The Concepts Of The Bipolar In Order Workshops
It is important to view any mental condition as having a combination of both good and bad aspects. When we see the whole picture, we can accept the possibility that our condition has a range from illness to advantage.
It is an illness when it is ruining your life, and it is totally out of your control. It is a disorder when it is not necessarily ruining your life, but it is having a negative impact on your life. It is a vulnerability when a chance exists that it might cause you to act up and do some bad things. It is an advantage when you finally figure out how to take the traits and turn them into something that helps you to grow.
There are clear steps we can follow that will help us to turn our condition into an advantage; Acceptance, Introspection, Focus, Creating A Business Plan For Success, Getting Help, and Your Own Hard Work.
Acceptance
Acceptance is the first step. We will never get anywhere until we recognize the importance of it. Acceptance means we are no longer in denial, but are willing to see our condition for what it really is. We need to accept the fact that we have this condition and it is not going away on its own. We cannot just mask it; we need to accept the good and bad traits that we have. Until we do, it is difficult for others to help us, and it is impossible for us to help ourselves.
Parents come to me all the time, frustrated that they can’t make a difference: "What can I do? My son refuses to accept the fact that he has this. What are our choices?" In conferences filled with both experts and consumers, no one really has an answer. You can lock them up for a few days but they will never trust you again. Until they come to acceptance, they will never make the effort to change. I wish I had an answer, but we all share the same frustration on this issue.
In our one day workshop, we break into small groups for this exercise:
Each person tells the others in the small group what acceptance means and why it is an important first step. Once each person shares his or her feelings, they work out a consensus definition. This takes a long time to work through, but having to express something to others is one of the best ways to become clear about it yourself. We compare all of the group definitions, and have a discussion about what we have learned. The commonality of ideas in all of the workshops I have facilitated is amazing.
Acceptance definitions from the workshop:
- It is the foundation for the building blocks that we need to get better.
- It is the beginning of taking back control of our lives.
- It is the comfort and understanding of who we are and where we are. It is exerting some control to become a better person, yet allowing for mistakes. It is taking responsibility for our actions, and not succumbing to self pity.
- It is being fully apprised, aware, and accountable, while being at peace with ourselves. It is being able to be ourselves. It is being open to the past and present without judgment.
- It is being self aware, being able to love ourselves as a whole, unconditionally. It is living with the consequences, both positive and negative of our actions. It is being willing to change habits, tendencies, and behaviors. It is knowing that we can only begin to accept others, by accepting ourselves. It is a key component to lifting relationships to a new level.
- It is learning how to grow. It is understanding what is happening. It is continuing our learning, then applying the knowledge through practice. It is knowing that we will not get it right the first time, but must keep practicing.
- It is being honest about what we are experiencing, what we have done, and what we have chosen, while loving ourselves at the same time.
- It is accepting people around us with their expectations or preconceived ideas about who we can become.
Acceptance is not surrender. Acceptance means to love ourselves for who we are right now, while striving to become someone we can love even more tomorrow. A point that is brought up in every workshop is that personal growth and the desire to change is a central component of both acceptance and forgiveness. We all agree that we have to come to acceptance before we can begin to change anything about our condition, our circumstances, and our relationships.
We need to work on acceptance for the rest of our lives. The acceptance we may have today is often conditioned on expectations that we are going to improve. When a few months go by, and we have not made the progress we were hoping for, we will need to accept that too. Acceptance is something that happens in the moment. We all need to accept our circumstances, other people, and ourselves, every moment of every day.
Introspection
How many of us, before we go out in public, look in the mirror, make sure our hair looks nice, and that we are dressed well? Why do we do that? Is it because we want to be attractive to other people? How many of us look into how we are thinking and acting before we go out?
I ask those questions at every talk that I give. Almost everybody raises their hand about grooming, but when I ask about thoughts and actions, very few count that among their daily habits. I counted six people out of 650 once, and often count zero in a crowd. It impresses upon me how little we have thought about it as a society.
