September 15, 2025 • 36 mins
Michelle shares her transformative realization that bipolar disorder isn't a disease but a cluster of symptoms, and how this understanding freed her from decades of believing she had an incurable condition.
• The bipolar diagnosis ends curiosity about why symptoms occur because people believe they've been given a complete answer
• Being told bipolar disorder is lifelong and incurable creates helplessness and a victim mindset
• The chemical imbalance theory of mental illness has been thoroughly debunked by research
• Psychiatric medications cause chemical imbalances rather than correcting them
• Common sources of bipolar symptoms include micronutrient insufficiency, trauma, health factors, medication effects, and unhealthy coping mechanisms
• Focusing on symptoms instead of disorders allows for identifying and treating specific causes
• Recovery is possible by getting curious about symptom sources rather than accepting a diagnosis as destiny
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bipolar is not a disease.
It is a cluster of symptoms,and what this does is it ends
curiosity.
I stopped being curious aboutwhy I was experiencing those
symptoms because I believed Ihad been given an answer.
I stopped looking for otheranswers because I thought I'd
been told why I was experiencingthese symptoms.
(00:21):
And that was not true.
Told why I was experiencingthese symptoms.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And that was not true .
Hey, welcome to the Upside ofBipolar conversations on the
road to wellness.
I am so excited that youdecided to join me today.
We're a community learning howto live well with bipolar
disorder and we reject that.
The best we can expect islearning how to suffer well with
it.
I'm your host, michelleReitinger of MyUpsideOfDowncom,
(00:46):
where I help people with bipolardisorder use the map to
wellness to live healthy,balanced, productive lives.
Welcome to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey, welcome to the Upside of Bipolar.
I am your host, michelleReitinger, and I am super
excited about today's episode.
Today, we're talking about atopic.
I actually wrote a blog postabout it and I teased it in my
last episode.
I thought I was going to get toit last time and I ended up
having plenty to talk about withthe review of the last eight
(01:23):
months and the things that I hadlearned, but this topic
deserved not just a little bitof time.
I think I realized that it wasprobably better to focus an
entire episode on this, becauseit's a really important topic,
and what we're talking abouttoday is how we need to stop
referring to bipolar as bipolardisorder and I'm putting that in
(01:44):
scare quotes for anybody who'sjust listening to this on the
podcast and can't see what I'mdoing.
But this is something that I'veactually been learning about
over time, and it became verycrystal clear for me over the
past eight months as I was goingthrough some really incredible
life experiences with my familyand recognizing the damage that
(02:05):
that diagnosis actually did tomy life not just the treatment,
but the diagnosis itself and sothat's what we're going to talk
about today.
So, in order to discuss this.
I think it's really importantto go back to my initial
diagnosis.
When I was first diagnosed withbipolar disorder, I went to my
psychiatrist.
I went to the psychiatristlooking for answers.
(02:26):
I had been struggling withincreasing mood swings over the
prior couple of years and Ididn't understand what was
happening to me.
I was, you know.
I'd go through periods where Iwas feeling really happy and
hopeful and my mind would beracing racing and I'd be really
confident that I was on theright path for my life and have
(02:48):
new plans and new ideas.
And then I would crash and getreally depressed and have a hard
time functioning, not want tobe around people, and then I
would get elevated again and itwas starting to get in the way
of my life.
These mood shifts were becomingmore erratic and more intense
and it was starting to affect mylife and the people around me.
(03:09):
And so my parents my aunt anduncle who I lived near, and then
my parents really encouraged meto go seek help from a
psychiatrist, and so when I wentthere, I was looking for
answers.
I needed help understandingwhat was happening to me and why
I was experiencing thesesymptoms, and I didn't call them
symptoms at the time I just wasstruggling and I wanted to know
why I was struggling.
(03:29):
And when I was diagnosed I'vetalked about this in my book and
I've talked about it on thepodcast I was initially
diagnosed with anxiety anddepression.
