“Even Nothing Cannot Last Forever”
Quote by Neil Gaiman
Post Created Jk the secret keeper
Illustrated by j. kiley
Post Created on May 18th 2013
Posted May 18th 2013
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” ― Dr. Seuss
“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” ― Lloyd Alexander
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” ― Terry Pratchett
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
“When I was your age, television was called books.” ― William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.” ― Lauren Oliver, Delirium
“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” ― Albert Einstein
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” ― Dr. Seuss
Genius or Madness?
“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary
Post Created by Jk the SK
Illustrated by j. kiley
Created May 12th 2013
Posted May 13th 2013
Original Transcript
6 November 2012
Genius or Madness?
Professor Glenn Wilson
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide” (John Dryden, 1681).
“There is no great genius without a tincture of madness” (Seneca, 1st Century A.D.).
dali spider of the evening
Many great artists and scientists appear to have gone slightly mad following their lofty achievements. Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest physicist of all time, introducing the concept of gravity and making major advances in optics, mechanics and mathematics. He was also intensely suspicious and distrustful of others and in later life dabbled in alchemy and sought hidden messages in the Bible. Of course, alchemy was not thought a mad pursuit in Newton’s day and he could have been afflicted with mercury poisoning as a result of his experiments.
dali the disintegration of the persistance of memory
Beethoven and Van Gogh are also said to have gone progressively mad, though the reasons are equally debatable. Beethoven’s mania may have been due to alcoholism, syphilis, or lead poisoning (apart from his profound deafness, which would distress anyone, let alone a musician). There are theories that Van Gogh’s mood swings were caused by porphyria rather than bipolar disorder, that he lost his ear in a duel with Gauguin (claiming self-injury to maintain his friendship) and that his “suicide” was an accidental shooting by two boys playing cowboys (whom he also protected).
van gogh starry night on the rhone
For others, the genius and madness appear in parallel. Nikola Tesla was a brilliant applied scientist whose inventions rivaled those of Edison. He obtained around 300 patents in radio and electricity technologies, pioneering alternating current and hydroelectric power. However, he claimed to be in communication with other planets, to have invented “death rays” and suffered from bizarre compulsions.
van gogh bridge
John Nash, the Nobel-winning mathematician who developed “game theory” for the social sciences also suffered paranoid delusions throughout his career. He was hospitalised involuntarily and had to feign sanity to be released. He still heard the voices but learned how to live with them and not to talk about them. “I wouldn’t have had such good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally” he said.
van gogh starry night
Sometimes it is a matter of chance or social milieu that determines whether an individual is deemed brilliant or crazy. To the Counter-Reformation Church leaders, Galileo was not necessarily mad (probably just heretical) but they clearly failed to appreciate his genius and subjected him to a lifetime of house arrest. In other times and places Picasso and Einstein might have been committed to an insane asylum rather than revered for their original thinking.
moby dick – jackson pollock
Many lists of creative achievers throughout history have been compiled along with mental health symptoms and diagnostic categories retrospectively assigned to them. Unfortunately, these are mostly anecdotal, speculative and lacking in proper controls for comparison. Some have argued that the connection between genius and madness has been over-egged because of a few high-profile cases such as those described above.
virginia woolf by george charles beresford 1902
The best evidence in support of the genius-madness link comes from behaviour genetics. The close relatives of creative people are more likely to be schizophrenic and vice versa (psychotics having more creative relatives). Einstein, for example, had a son who was schizophrenic, while Bertrand Russell had many schizophrenic relatives. According to Simonton (1999), “creative hits and crazy misses” are mixed within many illustrious family pedigrees, including the Darwins, Galtons and Huxleys.
virginia woolf
The first degree relatives of creative people are actually more prone to mental disorders than creatives themselves. This is because actual illness (as opposed to its genetic predisposition) is likely to impede a creative career. The exception seems to be writers, who themselves show high rates of many behavioural disorders, including psychoses, mood disorders, substance abuse and suicide.Could the environment also be involved? Traumatic events in childhood and orphan status seem more common in those who make outstanding contributions to art and science. In a study of 700 high achievers, found that three-quarters had troubled childhoods, especially loss of a parent. The “school of hard knocks” could provide motivation and inspiration (Dickens and Chaplin come to mind here) while at the same time generating psychological disorder. However, this idea is opposite to the common-sense view that parental support and encouragement is beneficial to achievement, rather than maltreatment and deprivation. Indeed, the Goetzels found that wealth was more common in the backgrounds of famous people than poverty. And of course, pathology in the parents may be genetically transmitted to their children, thus accounting for some of the associations reported.
Virginia Woolf
Similar thought processes, such as unusual and grandiose ideas, together with a determination to promote them, seem to link genius and psychosis. Certain neurotransmitters and gene loci have been cited as common to both, including the male sex hormone testosterone, a gene relating to a growth factor involved in neural development and plasticity called neuregulin 1 (NRG1 and genes modulating dopamine transmission in the brain, e.g., DARPP-32.
virginia woolf painting
Unconventional thinking is characteristic of a constitutional personality trait called Psychoticism (P). This has many facets, including tough-mindedness, lack of empathy, impulsiveness, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, bizarre thinking, and a refusal to adhere to social norms. High levels of P predispose to psychopathy and clinical psychosis, as well as to creativity, thus accounting for the overlap between them. A good deal of research over recent decades has supported this theory. A related trait is called schizotypy. An optimum number of indicators for this relates to creative achievement, rather than full-blown schizophrenia.
kurt cobain
Dopamine function (or dysfunction?) may account for the link between genius and madness. Dopamine is the chemical messenger in the meso-limbic and cortical areas of the brain concerned with approach, reward, positive mood and achievement-seeking. Genes that modulate dopamine levels are reported to affect novelty-seeking behaviour and to relate to Impulsivity and Psychoticism. Recreational drugs that are addictive and sometimes lead to delusions and hallucinations (e.g., amphetamine psychosis) tend to raise levels of dopamine in the brain. By contrast, anti-psychotic medications are usually dopamine antagonists (this being one of the reasons why compliance is difficult). Untreated schizophrenics have more D2 receptors in the striatum and lower D2 binding in the thalamus.
kurt cobain – bipolar
Genius and psychotic are both inclined to loose associations (i.e., “thinking outside the box”). This can be observed as unusual responses on a word association test or in some of Salvador Dali’s surreal images (e.g., the Lobster-Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa). Such flexibility of thought seems to be increased by dopamine.
beethoven – bipolar
Another description of the schizophrenic thinking style is that it tends to be over-inclusive, with the boundaries of relevance being set more broadly. To most people, an apple falling off a tree and the movement of planets in the solar system would appear to have nothing in common, but Newton was insightful enough to connect them under the grand unifying concept of “gravity.” Of course, not all such generalisations turn out to be that useful but many great scientific theories depend upon the ability to perceive improbable connections.
carrie fisher – bipolar
Exactly how loose associations or over-inclusive thinking promote genius is unclear. If enough crazy ideas are generated, one or two might hit the target by chance alone. This approach is deliberately harnessed in “brainstorming” sessions which use random “flashcards” as a means of generating fresh ideas. Certainly, it is difficult to be creative operating within received wisdom and some of the greatest artists and composers were the “rebels” least shackled by the traditional rules of their art. However, the “shotgun” theory smacks slightly of “monkeys on typewriters”. (It would take a long time for them come up with the complete works of Shakespeare). Outstanding advances in science, like the theories of evolution and relativity, and great works of art, such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle, cannot be generated by chance alone. Profound imagination and high-level spatial intelligence is usually required in addition.