If we want to be attractive to everybody, why do we take our ugly habits out there and ruin everything? Shouldn't we be looking at our inside, and not be so obsessed about our outward appearance? St. Francis didn’t care how he looked on the outside. Although outwardly he was not a handsome man, he was one of the most attractive people that ever lived. It was the way he acted that caught others’ attention. If we learn how to change our behaviors, we can become someone truly attractive to the world.
Introspection is the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes. It is the practice of looking into the mirror of our thoughts and actions. The practice I teach in the one day workshop only takes two minutes a day and provides remarkable benefits. The process allows our subconscious mind to monitor our thoughts, our triggers, and our actions. It allows us to see our progress.
Introspection relies on acceptance. It is important that we can accept ourselves each time we practice introspection. We must be willing to honestly look at ourselves every day.
Our therapists, family and friends, clergy, teachers, and even strangers see things about us that we do not. If we are willing to notice the way other people respond to us, we will get definite clues about how we are really behaving. By learning to see ourselves as others see us, we can begin to see ourselves for who we really are, instead of who we delude ourselves into thinking we are.
Introspection is the most important thing we will ever do. We will not do anything about our condition unless we accept it, but we cannot do anything about it without introspection. How are we going to change ourselves, or even know what to change, without a clear understanding of what we are working with?
In The Bipolar Advantage, there is a chapter about introspection based on the exercise we do in the one day workshop. The Bipolar In Order Workbook has thorough explanations of introspection. The two day workshop has deep introspection as the primary activity. It includes a deep look at our fears, relationships, mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual lives, as well as career and financial goals.
I can’t stress enough the importance of some kind of introspection practice. If you take just one thing away from this book, please make it the start of a lifetime habit of introspection. It is the most important step any of us will ever take.
Focus
The root cause of all mental conditions can be traced to our inability to control our own minds. You can’t even introspect unless you develop the ability to focus on the task.
During every workshop, we create lists of good and bad traits that people with mental conditions live with everyday. Near the top of that list is always: “My mind goes all over the place, it races, and is out of my control.” It is undeniable that controlling our mind is our biggest problem. There are those who doubt that the mind can be brought under control, but I never said it was easy. It is the hardest challenge we will ever face.
A good way to start is to learn to brainstorm. In the one day workshop, I teach the science behind how the mind can take advantage of brainstorming, giving concrete methods to do that. This is detailed in The Bipolar Advantage and The Bipolar In Order Workbook, so I don’t want to repeat it too much here.
Simple version: write down everything you can think of about a topic for three minutes. Most of us with racing minds will find we are naturally gifted at brainstorming. For us, the most important part of the exercise is not that we learn to brainstorm; it is actually that we learn to tell our mind to stop on our command.
At the end of three minutes, count up how many items you wrote down. You are now focusing on the counting instead of the flow of ideas. You have told your brain to switch off the racing thoughts and change functions. By practicing this every day, we slowly learn how to stop our mind from racing.
Are racing thoughts a good or a bad thing? They are a horrible thing when they are out of your control, but an asset once you learn to control them.
We have minds that are on fire so often, and are so out of control, that we need stronger methods than just learning how to stop them in controlled circumstances.
I have been practicing a stronger method my whole life. I learned how to focus the mind on one thing, blocking out all other thoughts and sensations. You can develop this skill too. The object of focus can be your breath, a candle, or an idea; it really doesn't matter what it is.
The first time you sit down for three minutes and decide you are going to focus, the same thing will happen to you that happens to everyone else. You set your watch, and at the end of three minutes, you realize you thought about your object of focus only at the very beginning, and after that your mind went all over the place. That is normal and experienced by everyone in the beginning.
After a few weeks of daily practice, you start to realize that you are able to return to the point of focus over and over again. After a few months of practicing every day, you can focus on one thing for a couple of minutes at a time. You have begun to succeed in training your mind.
It takes about six months of daily practice until you establish control. When you find your thoughts racing, stop and decide: “Hey, my mind is racing—focus,” and you will find you have the power to do it.