I was severely, severelydepressed when I went in for my
initial evaluation, so much sothat a lot of the information
was provided by my aunt, becauseI was having a hard time
thinking and communicating.
(03:50):
And so I was initiallydiagnosed with major depressive
disorder and anxiety disordersboth termed disorders and I was
told that I would needmedication.
But medication would help me tofunction better.
And so when I was given thatdiagnosis, I remember feeling a
(04:11):
couple of things.
The first thing that I felt wasrelief.
I felt like this huge weightwas being lifted off of me.
I finally understood why I washaving these symptoms, or these
mood shifts, these erraticemotional changes.
I thought I'd be given ananswer to what was going on with
me.
I also felt some dread.
(04:33):
I felt some apprehension aboutwhat that meant for the rest of
my life.
If I had a disorder, if I had,you know, major depressive
disorder, and if I had anxietydisorders, did that mean I was
broken?
You know who was going to wantme that way, and so I started
taking.
They gave me antidepressantsand I started taking those and
within a few months I startedgetting manic and when I went
(04:55):
back to I had moved.
During that time I graduatedfrom college and I moved home
and my parents had a front rowseat to see that the chaos that
ensued when I started takingthese antidepressants and so I
was.
I went back to a newpsychiatrist in up in Washington
where I moved to aftergraduation, and I was told that
(05:15):
I had been misdiagnosed, thatthe medication by putting me on
an antidepressant and it makingme manic, I was actually it was
actually showing that I actuallyhad bipolar disorder, that it
was revealing that I had bipolardisorder and they said they
called it bipolar two.
And so again I thought, oh,they just misdiagnosed me and
gave me the wrong medication.
So now I'm going to get theright medication and I'm going
(05:37):
to be okay or be able to manageit better.
And again it was this feelingof like relief, like getting an
answer.
It was helpful and I felt likeI was being given an answer to
the struggle that I wasexperiencing.
And this created a trap for mebecause over the following
(05:58):
decade I proactively went toevery psychiatric appointment.
I didn't skip.
So I didn't skip appointmentswith my psychiatrist.
I moved a few times and eachtime I moved I would immediately
contact and get establishedwith a new psychiatrist so that
I could continue my treatment.
I took every medication that wasprescribed to me and I
continued to struggle severely,especially after I had children.
I had very severe postpartumdepression.
(06:20):
I would have mood swings.
I experienced a lot of symptomsthat just made me feel out of
control and it started.
I experienced a lot of symptomsthat that just made me feel out
of control and it started to doa lot of damage to my family.
And because I had this diagnosisof bipolar disorder and I was
told it was, it was a lifelongcondition, I would have it for
the rest of my life it made mefeel very helpless and it made
(06:40):
me feel very hopeless.
I started to get to a pointwhere I thought, well, if, if
I'm going to have this foreverand things are just getting
worse.
I had some doctors tell me thiswas neurodegenerative.
It just kind of tended to getworse and worse and worse over
time.
I thought, if this is kind oflike having I can't remember the
name of the thing All of asudden my brain's going, but
(07:01):
where your body starts to shakeand you start to lose motor
control.
It thing.
All of a sudden my brain'sgoing, but where your body
starts to shake and you start tolose motor control, um, it was
like you know, it was kind offeeling like that, like if I'm
just going to keep getting worse, it's going to ruin everybody's
lives.
You know, my life isn't worthanything.
I started to feel like I wasn't, I didn't have any value in my
life because I I was able to doless and less and less, because
I just couldn't even manage myown life and my own symptoms,
(07:22):
let alone help anybody else, andit started to feel like a trap.
And then, as I've shared in pastpodcast episodes and also in my
book, I had a period of timewhere I ended up hospitalized in
three different hospitals overtwo different months.
They did electric convulsivetherapy on me.
I made multiple attempts on mylife and I was desperate.
(07:46):
I felt totally hopeless,totally desperate.
But then I had an experienceafter my third hospitalization.
