Postcards from the Funny Farm

Before discussing the abstract art that we call bipolar, we have to look at diagnosis and what is required.  It seems like more and more news stories about rapists, murderers, garden variety psychopaths, and the like contain a tag at the end of something like:

“This story is truly a tragedy, such and such was being treated for bipolar before they went bad.”

You must have a heart for the bipolars out there who are living productive, often high-level professional albeit silent lives.  They are still dealing with the unbearable highs and lows (which we will discuss in a later post) and they also have to maintain in such a way as to never let anyone expect they have the specter.  After all, the evening news is no friend to bipolars.  They extend the stigma along with ill-informed people, the media, and Hollywood.  It puts an albatross around the neck of anyone who finds out they might have it. Many bipolars say it makes them want to search for the best flight deals out of town.

Even bloggers can spread false stigma about bipolar.  I remember reading one guy’s blog (I won’t link or mention it).  He would write everyday how the walls were breathing and making him angry and other outlandish truly psychotic things.  He would justify it by saying he was bipolar.  I wrote him a note saying his symptoms seemed more schizophrenic than and he said he had read a book and diagnosed himself as bipolar without ever seeing a psychiatrist.  Ah, the downside of the internet.

The number one enemy of people with bipolar is people who self-diagnose themselves as bipolar.

To be clinically diagnosed bipolar, according to the DSM, several quite explicit and profound symptoms must be present over time.  I read one doctor that said true diagnosis can take about 10 years.

The reason this is important is because we all have moods.  Just because someone has mood swings does NOT make her/him bipolar.  Often irresponsible people tell everyone they are bipolar before getting a medical diagnosis.  They do this for mixed reasons.  Bipolar unfortunately has become a “catch all” for people with issues.

Even if a responsible person feels moments of extreme highs and lows and goes to the doctor to get diagnosed, the doctor may be wrong.  Bipolars have to sort through feelings, facts, and the data day to day.  They have to become experts on their disorder because even the doctors can’t know for sure until time has passed and behavior observed.

Do you know someone who claims to be bipolar?  Have you seen a movie or news show that equated moodiness with bipolar?  Remember diagnosis is the key. If they aren’t seeing a psychiatrist regularly (either in real life or on the show) it is likely they are not truly the texbook bipolar.  Rather, they are part of a stereotype.  There is a lot more than mood to bipolar as you will learn in this series. Take this list linked below for example. It is famous people who have been clinically diagnosed as having bipolar.  Recognize any of them?

Remember seeing any of them frothing at the mouth or filmed in a straight-jacket?  Hardly.  Most of them are/were world changers and that’s one thing science can associate with bipolars.  I’ll bet you never heard that in the media!  Consider the silent bipolars when you hear and see the loud ones on your television screen.  Based on what I have researched and experienced regarding bipolar, I think society needs a real paradigm shift toward the truth about it.

Wiki partial list of Famous people with Bipolar

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Boy that is sometimes easier said than done. Have you ever got so uppity at someone only to find out later you were wrong? It’s a bad feeling let me tell you. Kind of like when your baby has a really bad diaper and for the life of you you can’t remember where your wife put the wipes. Tonight I waited on the phone for the longest time with the bank thinking I had an unapproved transaction on my statement for $15. After going through it with three people on the fraud line, I realized the mistake was mine … wow.

I think I’d like to be the nice person for a change. Do you think people say that about you? We all get frustrated and we all have issues. Come on, let’s face it … we ALL do. Instead of bumming the world out about it, how about we decide to be a nice voice on the phone, a nice face passing on the street, or a nice “voice” of writing on internet comments. This world is so screwed up and there is more pain around you than you could imagine. Let’s focus on that “be nice” energy point and see where it gets us. Are you game?

Before I close I just want to encourage all my readers about an opportunity to write on an exciting subject. It pretty much applies to anyone, so everyone can go for it. It’s for my current contest and you don’t have to do anything special, just link to this site. The prizes are pretty good I think and everyone who enters will get their share of new traffic. More details here.

I got that title from an old Alarm song. It’s a great tune with an even greater message for the visionaries among us in 2008.

Instead of waiting for others to be our inspiration, we have to be the inspiration to others AND to ourselves.

As you may have gathered from this series’ title, I grew up in Orange County. 45 minutes from Disneyland and 2 hours from the Mexico border. Nice living! When I moved up here to the high desert of California in August of 2002 I had nothing more than 300 bucks in my pocket and what seemed like a mystical job contract to teach public school. I left behind a rental apartment and everything else that had been “home.” I had decided some months earlier that a return to teaching was what my life and soul needed at age 33. You can read more about my transition back into teaching in my article entitled: Success and Relativity. Anyway, I didn’t mind the details of the move, I just knew this was my return to teaching and return to joy. It was as if I was in the story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the teaching job was my “golden ticket.”

The people I met up here, from the interview onward were magical. They saw the light in me and in turn I saw theirs. People offered to let me sleep on their couches, rent their condos, go out to dinner with them, set me up with women … note: I was single then … it was like out of a dream. The dream wasn’t so much about what they offered me though, it was about the light they shined into my heart. I remember thinking of the high desert as a magical place that no one in Orange County, where I grew up, could ever touch. Well, of course, I see now after nearly six years that wasn’t the case, it was merely my perception brought on by simple things people did.

The people were and still are magical but many have left the desert. One woman in particular who was instrumental in hiring me sufferred unspeakable loss when her son and his wife lost a baby in delivery. This world can be so harsh. She left the district and I don’t see her anymore. Others have retired and some have just moved on. I find myself sometimes asking: “Was the magic real? Where has it gone?” There you have the place to put my title: We are the Light.

In life we are lucky at times to be touched by the magic of others. We must never forget however that we have that same power to touch others. We see the light in people they often don’t see themselves. Let your words and actions pour light like water into the “vases” of people. Let them be better for knowing you. I’ll never forget the time my Grandpa had such an impact on me when he bought me a set of Callaway irons as a kid. I used to polish them nightly. Golf was a better game for me because of his generosity. That’s the kind of impact we should all have.

Remember also that the world is not always a mystical place. It is most the time, at its most complex level, just people walking on sand getting to their next destination. It takes people of vision, like you and I my friend, to to create the perception of magic.

The things that are eternal are actions and words you dream. Only you can start them. Only you can bring them back. Only you can keep them going. There really isn’t much to say on this except: GO AND DO!

An aside here at closing: Below are 4 of my family pictures. Each person in them “happened” post-desert … post-magic. Looking at them reminds me that home is where I probably need to shine the brightest, before I take on the world. Wouldn’t you agree?