The reason Tiger Woods is so good is because he trained his mind to focus on what he is doing and nothing else. He blocks out all distractions and all of the thoughts that say he is going to screw up. He says to himself “I am focusing on doing it right and I have practiced over and over again.” When you talk to people who are successful at anything, they will tell you that the ability to focus is the key to success. Why don't we practice it? Three minutes a day is all that it takes to prove to yourself that it works.
The mind can be brought under control, but we have to do the hard work it takes to accomplish it. We have to make consistent effort over a long period to see results. It doesn’t happen overnight, so we have to stick with it. When you take the cast off of a broken limb, you have to do physical therapy and exercise your muscles in order to make them powerful enough to function again. We need to do the same thing with our minds: exercise them in ways that will make them stronger. There are countless ways we can stimulate our minds to grow; focus is the number one exercise.
Business Plan For Success
Turning mental conditions like bipolar and depression into an advantage requires a real plan to succeed. There have to be clear, well defined goals. We can figure out a plan that will get us there - if we are sure what “there” means.
Every successful business follows a plan. Companies traded on the stock market must have a written plan and announce every three months how they are doing. Those that are successful are good at setting reasonable and achievable goals, and staying on track to achieve them.
The secret is to be able to change the plan according to the circumstances. If an outside influence changes, the best companies are able to adapt their plans to stay competitive. We must learn to do the same with our life plans. A life plan, of course, is not about making money as much as getting your life to work for you.
At our one day workshop, I take the hardest topic there is. During the last hour of the workshop, I say: “Let's take depression and turn it into an advantage.” We do an example together, building a plan that says we are going to go from seeing depression as the worst thing in our lives to seeing depression as an advantage.
By then, I have already told my story of how I have turned rage into an advantage over the course of eight years. This includes a definition of what an advantage means. In the case of rage, it means that I no longer rage at anyone, I understand it at a much deeper level than practically anyone, and I have the ability to help other people control their rage. Some people would say that I have “mastered” rage.
In the case of depression, I let the workshop members define what requirements must be met to claim depression as an advantage. This process makes it their definition, not mine. I only interject when they try to set an unreasonable definition (like never to be depressed again).
A recent group came up with the following list:
- Come to acceptance.
- No suicide risk. Suicide prevention plan in place.
- Ability to help others deal with depression.
- Understand the levels and components of depression.
- Active in advocacy for people with depression.
- Feel more in control during and getting out of depression.
- Extended range - able to handle deeper depressions.
- Finding lessons.
- No decline in housekeeping due to depression.
Another group came up with a similar but unique list:
- Acceptance
- No more fear or risk of suicide
- Less time below level 4
- Find lessons
- Better understanding
- Help depressed people
- Ability to see benefits
Every workshop group creates a different list of what it would take to claim depression as an advantage. We work on this list until everyone agrees that if these criteria are met, we could realistically claim that we have turned depression from something on our bad list to an advantage.
Once we have agreement of what criteria needs to be met, we then create a “business plan” timeline to get there. We all hope that we can make it in five years and accept that we may not. Working with five years as the goal, we write down milestones that need to be achieved in order to know we are on track for success. Once again, this is a personal list that is different for each group. The group that made the first criteria above created the following timeline:
Tomorrow
- Review today’s lessons
- Do three minutes of meditation
- Start working on acceptance
- Buy two books about depression
One Month
- Write a list of positives
- Five minutes of daily meditation
- Introspection questions well thought out
- Daily introspection started
- Started reading a book about depression
- Found a good therapist
Six Months
- Ten minutes of daily meditation
- Have developed clear descriptions of depressed states
- Written plans for handling crisis
- Finished reading one book and started another
- Talked to someone with depression, and helped them
- Relationship with therapist developed
One year
- Twenty minutes of daily meditation
- Advocacy for people with depression
- Some form of self-expression of what I have learned
- Read second book about depression
- Written list of causes of depression
- Definition of various levels of depression
- Read biographies of famous depressed people
Two Years
- Twenty minutes of meditation twice a day
- Lessons discovered
- Starting to gain control while getting in and out of depression
- Ability to handle deeper states without fear of suicide
- Wrote two articles about depression
- Refined list of causes
- Better functioning while depressed
- Running support group
There are still many things left to do, but there are three more years to go. This is not a complete plan, nor is it a prescription for everyone - it’s just enough to get everyone thinking in terms of making small steps that are achievable. It is important to have clear objectives that are not going to be too hard to achieve. Once an objective is achieved, it can be built upon.