bipolar behaviour
Application to the point of “work addiction” is also often involved. Edison reckoned that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.Most creative people are also the most productive. There is a positive correlation between quality and quantity of output, implying that each masterpiece is likely to be interspersed with much that is mediocre. (I do not ne)cessarily agree with this statement.)
marilyn monroe – bipolar
The human tendency to apophenia may be implicated in both creativity and madness. This refers to seeing meaningful patterns where they do not exist and it underlies superstition and hallucinations (e.g., seeing ghosts and hearing “voices”). This perceptual style has survival value because failing to spot a predator in the forest is a bigger (potentially fatal) mistake than seeing one where it does not exist. Exaggerated apophenia is characteristic of schizotypal individuals and is enhanced by dopamine.
ernest hemingway – bipolar
Another mental “illness” linked with creativity is bipolar mood disorder (previously called “manic-depressive psychosis”). This is characterised by extreme mood swings, occurring over a period of months, and it seems particularly to afflict artists, writers, musicians and comedians. Among highly talented people who appear to have suffered mood disorder are Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Spike Milligan, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry (who presented a TV documentary on bipolar disorder detailing his experiences).
winston churchill – bipolar
Genetic analysis shows links between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Sufferers are often tortured souls, particularly when the “Black Dog” afflicts them, and their feelings may be tapped to give greater depth and sensitivity to their art. On the other hand, the “flight of ideas” experienced in the “manic” phase of the mood cycle can result in exceptional productivity. As with the trade-off between schizophrenia and genius, bipolar disorder balances troughs with peaks in a way that might account for its evolutionary survival. Treatments are available for bipolar disorder but there is a danger that, by smoothing mood, they could impede the creative forces.
bipolar wheel
Then there are the autistic spectrum disorders (such as Asperger’s syndrome) in which a deficiency in social communication is sometimes accompanied by “savant” skills in fields like music, mathematics and spatial intelligence. In the film Rain Man (1988), Dustin Hoffman plays Raymond Babbitt an autistic whose exceptional memory is exploited by his brother to count cards in Las Vegas casinos. (This was loosely based on a real-life savant called Kim Peek, who may in fact have had a chromosome disorder). The artist Louis Wain, who became famous for his surrealistic cat paintings was hospitalised for schizophrenia, but others have argued he was actually autistic.
marilyn monroe poster
These various “disorders” can all contribute to extraordinary contributions to art and science. Some tendency to psychotic traits seems to be beneficial (thus accounting for the maintenance of such genes) but too much makes the individual disorganised and is hence detrimental. It is notable that creative artists and writers have profiles similar to those of psychotic patients on clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) but are less extreme – in fact, roughly half-way between normal controls and full-blown schizophrenics.
mel gibson – bipolar
What is the mechanism whereby schizophrenic genes promote survival? The clue may be in the behaviour of bower birds, the males of which make colourful and elaborate constructions in order to attract a female (the Taj Mahals of the bird world). Creativity has also been shown to promote mating success in men, as measured by number of sex partners. Since there is no such connection for women, it is not surprising that men’s productivity in art and science exceeds that of women by around ten times.(I don’t believe this statement about men exceed women by around ten times in productivity in art and science—more like opportunity and the continued imbalance in availability and acknowledgment).
medical cannabis for bipolar treatment
Obviously, it does not do to be totally and permanently “away with the fairies”; some measure of control needs to be maintained. Consider James Joyce and his daughter Lucia, who was being treated by Carl Jung for schizophrenia in 1934. Joyce doubted she could be schizophrenic because her thought patterns were so similar to his own. Jung disagreed, comparing father and daughter to two people who had arrived at the bottom of a river. According to Jung, James had dived there, whereas Lucia had fallen in.
“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary FULL MOVIE (2011)This is a brilliantly made Documentary. Everyone who is Bipolar or knows someone who is or those in the Psychiatric profession and do counseling with anyone who is bipolar or anyone interested in bipolar and everyone who wants to have a knowledge of bipolar and find out what it is from what the myths are or how much people are misinformed about bipolar. A MUST SEE VIDEO. STOP THE STIGMA OF BIPOLAR AND ANY FORM OF MENTAL “ILLNESS” CREATIVITY.
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ― Oscar Levant
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.” ― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ― Aristotle
“I’m a misunderstood genius.”
“What’s misunderstood?”
“Nobody thinks I’m a genius.”
― Bill Watterson
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” ― E.F. Schumacher
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
QUOTATIONS on MADNESS:
“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” ― George Santayana, Essential Santayana, The: Selected Writings
“So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.” ― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke
“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“I don’t possess these thoughts I have — they possess me. I don’t possess these feelings I have — They obsess me.” ― Ashly Lorenzana
“The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.” ― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence — whether much that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not spring from disease of thought — from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
QUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:
“I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible…” ― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
“Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” ― Karl Lagerfeld
“Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother
“Clear your energy, honor your rhythm, live your vision ” ― George Denslow, Living Out of Darkness: A Personal Journey of Embracing the Bipolar Opportunity
I must bring this to your immediate attention. Last week, when I wrote to you in our usual letter, I included a poem. It was a raw and painful poem to write. I would really like to discuss some of it with you in this letter. I hope you don’t mind. It has been making me feel rather vulnerable, even though I haven’t sent you the letter yet. Someday, any day, might be when I do get brave enough and really write these letters with the direct expectation of mailing them to you or handing them to you in person. The second way would make me feel more assured that you received the letters personally and no one else touched them or might accidentally open them. I don’t think anyone at the counseling center would ever do something like that intentionally. But these are very private letters meant for your eyes only. Just thinking about discussing the poem I wrote is making me feel rather anxious. In fact, I feel like I am starting to have a panic attack. Let me take a Klonopin before we continue. After that I will post the poem and the paragraph that followed it. I want to discuss that along with the poem. I’ll be right back.
Here I am, back really quickly. It will only take about 15 minutes for the med to take effect. Well, here goes, this is the poem once again appearing in one of my letters I am writing to only you. If I ever give these letters to you, I must have your word that you will never ever show these to anyone else. No one must know what I am telling you. These have to be our secret. If you only knew how I feel inside.
How do I really feel about you Annie? Right now, I have no idea. Too afraid to go inside to find out what I truly feel. The whole of the world confounds me. It just makes me feel depressed. It just feels that I can’t hold onto the people I love. They just tend to die. It’s not like they’re even old. When you die in your twenties, I would call that dying “Forever Young.” Too many die FY. You’re not going to do that, are you Annie?
What do you think of my poem? If you read it now, how would you decipher it? I’ll play both of us. You go first, or should I? Let me pull out the first three lines. The writer, the lover, the thinker: isn’t something missing? Whose feeling anything? The lover is just sexual. You can do that without any feelings at all. The writer is mental but could be emotional with the words they are expressing. But I don’t think so. It’s cerebral. The thinker, existential separation anxiety filled with analytical theorizing until infinity gets exhausted.
Someone is missing. Someone who connects in a soulful way with people or animals. Who is that? Lets think about it. Send out feelings to find out who they are? You think a spiritualist. I thought I was one of those people. I believe in the spirit, the soul, the astral body, the separation from the physical. The soul is just carrying the weight of the body while its heart beats and air fills its lungs and the grey matter still is able to function to make the physical tissues of the body perform.
