a finger.
Try it for a month! Every day. Increase to 10 minutes a day next month. Your mind is going to ALWAYS argue against meditation, always try to make an excuse. Always. It's very, very, very predictable in this. It will always invent something else it has to do, right that moment.
But it's 5 minutes, so… c'mon. Clearly you can tell your mind to fuck off for 5 minutes and sit. For the beginner, there's really not much more to it than that.
I'm working on food/nutrition and exercise NOW, coming more from the meditative standpoint, so I know both are hard.
Erika,
I support your realization that it is difficult and your desire to suck it up. I taught my son to use his breath at 11 using this visual imagery. I will share it with you since it incorporates breathing as part of it. It puts you, the breather in control of visual images.
Do as James said, sit in a chair or find a comfortable spot somewhere. Visualize yourself sitting atop a cloud with clouds all around you. Imagine you can see only clouds… no blue sky….
Breathe in and when you exhale, you move or blow some of the clouds out and away.
As you breathe each time you will see them recede and blue sky begin to peak through….
Continue this until you see blue sky. Breathe the clouds away until you have made a blue sky with very few clouds….
It can take as long as you want it to take, but the first time my son did it, it took him 10 minutes.
This technique was helpful to my son when he became upset, anxious or was out of control, I could say to him go find a comfy spot and 'make blue sky happen'. This type of meditation is a tool; a tool you can learn to use effectively. Visual images are helpful when you are learning how to breathe.
It certainly was empowering to my son. He now has progressed to other types of meditation but for the beginner, it gives you a focus for your breathing.
I hope this helps you. Bravo to you for taking steps towards learning to meditate.
Heather – I'm going to share this with some of my yoga students too. I love that – make blue sky happen. I wish I had known something like that long ago. What a wonderful too.
James, thank you for sharing this with us. I am certainly passing it on. I definitely can see where this is helpful and calming!
Mistress, I am definitely giving your suggestion a try. I am a newbie at meditation and this seems like a great place to start!
What is strange about meditation and me is that I have meditated for great lengths of time. I can sit with my breath and stay with my breath. When I get distracted it happens, I return to my breath.
The thing is I just don't like it. My whole life I've struggled against this thing that I call the “nothing”. It creeps up on me and suddenly I experience this complete non-existence/infinite space. Meditating always brings me a bit to close to this experience. As I've gotten older I've gotten better at holding it back. It's not that I fear meditation will bring up this experience but sometimes I feel that I've spent so much time trying to get away from this infinite empty space I don't want to just sit down and try to go towards it.
I was speaking to a Buddhist friend of mine who I respect greatly. He said that I should consider a mindfulness practice that is not sitting meditation. I found this to be interesting but of course have not pursued it further.
Anyway, sorry James, didn't mean to come here and puke all this up on your blog! Got me thinking at least, right?
Erika -
I've found great success with mindfulness as well. It's even less technique than sitting in meditation. There are some great sources and you can do it anywhere. Meditation for me eventually gave way to mindfulness, though I do still sit as often as I can manage to. I have a blast with mindfulness on the bus transit system. A lot of Eckhart Tolle's talks are basically about mindfulness and feeling the stillness, but perhaps you should look into it.
I think I know what you're talking about with 'the nothing'. I've written about that in other places at other times.
If you feel like you've had experiences with this nothingness, please pm me. No one ever understands what I mean. It can be such a frustrating thing not being able to have people understand this issue or being afraid of it.