Take, for example, meditation as a habit to develop. Note that only three minutes a day for the first month leads to five minutes in the next month, ten minutes in six months, twenty minutes in a year, and only after two years does it ramp up to twenty minutes twice a day.
Too often people take on too much and do not achieve it. If you try twenty minutes of meditation, twice a day, from day one, you probably will not keep up the habit. If you work up slowly, the habit will get stronger as you feel the benefits, and you will be more likely to keep it up.
Someone inevitably asks, “What about the other things on the list that need changing?”A remarkable result of this exercise is that the path outlined will work for any part of the condition they would like to master - depression, rage, anger, impatience, etc. If I came right out and said it, the realization would not sink in, but the fact that they built the process and asked themselves, “What about the other things on the list? What steps can we take to master them?” creates a breakthrough. The same path outlined works for every issue.
Having taken the steps in my own effort to turn rage into an advantage, I have already developed the tools necessary to apply them to other traits I intend to master. Once success is achieved in turning one trait into an advantage, it is much easier to do it again and again. With each success, our ability to change the next item becomes easier and takes less time. Eventually, we should be able to master our condition and turn every trait to our advantage.
Every person so far has said: “Yes, I could do that.” Personally, I see this as amazing. People walk in saying depression is the worst thing ever, and they walk out, six hours later, believing they can change it. I think the fact that they even accept the possibility is a huge change. It is possible to turn any mental condition into an advantage instead of a disadvantage, but we have to take action.
In our two day workshop, we each build our own personal plan for success that includes all of the aspects of our lives that we want to change. We end up with a clear, achievable plan that when followed leads to a much better life.
Get Help
We cannot do it alone. One of our greatest challenges is to communicate openly and honestly with our team, and they need to communicate openly and honestly with us. It is important to get beyond stigma and fear with everyone on our team.
Your Doctor
Your doctor has a critical role to play. By doctor I mean a psychiatrist, not just a general practitioner. They are the experts on how medications work, which ones to give, and how much of each is the best dosage for your current circumstances.
What I am proposing in this book is a paradigm shift for many doctors. If you are going to turn your condition into an advantage, you must find a doctor who believes in the possibility. A doctor who thinks that you have an illness that needs to be medicated into submission will prescribe too much medicine and keep you in the zero range, which will not work. You should be looking for a psychiatrist who views their responsibility as finding the least amount of medication possible to have the desired effect.
My doctor's role isn't to narrow my range of moods and experience down to zero. His role is to help me figure out the medication that allows me to function in a range that works for me. If my doctor helps me to find the right dosage, I can use my medication as the tool that it was meant to be.
Your Therapist
Your therapist is often a different person than the psychiatrist who prescribes medication. The therapist has to be your coach, guide, counselor, educator, and help you to see the things that you can't. Helping you to realize what is going on is a critical role that they are professionally trained to do.
A good therapist is the key to our making the changes necessary to create a better life. They have seen and helped many people in our situation, and have tremendous insight into what works and what doesn’t. A healthy balance between receiving support and receiving candid feedback is crucial for success in all forms of inner work. It really helps to have a professional with an objective viewpoint on your team.
A list of therapists who believe in our concepts can be found at the Bipolar Advantage website125. They still practice with the same techniques, but have made the huge paradigm shift from focusing on illness to focusing on turning it into an advantage. If your therapist doesn’t believe that you can turn your mental condition into an advantage, how is he or she going to help you get there?