I was thinking tonight about Heaven Annie. As I made it up the stairs to bed and my cat always raced up the stairs before me. We play that game every night. I make believe I’m going to beat him tonight. It’s always the challenge. There’s no way in Hell that I can ever beat him. But he loves the game. You want to know his name? He goes by many. He has such a magnificent personality. We call him Sparky because he sparks like fireworks. It’s not his official name. That one is proper. We named him Higgins after the character in the great Broadway play Pygmalion. He responds to anything but Higgins and he rather prefers being called Sparky.
What the Hell are we talking about? Is it about making it through with some enjoyment and to try to forget about all the nightmares? Or are we suppose to face the nightmares? The soul tells me that we have to or we won’t make it. I have too many. How about you? What are your bad dreams? What tried to fuck you up? Any bad people in your dreams? You seem pretty together but anyone can put a mask on. Why do you suppose we all try to hide from everyone? We are all human. Our feelings fall somewhere into the human category. Are we afraid people will think we are crazy or too weird?
Back to the poem, the next three lines are pretty explosive. Feeling the fool for not hearing, the silence for not screaming and feelings trying to blow the whole thing wide open but being stopped somehow. What stopped me? You probably would like to know that. A good reason, how about one of the abusers threatened to kill me right at the moment I told him if he didn’t stop I would go to the police. Wrong thing to say to a nasty, mean pedophile. He tried to kill me but he stopped at just making me feel he was going to crush my head into stones like Stonehenge. He pulled back but not until he told me he would not only kill me but my whole family. Those other people who also abused me. For some reason I felt I needed to protect them. I didn’t care if he killed me. My life was ruined. They all in combination destroyed who I am. They crushed my life. I am dead. My spirit has been stolen from me. It’s like in Peter Pan, they stole my shadow, my reflection. I don’t have one any longer. I am invisible. That’s why no one can see me. Why I never get noticed except when someone wants to hurt me or make me feel more pain so that I really do want to be invisible. I just wanted to die.
The only reason I stayed alive was I loved my grandmother. The funny thing about it all, my grandma, she had an accident shortly after this and went into the hospital. She never went home again. I saw her once at the hospital. I climbed into her hospital bed with her. Under the oxygen tent, we hugged. I held her so close. Her arms used her strength, as much as she could and held me close. Then it was time to go. I gave a bunch of kisses to say goodbye to her. I didn’t know I would never see her alive again.
She died in protest. They wanted her to become one of the forgotten. She wasn’t going to let them do that to her. She told them that it was something she would never do, going to a nursing home. She stopped her breathing and her heart from beating. She left me behind. I stopped living when she stopped, too.
“The feelings trying to explode…Where was the awareness?” I was clueless on what or who to, if anyone, to talk to. I never talked to anyone back then. Words were not my companion when spoken out loud. Not something I even knew how to do. Didn’t know how. Had no practice. What would have been the right words to say anyway? I didn’t know them to say or to even write down on paper. I am only learning now how to connect my words with feeling.
“We say ‘Welcome to the surface.’ It should have been Welcome to the circus. “Now what needs to be done?” We need to find someone new that we can really talk to. Someone who will listen and really hear what we are saying. Not judge us. Try to understand. And not constantly criticize us and try to put us down. Diminish who we are. That’s been done all our life except in college. For some reason I mattered when I was in college. I felt important and wanted. The same happened when I was part of the Women’s Center when I lived in Connecticut. It’s not so much I want to feel important. I just want to feel like I matter. Everyone I think needs to feel important in some way.
“Releasing the energy ensnared for decades amongst twisted webs…” I have been so blocked. My thoughts and feelings didn’t have an outlet. And I didn’t know how to say the words. I was made my own prisoner eventually, out of fear. Demons possessed me with fear. All the demons from all the years of abuse and made to feel like I was nothing, a nobody that had no worth or purpose.
“The voice is seeking freedom but holding onto multiple secrets.” We have a central voice but we also have multiple voices. With all the alters, we have to listen to all their voices and all the needs they tell us that they have. It’s hard to keep track or remember. It is really confusing inside our head sometimes. But we were working with a woman therapist who had her moments of quality therapy but she had her problems. I have an obsessive alter who was in love with her and obsessed with her. Let’s call it quite dependent. We were attached. We needed her. She was the first therapist that figured out what was going on inside our head. She figured out the DID. I have to admit when she told us we has other personalities, it really freaked us out. Kind of went into shock and some heavy denial. No way could that be possible. She said the psychiatrist agreed with her after he tested me.
That was the big secret. We thought realizing we were Gay was enough of a shock but being MPD was more difficult. Coming out of that closet was worst. It took us a while before we could tell Scottie and we had been together for a long time at that point. Almost 15 years. When I found the courage to tell her, her reaction was: “Oh, I already knew.” I asked her why she didn’t tell me. “Because you needed to figure that out yourself.” Of course, she was right. It wasn’t easy. Like I usually do, I bought or borrowed every book I could find on the subject of MPD. I learned it all. Enough to get a degree.
There is so much more to discuss in this poem. I packed it with a great deal of exposure of my past. I need a break. I may try to answer more of the points in this letter or carry it over to the next letter.
It’s a list of some of the confusion that smashed into our life. It started when we were really little and didn’t stop. The abuse continued when we were adults. No was the word that meant nothing to anyone who wanted something from us. Our body betrayed us. We couldn’t stop anyone from forcing us. Some didn’t even realize they were forcing us but they were. If we shut down inside we became frozen. We couldn’t stop what was happening. This started when we were little and continued into our adult relationships. It was all on some degree of force. We weren’t there in our bodies. We left or went deep inside or floated on the ceiling until it was over.
It wasn’t consensual. It was a form of rape and abuse. We wanted love but not sex. We didn’t want to be sexually aroused because it would always end with us disappearing and our bodies would shut down. It was like turning the keys off in a car. The engine would stop running and so would we. Eventually we created an outside person, a human robot, who faked our life like a computer. She would accumulate data. And learned the expected behavior and that would be hos she would perform. We were safe inside while she was out there living a fake life as a fake person. A puppet represented us. She hid in plain sight. No one would find us with the puppet self having a controlled pattern of behavior, always asking questions to improve her performance do she wouldn’t be detected.
Our hiding place was discovered by this woman therapist. She saw through the facade. She was tricky and scary to us. She got to close. We started to care too much. She opened up the rawness in us. She made us need people. Specifically, she made us need her too desperately. We felt so close to her. But more like the fox in Le Petite Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. She tamed part of our wildness. She made us want to be loved by her. Being loved and wanting to love in return puts such a control on you. I began to develop an overwhelming need for her. It was driving me mad. Everything started falling apart. My life felt out of control.
Our hiding place was revealed. There was no place to go except into madness and wanting to commit suicide. Suicide has always been a part of our life. It is a part of our breathing. It is always an alternative to the divine madness. We can escape that way any time we chose. But it is not an answer we can choose. Not with all that we are responsible for. Our life needs us to be in it. Everything has changed. We are learning to begin to live. We have found a purpose. It is delicate and sometimes difficult to balance but we are giving our new life all that we are able to give it. We know and are learning what we are able to do. We are able to write. We are able to be creative. Our artistic nature is starting to blossom. We are letting it be free. It likes that. It feels like are trusted to let the muse guide us. She always seems to be when we need her. We don’t push it. We let it be a natural flow. We like, no we love where we are now. It does have its difficulties with the mentally creative activities that bombard our brain. But we work hard on that more with our doc then with Mr. Xxx. He is about as helpful as a dead skeleton. His sense of warmth and communication I’d to tell stories that do not at all relate to what I am feeling or going through. He doesn’t help me at all except to give me reasons to escape my life. He lets me run away. I know I have my weaknesses but I need to find my life before I die or I kill myself because I can’t live with the confusion any longer or the depressions or rage.
