When I first got sick, I believed I could think it away. I thought I was a smart guy, and surely I could find a way to control these things. I guess I’m a smart guy, but I sure as hell had no idea what had happened to me, nor how it had changed me. No clue.
The first thing my psychiatrist did was to throw me on lithium. My wife started reading every book about bipolar that we could find. I thought I understood what was happening to me. Hah!
It took a while to find a therapist. We needed both a couples therapist and a personal therapist to help me deal with being bipolar. Wow! What a wave of sadness I feel just thinking that thought. (Or am I being sorry for myself?)
Early on in my therapy, my therapist suggested I read a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which, I believe, is the approach maccmann is referring to. It’s approach is to teach you how to counter your unrealistic thoughts, and teach yourself how to get better, and stay better.
Great! Right? The research said it worked for 75% of patients. The implication, like maccmann’s, is that everybody can do it.
So I tried, but I got stuck in a fatal loop. If I was responsible for my getting well, then I was responsible for being sick, and since I was sick, I must want to be sick, and therefore I was a failure.
I was worse off than before. What a relief when my therapist said to try mindfullness.
It’s not easy being from the school of self-responsibility. I was born and bred to it (which is one reason why I don’t tell my parents). You have no excuse. If you fail, it’s because you chose to. If your standards of success are high enough, you’ve guaranteed yourself failure, no matter how smart and competent you might be compared to others. Exhibit A: daloon (male).
So, am I really responsible for being sick? Or is it brain chemistry? The psychiatrist (a major researcher on the genetic causes of bipolar) said it was chemistry. My wife said it was chemistry. My therapist said it was chemistry. But I did not believe them. I knew, as maccmann knows, that it was all me.
It didn’t matter that the “events” seemed to occur randomly, and unrelated to anything in my personal history. It didn’t matter what all the experts said. They were just trying to be kind, to let me off the hook, to give me some relief. They were lying to me, in other words.
Every therapist has sworn up and down that they aren’t lying to me, and when they compliment me, it’s true, but I still suspect otherwise—they have a vested interest in me liking them, and no matter how ethical they are, there is still the possibility or maybe even likelihood that they are being influenced at an unconcious level by their need to earn a living.
So I was convinced that everyone was misleading me, in suggesting that it was the chemistry, and not my thoughts that caused my depression. I was 100% in maccmann’s camp.
And it nearly killed me.
A friend saved me. She was about in the same position that I was at the time. In talking to each other, we made each other laugh. Hysterically. We were talking about how we might kill ourselves, and after a while it became absurd.
I feel better, most of the time, after I talk to her. I feel better when folks here offer their support. It means a lot to me. Oddly, I tend not to feel better after visits to the therapist. And with my wife, it can be good, and sometimes it’s like she’s trying to make me feel bad. She doesn’t know the doublethink that goes on in my head, and she can’t guess that it’s there. So sometimes, it seems like everything she says makes me feel like a failure.
But when I take a pill, after a few weeks, a lot of that doublethinking stops. I felt like my thinking changed with the meds. It really disturbed me. How could a pill change the way I think? Not just the way, but the what. It made me think that someday, we’ll be able to take pills to create not just emotions, but thoughts we want to think. Scary.
Later on, it seemed like I had a lasting mild depression, so the psychiatrist added an anti-depressant, and that worked at first, but then didn’t, so he upped the dose.
So now Sunday happened. And Monday. Falling down the elevator shaft, and somehow, bouncing right back up.
My thoughts? Well, the mind is a mysterious thing, but why? People theorize it was Thanksgiving and the stress of my father and other family members; the dark (seasonal affective disorder); poor sleeping habits. But I had a good time with my family, and I’m doing much better on sleep. Not much I can do about seasons, although I could get a light box.
I know that when I believe I can do something mentally to help myself, I fail and get worse. When I take the blame away, I can get better, but I still, randomly, it seems, sink down. I have a tendency to blame myself for these things, and I need people to remind me (believeably) that it’s not my fault, or I will cycle down and down.
People are different. We have different responses to stimuli. Different history, and different senses of meaning. No one size fits all. It’s nice to know there are many methods out there. I know there are a group of people for whom the idea that we are responsible for our own depression is a killer. Perhaps we have lived lives where we feel responsible for everything. You want to know what I’m responsible for? The world. The whole fucking world. Not doing a very good job, am I?
I don’t know how many we are, or what portion of depressed folk we represent. I know that mind power doesn’t work for me. I still don’t believe that. However, it doesn’t help when people tell me I can control it. I think the people who say that need to proselytize about it, because it helps them believe it will continue to work for them if it works for others. Like a religion.
Some of us have had enough blame in life. We blame ourselves more than anyone else possibly could. It doesn’t help to be told that we can fix ourselves with our minds. That heaps more blame on us, and makes us worse.
sorry about how long this is. guess I had something to say!
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