All of our main concepts are covered by a good therapist: helping us to see the whole picture, acceptance, introspection and creating a clear path to success. They are not always trained in the practice of meditation or focus, but the best ones are. Bringing your plan to your therapist allows you to receive important feedback and help in making the adjustments necessary to achieve it.
Yourself
Our responsibility is to communicate what is working, what is not, and where we need help. We have to start telling the complete truth if our team is going to be able to help us. They can’t help us if we don’t communicate honestly. Otherwise, they are treating some fantasy person we made up, instead of treating us.
Our therapists might be our coaches, but we are the quarterback; we have to do the things they suggest, and use the information they helped us to learn. We can’t just talk about the concepts, we have to live them. Everybody else can help, but it is our job to turn our lives around.
Your Family And Friends
In the scene at the train station in “The Hours,”126 Virginia Woolf reminds her husband that she is a sovereign human being and ultimately, the choice of her destiny must be hers alone. This is the responsibility that each person with a mental condition must accept, and friends and family members must live with. However, the only way to thrive is to include your family and friends in your life.
Family and friends have a critical role to play, because they are there with us. We can lie to our therapists, but we can't lie to our family; they see it.
Unfortunately, sometimes this closeness can make things worse. Most often from lack of training, they provoke us when we are at our worst. When we are starting to lose control, they say: "You're losing it, you're losing it! Did you take your drugs today?" They start an argument with us, because they are afraid and don’t have a better way to show concern. I think we have all experienced these situations.
I promise, you will never win an argument with a person with a mental condition when they are having an episode. It is not possible. But when we calm down later, you can find a way to communicate with us. We do want our relationships to work.
We all need to work on when it is appropriate to communicate and how to communicate more effectively. There are good books on communication and conflict resolution. Both sides should read them. Along with commitment; deep, sincere, and open communication will be what saves most relationships.
It is important to look at the big picture. Try to remember the improvements more than the setbacks, and emphasize progress and support instead of recrimination and frustration. Avoid perpetuating conflicts by expecting perfection in others. In our closest relationships, we must constantly practice acceptance and reestablishing trust.
Realize that everyday is a new opportunity to establish better relationships. Family members need to acknowledge our growth with deeper trust in us. Positive feedback, encouragement, and gratitude will go a long way between those with mental conditions and their family and friends.
Your Clergy
Duke University did a study that counted up how many hours clergy are spending with those who have mental conditions, versus how many hours professional therapists are spending.127 They found out that the clergy in the U.S. are cumulatively spending more time counseling than all of the therapists combined. Unfortunately, the clergy do not have the same level of training. An increasing number of seminaries are offering courses in psychology, however, and pastors are more likely than ever to refer congregation members to professional therapists.128
My spiritual counselor taught me to quit calling it an illness and call it a condition. He changed my way of looking at it. A condition means it has both good and bad parts to it. It is not all horrible. We have to quit looking at it as a deficit-based illness and start looking at it as an opportunity for growth.
Those Of Us Who Have Been There
Last, but not least, those who have been there have a responsibility to help others in any way we can: empathy, assurance, and showing them that it is possible by our own actions. Changing ourselves is our number one responsibility. If we can improve our condition, and turn it to an advantage, it is setting an example for other people to believe it is possible to do it themselves. Only by example can we show others a pathway to get there.
Your Own Hard Work
Doing the hard work to get a handle on this condition is the hardest thing you will ever do, except for one thing - not doing it. Because if we don't do it, we are going to suffer needlessly; we might even end our life early because we didn't try to improve our chances for success.
Footnotes:125 http://www.bipolaradvantage.com
126 “The Hours,” Paramount Pictures, 2003, Directed by Stephen Daldry, written by Michael Cunningham (novel), David Hare, screenplay
127 Buckholtz, Alison:“In Times of Trouble, Growing Numbers of People Take Comfort in Faith-Based Therapy”; Special to The Washington Post, Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page HE04
128 Brinton, Henry, G., A Meeting in the Mind; Science and Faith Join Forces on Mental Illness., Washington Post, Sunday, June 12, 2005; p., B03
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