I want to say that I am here and I want to stay alive. We want to be here. We choose life.
We fought through them trying to destroy us. They didn’t succeed. We are still alive. No matter how many battles. No matter how many nights we have to fight to make it alive til morning gets here. Therapy, knowing my psychoanalyst is there is so reassuring. It means at least one person is out there in our Universe that knows we are alive. That we exist. Being alive is a higher grade than just existing. The artist that lives inside of us makes it all matter. Otherwise, nothing else matters. If I didn’t have my art, my animals, the women I love and the men who are decent that I love. A good home and family who I love and who love me. The special people who know who they are. They are part of what make this life I live matter. But that involves some major time tripping. I am having visions of a future in my life, but I must be patient and wait for that time to happen. It is a good sign that I make it to that future. Others do not.
Here in 2007 I have you Annie. I am focusing on that. Your presence is beginning to mean something more to me than I even understand at this moment. We will see where that takes us.
Until next time.
Regards,
MadisonI attach this to the letters I write to you Annie to assure the strictest of confidence.
To Annie,
At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the boundaries between us and to record the development of our relationship.
I want Annie Haskell to trust me. I want you to know I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. Writing to you in this way frees up my words as I speak them onto the page. Some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I have written in honesty. Right now, I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.
Regards,
Madison Taylor
Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.
the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats, patrick, sparky and toker love to escape to
madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it starts just past the labyrinth
QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
“A Dream
The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor
“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”
“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist
“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan PoeQUOTATIONS on LIVING:
“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame…” — Jack London
“There are two kinds of people. One kind…they congealed into their final selves…you can expect no more surprises from them…the other kind keep moving, changing… They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive…” ― Gail Godwin
Happy 4/20 Legalize It!
FREE MEDICINAL CANNABIS / MARIJUANA TREATMENTS
Created by jk the secret keeper
Created & 04/20/2013
California Time Posted 4/20/13
EDT Posted 4.21.13
“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.” ― Bob Marley
“When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.” ― Bob Marley
“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.” Thomas Jefferson
“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit . . . unnatural?” ― Bill Hicks
“We all need something to help us unwind at the end of the day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly brainbox of its witterings but there has to be some form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly relentless.” ― Russell Brand, My Booky Wook
“Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.” — Richard M. Nixon
“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
The Non-Sense: Part 1
at the beginning of time there was total blackness if you follow the creation story and on one of the days it was said: “let there be light & there was light.” now i know that in the bible they are technically speaking about actual light. you know, turning on a switch which then turns on the light, providing someone paid the electric bill. But then I don’t think there were corporations way back then. Or did they pay off those in High Command so they would eventually be able to announce that they have actually been controlling the single universe since the beginning of their designated recording of the beginning of time. this is what you call black humour. don’t be too sensitive about it. I really believe that I am trying to be funny. How can you be serious about the creationist theory and believe that man walked with dinosaurs only 6000 years ago. Now that is funny to really take those figures seriously. The world is filled with two much blackness for having only been around for such a short period of time. None of the things that happened in the Universe could have happened that rapidly. Let’s get serious. The Devil was kicked out of Heaven and descended to Earth. He went by the name of Lucifer. He wasn’t such a bad guy. After all it was god’s best friend. They had a fight and Lucifer supposedly lost so Earth was his interim designation. All Hell broke loss. What was going on in Heaven? Why were people’s hearts filled with such torment & blackness. What the hell did they do to deserve such wrath. Why create animosity & strife developing into wars and killing and bloodshed.
The Garden of Eden. Now that must have been one cool suppressed group of people. They didn’t have knowledge. Does that mean no wisdom? Do they go together. What about Lilith? Did she lead Eve astray or was it the snake taking the fall. His legs were stolen. Who took them? That wasn’t very funny. Now by now there are probably some who are taking offense to the story I am writing. But it is just my way of creating an alternative to all the other alternatives about the creation of the world , the universe, god, the big bang theory. You probably wondered when I would get to that. The Universe exploded out of nothingness into something. Logically, as Spock would say, “that is improbable and totally impossible.” And what about the edges of the Universe or the possibilities that there are multiverses spread out all over the place into infinite space. How far does that go? How can anything be infinite? It expands and expands like a balloon that never explodes. But if there really was a Big Bang, then something did explode. I am in total control of my faculties but find that non-sense is necessary to find any common sense to explain any of what this universe is or was or will be. Otherwise, it would make us all mad just like the hatter & wonderland would seem like a real place and earth totally made up. This has been a display of true non-sense that has some sense but not enough sense to make sense. Trying to understand the dimensions of Stephen Hawking’s brain or Einstein’s theory of relativity is enough to make the world inversely implode and then there would remain no-sense for making any sense out of anything at all. When you see the world in darkness, it feels like all is lost and gravity is pulling us to the center of the universe. Is the universe shaped in such a way that there actually is the possibility that it even has a center. If it did would there be a chocolate covered cherry waiting for everyone that exists in the entire universe to enjoy as a treat.
Niamh Clune’s poem makes sense.(Under — Comment #6 1st line: “It is easy to believe…”) What I have written makes no sense but I needed to release these words from my brain for it to go back into making some semblance of sense in the near future. How does anyone decipher reality from it’s opposite? And what is realities opposite? That is a $300 billion trillion dollar question. I am asking if there is an answer out there for anything except that matter is vibration, frequency & energy(that you Nikola Tesla) but I do not think the last word is the right word but I found it and corrected it. Matter is actually vibration at a certain acceleration which gives it form & we all live within the hallucination of the imagination of someone sitting out in space having one hell of a nightmare with fringes of pleasant fun & loving thoughts. When they sneeze it causes for the symptoms of climate change. When they cry in their sleep, it rains & it may cause tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis. We all live in someone else’s imagination who is in a coma from being in a crash with a star in the outer galaxy of the alternate universe parallel to the one we do not exist in now. So all of this that I have written has no baring on madness or fantasy or reality. It just is what it is and nothing more.
@-;– jk the secret keeper
Now seriously, in response to Niamh Clune’s poem. It is quite serious and poses some extremely important points. To believe that there was light that came out of the darkness of the Universe before the Big Bang Theory is an unfathomable thought until you look around at now and see that there is light. But there is also blackness that intrudes upon most of our lives. It causes us pain and wonder as to why we all must feel such pain. Niamh has a way in her writing to explore and to reach the center of thought or idea. In this instance, she explores the vulnerability of our heart. The ease in which it can be broken. The struggles we must pass through to make it through this life we have been given. She is so brilliant in her expression of the places between living and dying. I want to ask why death? If we are given the gift of life why steal it away from us with something so unknown and fearful as Death. It seems a cruel joke.