I was watching my children mytwo little, my two middle
children they were little at thetime, four and two playing with
each other.
And I had this really clearthought come into my head that
if I ever successfully ended mylife, that it would ruin my
(08:07):
daughter's life, that she wouldbelieve it was her fault and it
would end and it would ruin herlife.
And that turned everythingaround for me.
Even though I didn't believe mylife had value, I knew hers did
, and so I knew that I had tofind a way to live with my
disorder in the best waypossible so that I could give
her a good chance at life.
(08:28):
I was not willing to ruin herlife.
I would continue suffering forher if that was what was
necessary.
And thankfully, over thefollowing decade I actually
found the path to healing, eventhough I didn't understand that
I was healing.
At the time when I was goingthrough the healing process I
didn't know I was healingbecause I believed, because I
(08:48):
had been diagnosed with bipolardisorder, that I had a lifelong
condition, that there was nocure for it, that I would always
have it.
But over time I thought I wasjust learning how to manage it
better.
I thought I was finding thingsto help manage my disorder
better.
I thought I was finding thingsto help manage my disorder
better, and even when I startedmy blog back in the beginning of
(09:09):
2021, I still believed that Ihad this condition.
I just believed that I hadlearned how to really manage it
well so that I rarely hadsymptoms, and I wanted to teach
other people who had thislifelong disease or condition or
disorder.
I wanted to teach other peoplehow to manage theirs better too,
(09:29):
because I thought if you haveit for the rest of your life,
let's try to live the healthiestway possible with it.
It was only when I startedlearning more about what was
actually happening in psychiatryand in the creation of these
diagnosis that I started toquestion what I had been told.
The first book in that processwas Anatomy of an Epidemic by
(09:53):
Robert Whitaker.
I interviewed him on an earlierpodcast.
I can link that in the shownotes, but that was a really
eye-opening book for me.
That one helped me tounderstand that these diagnoses
the diagnosis of bipolardisorder was not created once
they found a disease.
(10:13):
They hadn't identified theetiology.
I think it's called etiologythe underlying condition.
They hadn't identified anunderlying condition.
They had just created adiagnosis based on a cluster of
symptoms and then, over thefollowing decades, the
psychiatry started to try andjustify their diagnosis.
(10:38):
They were looking for a causefor this disorder they had
created and when people didn'tfit within the parameters of
that, over time they expandedthe parameters so that they
could group people into thesediagnostic categories.
And then I started readingProfessor Joanna Moncrief's
(11:00):
books.
She wrote the Myth of theChemical Cure.
Most recently she wroteChemically Imbalbalanced, which
is a book that was based on.
She was a lead researcher in agroup that that did analysis of
years, decades worth of studiesthat proved that the chemical
(11:21):
imbalance theory is not true.
The chemical imbalance theoryis not true.
It completely debunked thechemical imbalance theory of
illness and even now peoplecontinue to use that as a
justification for the diagnosis.
They continue to say that well,we know that bipolar is a
chemical imbalance.
And now I'm starting tounderstand.
No, it's not.
(11:41):
That was a theory that wasdeveloped to justify the
diagnosis, to justify thecategory that was created, based
solely on symptoms.
And then last year I read anarticle in Psychology Today by
Jonathan Shedler he's a PhD andthe title of the article is A
(12:06):
Psychiatric Diagnosis is Not aDisease.
And I actually I wrote a littlesynopsis article in my in my
blog if you want to go and readthat and I would encourage you
to go and actually read hisarticle I've linked that in in
the blog post and I'll actuallylink it in the show notes for
this episode.
But he talks about how, upuntil the most recent version of
(12:38):
the DSM, the DiagnosticStatistical Manual for
Psychiatric Diagnoses, there wasa disclaimer at the beginning
of the manual or an explanation.
I don't know if it's called adisclaimer or an explanation,
but there was a designation atthe beginning of the manual that
said that the diagnosis inthese manuals were not
identifying underlyingconditions.