Life seems at times to be a cruel joke. There is so much violence. I don’t mind the mystery of life but why the punishment. We are given Will, Purpose, Power and Love but it all gets rather jumbled up as we live those lives that we are given. Art is a way to sort out that jumbled up mess so that we are able to make an attempt to sort it all out. The points in Niamh’s poem first sets off the non-sense reaction in me b/c it makes me aware of the difficulty that life really is and then I find the seriousness & try to respond to her poem’s point on that & it all seems like we have had a majorly sadistic joke played on all of us. We just must hope that we find people who we are able to love and who will love us and will get our sense of humour and get us being somewhat fucked up at times. We do need friends to make it through. We may need our privacy and the wish that someday having reality tv fail once and for all and be gone with it.
We need Will, Purpose, Power and Love. The Will to live. To find a Purpose to want to stay alive. The Power to survive and actually live out our lives. And Love, which I feel is the most important of all in the Universe. And To have Love and give Love is the greatest gift of all. jk ps. I have total respect for Niamh Clune’s writing. Why it set off the need in me to let loose with a tirade of unfiltered goofing is probably due to the intense seriousness of the subject of her poem. It is so good that my nervous system needed a release before I could get to the core of the seriousness in myself in response to the seriousness of the words and thoughts she expresses in her poem. I do hope that she will understand what I was doing. It was to show the non-sense of most of what life can be & also what seriousness there is throughout life that we need relief from it at times. It is a need to find relief. jk the secret keeper @>-;–
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Hannah Harrington
“He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that’s what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you.”
― Hannah Harrington, Saving June
“A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.” ― W. Somerset Maugham
“Artists exist to show us the world. So do windows. ” ― Jarod Kintz
“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― C.G. Jung
“What do you think an artist is? …he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”
― Pablo Picasso
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” — Dr. Seuss
Flannery O’Connor
“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
― Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” — Dr. Seuss
“You’re mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation
at high speed with total clarity.” ― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss
“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” — Dr. Seuss
“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” — Dr. Seuss
“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
― Alice Walker
“If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good!”
– Dr. Seuss
“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
― Pablo Picasso
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
– Dr. Seuss
“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent van Gogh
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So. . . get on your way.
– Dr. Seuss
“Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.” ― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.”
– Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg
“When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”
― Pablo Picasso
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
– Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go….”
– Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas
“Step with care and great tact
And remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
– Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go
Leonardo da Vinci
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
“Young cat, if you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you would learn! The most wonderful stuff!” — Dr. Seuss, Seuss-isms
Yann Martel
“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
“I am the Lorax, and I’ll yell and I’ll shout for the fine things on earth that are on their way out!” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
― John Keats, Letters of John Keats
“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
― Albert Einstein
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
The Hours: Depression. Suicide. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway – a thread throughout the entire film. An intense film can draw you out of yourself. I, so, love Virginia Woolf that the mere presence of her in the film carries me back in time. It causes me to feel such intense feelings for what she must have experienced. I connect to her pain & awkwardness & complete sense of feeling madness taking over her mind. She doesn’t want to burden her husband Leonard any longer or her family, that she decides to place heavy rocks in the pockets of her coat and walks into the river Ouse & drowns so that all the pain will be washed away. Suicide is a theme in this film & failing relationships. It is attractive to me when I am depressed for I feel a oneness with several of the characters & it makes me feel more connected with my own self through their lives.
What Dreams May Come: Death. Finding Your Loved One In Hell. Going through the many level of death, trying to get your loved one to remember you. Once done you both are brought to Paradise. Illusions in film are sometimes beautiful & often horrible but the thought of being reunited with the person you most love is well worth the journey. Most would go to the ends of the Universe to find their love but to the basement of Hell that is one long perilous journey.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Losing Your Memories of Ever Knowing the Person You Love. You ask for your memory to be wiped. I am rooting for the two main characters in this film that they will find a common ground in which to make their relationship work but it seems they always end up wiping their memories clean & once again play out their destiny to meet & repeat their love affair all over again. It is serious & amusing at the same time. So there are laughs but there is a sadness & desperation of wanting the two to actually work out their love relationship. It is the romantic in me to believe that there are soul mates out there and that love can& does in some cases last forever throughout eternity as it was for the Browning’s, Elizabeth Barrett & Robert.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers & Return of the King. Escape. Fantasy. Lofty. Good triumphs over evil. Appeal to noble instincts against the worst sort of odds. Coming together of people from all magical dimensions to fight the good fight and be triumphant. The struggle to carry out the journey only one can achieve, of course, with the help of his best companion & being waylaid by evil all along the quest.
Harry Potter: (all eight in series) These films grew in maturity & I love Daniel Radcliffe & Emma Watson. I loved the fact that practically every top rated British actor did a role in these films. Once again Fantasy, it always hits in a good place for me. It takes you into a world that is impossible to have experienced until you either read the books or watched these films. It was a tradition in our household that S would receive as a present every hardcover book of Harry Potter as soon as released, usually around her birthday. And the best collection of each film would follow around Christmas to show up under the imaginary or potted tree for a present for S. I love Harry & Hermione the most. Ron was a good sidekick but I really wanted to Hermione & Harry to end up together but I suppose it did all work out. There were several gasps when certain characters died that you did not expect. Especially, a certain rather short fellow that you got attached to. Time for a Harry Potter marathon. S does LOTR marathons all the time. I usually get into Twin Peaks marathons. I am due a Lost marathon. I missed all of year 6 b/c of being extremely ill. I literally Lost that year of my life. There is no recall of anything that happened that year.
Somewhere In Time: A Love Story where the two lovers are separated by Time, torn apart & the only way they can be rejoined is for one to travel back in time in order to meet. An unfortunate thing happens with a penny from his present. Its presence in the past cause him to be jerked back to his present. He is too weak so is unable to return. He must die to be reunited with his beloved. The music & the love story is the most beautiful, sad & love story ever. I cry every time I see it. I listen to the music from it quite often.
The Sound of Music: Favorite film of all time & most watched film, also. Love. Family. Romance. Shyness. Finding a mother who loves you. Falling in love. Beautiful music. Longing glances. Escaping the Nazis with success but leaving their old life behind. The only life that they knew, Facing an unknown future. Beautiful music & scenery & love growing throughout.
Ruling Class: It is about Insanity, in part. Peter O’Toole opens the film as Jesus Christ & his father erotically hangs himself by accident while trying to achieve sexual satisfaction. JC inherits the fortune. It’s a comedy. Really. Interesting transformation. The family are all nuts. In the family’s efforts to lead him off the cross they haphazardly turn him into Jack the Ripper. He goes from the God of Love to the God of Vengeance. There is singing, dancing, lewd jokes & murder. It is quite funny. Makes you forget about the fact that you are feeling so depressed.
V for Vendetta: Evey is an ordinary girl capable of overcoming her fear and being a part of a revolution. This is an empowering film. The hero V blows up the root of Power – The House of Parliament. After living under the oppressive rule of a Talking Head tyrannical government. First, V starts with a list of people who are high up in the group of Talking Heads & one at a time starts methodically killing in a manner that fit each one’s past transgressions. Great Explosive Ending. The People’s Revolution a total success. Very Uplifting.
Except for great mysteries, the category of films that Girl Interrupted is in, I would say that I love most films that take place in mental hospitals or that have psychotherapists and patients as main characters. I’ve been drawn to psychological films since I was a child when I first saw David & Lisa. Psychology has fascinated me with my first contact with the subject. Understanding how the mind works. Why we feel the way we do. How our lives are affected/effected by merely living it. All the traumas of the world that we have or come in contact with during the course of living. There are predators out there that fuck you up. There are chemical imbalances that fuck up our brains or so they say. I like to watch people with questionable mental creativeness interact. The ability to not block your ego from letting everything out. Feeling your inhibitions unblocked or so it seems. What is insanity after all? Does it really exist or are some people just too sensitive for this world?
There is a long list of films in this category that I have seen & would recommend when depressed. First film after David & Lisa and Girl Interrupted are the following: Suddenly, Last Summer. Lilith. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Prince of Tides. Spellbound. Freud. A Dangerous Method. Good Will Hunting. Sybill. Mr. Jones. Primal Fear. Nuts. Marnie. Beyond Therapy. (All excellent films & dramas except Beyond Therapy, which is a Robert Altman comedy of errors. If you are an Altman fan you will find this film hysterically funny & it will lift almost any ones depression at least during the time while you watch this film.) Another film S reminded me of which she absolutely hates but knows I absolutely love. I had a therapist that use to tease me jokingly about this film & said please don’t ever do that to me. The film is called: What About Bob? This is the ultimate OCD film comedy of all times. Bob gets a new psychotherapist who is about to go on vacation, He sees Bob once & recommends another psychotherapist he can see during the summer during his vacation. Well, Bob has bonded extremely intensely with his new therapist & goes to extremes to follow him to where he is on his summer vacation. Every psychotherapist’s nightmare. His family absolutely adore Bob. It is extremely funny & frustrating. Good for any depression, I think. The psychological film list of greats: As Good As It Gets. Three Faces of Eve. Persona. Shutter Island. A Beautiful Mind. Harvey. Twelve Monkeys. All of them excellent. Forgot The Sixth Sense: “I see dead people.” An amazing film that will take you out of yourself. You will be so amazed at the twists & turns of this film. By now everyone knows the ending but just in case I am not revealing it here. I do in my dreams what this kid does in his waking hours.
The film list continues with just a few more suggestions…
Donnie Darko: Destiny. Who expects something to fall out of the sky & crash through your bedroom roof & kill you while you are asleep. That is not the film. The film is what happens before the Big Event. It’s a quirky, time distortion, strange story about a kid who seems to be living in another time zone from the rest of the world around him. Great film.
Proof: Shows the growth of a loving relationship between a daughter, who is a touch questionably balanced, & her father who was losing his mental faculties. Both brilliant mathematicians who are trying to solve an extremely important & complicated math problem. At least, important to them. Then enters the sister from Hell who after their father dies, tries to sell the family home & bring her sister back with her to live in the city, after spending her entire life in that house. It’s a brilliant film. Very moving but pisses you off b/c the sister just doesn’t get it.
Inception: This film will blow your fucking mind. It takes you on a trip through the corridors of time & space so that you cannot tell where or when you are in reality or inside of a dream. The world around you keeps caving in. Might be a great distraction for someone depressed. The world in the film seems a hell of lot worse than the delusions you might be experiencing in the reality you are presently in. I still haven’t figured out the ending. Totally disagree with S even though we have played the last scenes over and over again.
My favorite films with Julie Andrews, who I adore & she can help me through some of my many mood changes. Good love stories & musicals, sad or happy: Tamarind Seed. The Americanization of Emily. Thoroughly Modern Millie. Victor/Victoria. Princess Diaries I. Mary Poppins. I mentioned The Sound of Music earlier. Just having them on in the background helps.
Musicals on the stage & on film. Those over the years that have helped with depression are: West Side Story. All That Jazz. Showboat. Funny Girl. The Pirates of Penzance. Hair. Hello Dolly. Chicago. Moulin Rouge (with Nicole Kidman & Ewan McGregor). Musicals help me to get in touch with what I am feeling but those feelings are usually good or real, not bad. Feelings are never bad.
jk the secret keeper
This is the end of part 1–part 2 follows next post When Bipolar: Experiencing Depression
Virginia Woolf: “If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.” — “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.” — “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.” — “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “A woman’s whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.” — “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It’s contrast.”
— “The Hours”
Angelica Bell: “What happens when we die?” Virginia Woolf: “What happens?”
[pause] Virginia Woolf: “We return to the place that we came from.” Angelica Bell: “I don’t remember where I came from.” Virginia Woolf: “Nor do I.”
— “The Hours”
Clarissa Vaughn: “I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.” — “The Hours”
Leonard Woolf: “Do you think it’s possible that bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of error?”
— “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease, completely. All this must go on without her. Did she resent it? Or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.”
— “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “I was going to kill my heroine. But I’ve changed my mind. I fear I may have to kill someone else, instead.”
— “The Hours”
Virginia Woolf: “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel I can’t go through another one of these terrible times and I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can’t concentrate so I am doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I am spoiling your life and without me you could work and you will, I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. Virginia”
— “The Hours”
Galadriel: “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who, above all else, desire power. But they were, all of them, deceived, for another Ring was made. In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged in secret a master Ring, to control all others. And into this Ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One Ring to rule them all.” — LOTR “The Fellowship of the Rings”
Galadriel: ” And the ring of power has a will of its own. …some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. …Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived. Its time had now come. …something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable. A hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire. For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all…”
— LOTR “The Fellowship of the Rings”
Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” — LOTR “The Fellowship of the Rings”
Elise McKenna: “The man of my dreams has almost faded now. The one I have created in my mind. The sort of man each woman dreams of, in the deepest and most secret reaches of her heart. I can almost see him now before me. What would I say to him if he were really here? “Forgive me. I have never known this feeling. I have lived without it all my life. Is it any wonder, then, I failed to recognise you? You, who brought it to me for the first time. Is there any way that I can tell you how my life has changed? Any way at all to let you know what sweetness you have given me? There is so much to say. I cannot find the words. Except for these: I love you”. Such would I say to him if he were really here.” — “Somewhere In Time”
V: “…words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning…where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission… He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent… More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives… if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you…allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.”
— “V for Vendetta”
Cobb: “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”
— “Inception”
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: “War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he’s capable of. It’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us, it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.”
— “The Americanization of Emily”
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison: “I don’t want to know what’s good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn’t good, or bad, or true. It’s merely factual, it’s sensual, it’s alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be.”
— “The Americanization of Emily”
“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.”
― Tim Burton
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
― John Lennon
“Nothing is real.”
― John Lennon, Beatles Lyrics
“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.” ― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark.”― Frances O’Roark Dowell, The Secret Language of Girls
“Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as “fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales.” And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day “advancements” we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question “Who designated myths and legends as unreality? ” But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors “You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things” and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.” ― C. JoyBell C.
The following was written as a response to an article on PsychCentral “Keeping Creativity Alive with Bipolar Disorder” By Kat Dawkins. The link is: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/bipolar-life/2013/02/keeping-creativity-alive-with-bipolar-disorder/ I couldn’t help myself, once I started writing my comment it turned into the following. It is really a great idea to use your creativity to keep yourself alive and to help believe in yourself. It is a great article and I highly recommend everyone read it, not just those who identify as/with bipolar. It is a really positive article and reassuring and supportive. So, this is how I responded personally to what I had read and how I felt after reading the above mentioned article.
I am in need of creating every day. Almost all the time I am awake. I need to be reminded to eat. Take infrequent breaks to watch some tv but can’t concentrate, need to get back to my laptop. i write a blog, poems, essays, prose, learning to write in the Japanese Style of Poetry. I am working on a screenplay. I do art for my posts and for myself. I create collages and posters. When I was a kid I wrote a lot and painted. I wrote songs and played multiple musical instruments. Now I am making short movie videos, just really learning. I want to get deeper into photography. I do computer graphics. I cannot be creative enough. And most of the time I do not realize I have all these abilities to the extent to call myself an artist, a writer, a musician, a screenwriter. I never had any belief in myself. I felt shy about saying I did anything creative or that anything I wrote was worth mentioning or showed any sign of talent. Basically, I am saying that I did not believe in myself on any level. Even though, when I was a teenager, my first psychotherapist convinced me I should use poetry as a way of communicating what I was feeling since I was having such a difficult time talking about anything. She felt I really expressed myself in my poems. After that for some reason I think my older sister saw my poems and decided she was going to show my poetry to a professional writer and poet. He wanted to meet and talk to me. I was surprised when his critique of my work was so positive. He told me I had an eye and saw things differently. His encouragement was that I should continue to develop my abilities, that I had it. I was a developing poet with great potential. I was blown away but wasn’t really sure how to take what he said and what my sister said to me afterward supporting his opinion. I never had any encouragement about things I did that were creative or sports or theatre or anything artistic. Not one word of encouragement until I was past the believing stage and didn’t believe what other people said or what I saw in myself. Yes, I knew what I could do but I never felt I had anything that was special. I did not believe in myself.
Let me continue…
I wrote my first screenplay when I was about 13 yrs. old and my first novella when I was in high school. I was in the youth orchestra, the church choirs, did theatre in high school. In college, I worked my way up from being the poetry editor to become the editor in chief of the college newspaper. I was actually in a professional singing group. We played guitars and I wrote some of the music. I use to write music and lyrics that people actually liked but still I didn’t believe in myself.
I see all these things written down but I would never believe in myself or say out loud when others talked about being writers or poets or artists. I could never believe in my identity as a creative person who was an artist. Until this person came along quite recently and started telling me that I was good and I kept getting better. I have all these ideas in my head. I told a friend on Skype tonight that I never knew ahead of time what my post was going to be that day or night. I write at least one post a day but often more, sometimes up to four. It depends on how much energy I have and how much I want to express.
To think a few years ago I was afraid to write a poem and when I started to b/c of the encouragement of my then psychotherapist, I felt so embarrassed and shy about showing to her one poem or even to read it to her because i felt I would be misunderstood or it would be too revealing and I felt my feelings or thoughts were perverse or really fucked up. She finally convinced me that I should send off one of my poems to have it published. That freaked me out but eventually she won and I sent off a few poems to a journal she felt would like my work. A few months later, I picked up a copy of this journal and began reading it. When I got to the section where submissions of art and writing were, I read through it. There was this one poem I read that I particularly liked. Not realizing it was one of mine, I really liked the courage of the poet who wrote it. For some reason, I finally saw the name of the poet. It was me. I was shocked. Kind of blown away. They never contacted me that one of my poems had been chosen to be published. I think at this point I must explain why I didn’t recognize my own poem. It is basically, I have what is called short term memory loss. If something doesn’t make it to my long term memory, I will not remember it. An easy example has to do with names. I never can remember anyone’s name unless I have heard it over a continual stimulation so that it makes it to my long term memory. This is an even better and I find amusing example, my partner didn’t think it was funny, but we were watching the show “Elementary” where there is a character whose name is Sherlock Holmes. The show lives in a world where there is no such character of fiction as Sherlock Holmes. That’s not important though. There was this female character that for some reason I could not remember who she was and I kept asking my partner questions about her. At times, I thought she was a psychiatrist. She wasn’t. Then I thought she was a journalist. She wasn’t. I kept getting these ideas b/c of the dialogue she was saying. My partner kept telling me that she was a profiler for the FBI or CIA and had once been personally involved with Sherlock and revealed personal things he shared with her in a book she wrote. For some reason I could not remember this. I do not have short term memory as bad as the character in the film “Memento” but sometimes I feel it comes close at times. When I write something, moments later I will have no idea what the hell I have written. The same thing happens with watching films or reading. While doing the activity as long as I am not interrupted I mostly can follow the story. But if I take a break, I need to start again.
So now that I got so far away from what I was writing about, I am back.. That is why I didn’t recognize my own poem. So I had been published. But I was always posting poems and editorials when I was working on my college newspaper. But somehow I lost all of that once my life had changed so drastically afterwards.
Now where I am in my life I write about anything. My partner said about something I posted a few days ago that she would never print something like I had written. I call it Free Stream. I just named it that when I was filling out the heading to the post. I like that “Free Stream.” That’s exactly what it was. I started out writing a poem but I knew that I was never going to get what I wanted to say to fit into a poem. Not b/c of length but b/c of how i wanted to say it. Anyway, with my new mentor/muse/friend I have found the confidence to write about anything and to feel free to express myself anyway I wanted to. My friend tonight on Skype said that my posts were a work of art. I do art and writing and always have at least one piece of music and I love quotations, so all my posts have at least one quote but usually lots more than one. And I create such a variety of types of posts, which is what makes it so much fun for me and I hope for those who follow and read or view my posts. It feels good to receive encouragement and to feel an identity that you can honestly believe in.. It is important in order to build confidence in one’s self.
It is important to my sanity to be creative and I highly recommend it to anyone especially if you are bipolar b/c it gives you a place to center your energy and you will find you have a lot to say and it will make you feel good to express yourself. And when you start to have people like and enjoy what you create and some people even comment and you comment back and on their blog posts too. It makes you feel connected and you actually do develop relationships and you see such creative art out there. My friend, who is so majorly creative, that I was Skyping with tonight who said my posts were a work of art also called me brilliant and creative. I didn’t have that as a kid or as an adult much either. I was so shy when I was growing up and abused on an unpredictable schedule but the abuse was fairly constant. There were mentors here and there some professors and some therapists after I was able to escape my family when I was an older teenager. But to have some very special persons I have met online and have made great friends with, who I really care about and love, is beyond anything in my life. Those persons I am talking about live on the other side of the world and across oceans but they give me so much and they encourage me to create. One of these persons is so demonstrably creative that the inspiration I gain from her goes beyond imaginable. They love what I have to say and how I express myself. It is so rewarding. So do it. Really do it. Create. jk the secret keeper ps: and I highly recommend reading the article that inspired me to write this piece for this post.
“The sheer secrecy of creativity — the difficulty in understanding how it happens, even when it happens to us — means that we often associate breakthroughs with an external force. In fact, until the Enlightenment, the imagination was entirely synonymous with higher powers: being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the ingenious gods. (Inspiration, after all, literally means ‘breathed upon.’) Because people couldn’t understand creativity, they assumed that their best ideas came from somewhere else. The imagination was outsourced.” — Jonah Lehrer
“The creative process is a seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.” —William James
“Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration…shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.” — Frederich Nietzsche
“Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.” ― Vladimir Nabokov
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” ― William Blake
5 Persistent Myths About Bipolar Disorder
By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.
Associate Editor
Published in PsychCentral
Edited by the secret keeper
Bipolar disorder is a serious and difficult illness that affects all facets of a person’s life: their education, work, relationships, health and finances. (Read Julie A. Fast: author of several bestselling books on bipolar disorder, including Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder and Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder.
Fast was diagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder II at 31 years old in 1995, a time when very little was discussed regarding the diagnosis. Since that time, knowledge and media coverage of bipolar disorder have improved dramatically. “I’m astonished at how much more people know about the illness.”
TV shows are featuring more accurate portrayals of bipolar disorder. “In the past, people with bipolar disorder were practically frothing at the mouth.” Today, writers and producers make it a point to get it right. Recently, Fast served as one of the advisors on the hit Showtime series “Homeland” and talked with Claire Danes about her character’s bipolar disorder.
While information has gotten much better, many misconceptions still exist and endure.
Five Persistent Myths About Bipolar Disorder
1. Myth: Bipolar disorder and depression are completely different diagnoses.
Fact: Bipolar disorder and depression — also known as unipolar depression — are not completely different illnesses. In fact, this is one of the most misunderstood ideas about bipolar disorder. (Psychiatrists are to blame for the misconception.)
Patients who believe this myth may oppose the diagnosis “if they don’t have the full-blown ‘manic-depressive’ picture and also resist taking “bipolar” medications like lithium.” Read Dr. Mondimore, author of Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for Patients and Families.
It’s more accurate to think of bipolar disorder and depression as “probably represent[ing] two ends of a spectrum of illnesses…The designation ‘bipolar II’ has helped crack this a bit, but this is why the term ‘bipolar spectrum disorder’ continues to gain ground.”
2. Myth: People with bipolar disorder experience dramatic mood swings followed by complete remission of symptoms.
Fact: Some people with bipolar disorder experience this pattern. However, “Many patients have periods of residual symptoms and less severe but still significant mood fluctuations between episodes of more severe symptoms.” This is especially common if people don’t engage in healthy habits to manage the illness.
3. Myth: Medication is the only treatment for bipolar disorder.
Fact: Medication is an important part of managing bipolar disorder. But it’s not the only answer. Viewing medication as your only treatment option “can lead to fruitless reaches for the ‘right’ medication.” And it can lead you to avoid making valuable lifestyle changes and seeking therapy.
As Fast writes on her website, “Medications take care of half of the illness, the other half is management.”
Stressed is the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle, including avoiding alcohol and drugs, cultivating good sleep habits, exercising and effectively coping with stress.
Medication and alternative therapies can be part of the treatment plan. Still be cautious against thinking “that we can exercise, diet, meditate, walk and rethink our way out of this illness.” (In fact, this is another big myth that persists.)
Think of bipolar disorder like any other long-term illness, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. It requires commitment and comprehensive management.
4. Myth: After having a severe episode, people with bipolar disorder should be able to bounce back.
Fact: If a person with bipolar disorder experiences a severe episode — one that requires hospitalization, for instance — there’s an expectation that afterward they’ll be able to get back to their work and life. However, equate this scenario to people who’ve been in a car crash. You wouldn’t expect someone with broken bones simply to get up and start sprinting.
5. Myth: People with bipolar disorder aren’t trying hard enough.
Fact: People wonder why someone with bipolar disorder just doesn’t try harder. They think that if they exert more effort, they’d have the life they want. They wonder why everyone else who experiences mood swings can cope with them but someone with bipolar disorder can’t.
But this implies that bipolar disorder is a choice. “Would you ever say that to someone with diabetes or pneumonia?”
People just don’t realize how serious bipolar disorder is. Thankfully, though serious, it’s highly treatable. Managing the illness is hard work, and finding the right medication takes time. But “Keep trying. Never give up.”
***I add that I do not personally agree that medication is necessarily the answer for everyone with the bipolar diagnosis. I do not take medication for Bipolar but I do take medication for my health and for my anxiety/panic. I, also, work with the methods found in the books written by Tom Wootten, particularly the book: “Bipolar In Order.”
It takes a long time to learn these methods and have them become effective. The theory is to work toward finding your bliss whether you are in a depressive state and having a difficult time or whether you are in manic state. Finding your state of bliss is working toward blending these levels so there is a more even connection and one learns to exist in all of the levels of your bipolar with an acceptance that all of life is a long continuation of its self and all states are part of the other. You do not “rise above the pain,” instead you are experiencing it fully. But the pain is no longer controlling your reactions. I wish I could get to that state but I feel I am working on it but first I need to learn how to release the pain so that I can feel it.
“The advantage is that we have the ability to experience it more deeply, while having the wisdom to chose how to react…The “cure” for depression is not the removal of all symptoms. The “cure” is to get to the point that the symptoms lose their power over us. …pain is part of the bliss just as much as pleasure, happiness and all other conditions.
From another article I found the following statement, in which I was not aware of before now.
“…People who suffer from an anxiety disorder in addition to bipolar disorder are more likely to have severe symptoms of bipolar, such as suicidal behavior, more manic episodes, and more depressive episodes…”
***Reading this last statement, it helps me to understand certain bipolar reactions that I experience. Lately, I haven’t felt like my bipolar has been that bad but in actuality, I have been losing more and more control over by bipolar. Coming to that realization, I have to thank my partner for pointing that out to me over the past holiday and culminating with her telling me late last night that I am totally out of control. I need to give myself a break. To take things slower. Not feel like I have to do everything all at once or create so many expectations for myself that I forget about sleeping and eating. Also, she feels I am not realizing that I have been depressed and hiding behind the manic episodes. Consuming myself in activities way beyond what anyone should expect themselves to accomplish. So I need to slow down. Talk more to my therapist about how to get things under control. I just need to break down projects into shorter versions at a time and not think I have to do them all at the same time and have them completed all at once.
I must say I rather like the term “bipolar spectrum disorder” because it incorporates all the possible combinations of how Bipolar effects anyone who lives with it. My symptoms are across the whole spectrum and do not fit nicely into any diagnostic package. Compound that with the other parts of my life I am working on healing that are not directly connected to BSD, I would say I live a rather complicated life. Let me tell you I am never bored. Who has time for that. I would also like to thank all the people in my life who have been extremely supportive. They know who they are.
I am sending a May Day signal that I need to slow down but still maintain a pace in my life that allows me to be creative but to do it in a Zen state rather than in a Hypomanic State. Now I know that isn’t going to be easy. And I sure have a lot of work to do to establish this “relatively incomprehensible state” for myself right now. I do find certain of my activities to be quite Zen.
That happens when I am being creative or better said, when I am creating something. Not making lists and lists for what I want to do, but the actual doing the activity of creating a poem or piece of art or drawing or making a collage or what my partner and I named transgraphics, writing anything imaginative or expounding upon a belief or developing a thought while stating facts within an argument in a written debate, working on my screenplays, short stories, or longer fictional writing. Creating is such an essential part of my life that if I were not able to do it I would die inside and want to die on the outside also. That is how important creating and art is to my life and existence.
So, I have Bipolar “Spectrum” Disorder and so many other challenges, that is why I throw myself into so many Challenges on “the secret keeper.” It is a haven I have created where I can live in a world that so many other creative people participate and that I follow and who follow me. It is my Paradise on this planet. A grand place to learn and join with others to expand our minds and have an enlightening experience and a fun place of a multiplicity of expressions and connections.
I felt this needed to be posted. Hopefully, for those who read this, it will give you a better understanding in a small or better way some of what Bipolar is and isn’t. Be kind. We have feelings just like everyone else and we hurt and feel just like everyone else. jk the secret keeper
Just a few sample of videos of who have been diagnosed or conjectured to have lived with Bipolar. There are a great many books and videos available for those who are interested in finding out more.