They were just identifyingsymptom clusters of symptoms,
symptom clusters, that's allthat they were defining.
So anxiety disorder, majordepressive disorder, bipolar
(12:58):
disorder, schizophrenia all ofthose diagnoses.
They were acknowledging thatthey are not identifying the
underlying mechanism for thosediagnoses.
They were acknowledging thatthey are not identifying the
underlying mechanism for thosediagnoses.
They are just identifying acluster of symptoms and it is
not identifying a disease.
It's identifying just thesymptoms.
And it would be like going tothe doctor If you started
(13:19):
running fevers all the time andyou went to the doctor and for
help and an an explanation andthey told you you had fever
disorder.
That is not an explanation.
That is not giving you ananswer, it is just an
observation.
All they are doing is observinga cluster of symptoms and
saying you have this cluster ofsymptoms, and the problem that
(13:42):
that creates is that it misleadspeople into believing they've
been given an answer.
I went to a psychiatristlooking for an answer when I
first went to get diagnosed.
I was looking for an answer tounderstand why these things were
happening to me, and I wasgiven an explanation that led me
to believe that the underlyingcause of my symptoms had been
(14:07):
identified.
And it wasn't true.
Bipolar is not a disease, it isa cluster of symptoms, and what
this does is it ends curiosity.
I stopped being curious aboutwhy I was experiencing those
symptoms because I believed Ihad been given an answer.
I stopped looking for him, youknow, for other answers, because
(14:29):
I thought I'd been told why Iwas experiencing these symptoms,
and that was not true.
It also fosters helplessness inpeople when I was getting worse
and worse and worse, when Iwould do things that were
triggered by the symptoms I washaving.
So, for example, I struggledwith binge watching television
(14:52):
and I didn't understand why Icouldn't stop doing it, and it
might sound silly to people.
I'm not talking about liketaking a break over the weekend
and binge watching, you know afew episodes of a show or
something.
I'm talking about weeks uponweeks of from the time I got up
until the time I went to bed,watching like 18 seasons of law
(15:14):
and order, svu after one move,or all 10 seasons of the office
in one sitting, like back toback to back to back to back,
and I not doing anything else,not taking care of my family,
not taking care of myself.
It was, I was.
That was a coping mechanism thatI had developed, or, like the
quote unquote bipolar rage.
Especially after I had children, I would have these like
(15:38):
rageful outbursts that I had nocontrol over and I felt like a
terrible person and I didn'tknow what to do about it.
And when I went to the doctorand talked about that, you know
they were trying to tweak themedications or whatever, but it
was all attributed to mydisorder, which made me feel
like I had no control over it,like I couldn't do anything
about it and I was doing damageto other people.
(16:01):
I was doing damage to myhusband.
I was doing damage in myrelationship with him.
I was doing damage to mychildren and I felt like a
terrible person and I thought,if I have this disorder and
these and I can't don't have anycontrol over these things I
need to remove myself from theirlife so that I don't keep
hurting them.
The other thing that it does isit creates a victim mindset in
(16:22):
people.
I experienced this myself, andI've also experienced it through
relationships with other peoplewho are struggling with this
quote-unquote disorder, wherethey feel like they can't help
it, and so people just need tounderstand.
I see this online all the time,this bringing awareness.
(16:42):
People want people to be awarethat they have this disorder
that they can't do anythingabout, and so they just need
people to excuse their badbehavior.
There's a television show or amovie I'm not sure if it's a TV
show or a movie.
I've never actually seen theshow itself.
I've only seen this one clip ofit where Anne Hathaway plays
(17:03):
somebody who has bipolardisorder.
Her character has bipolardisorder quote unquote and she's
having a discussion withsomebody that she, I think is a
coworker, who she wants to befriends with, and she's trying
to describe her bipolar to them.
And the reason why this hasgone viral on, you know on
(17:25):
social media is because so manypeople feel seen by this, this
scene.
They feel like it.
You know it's a great way tointroduce to people what you
suffer from.
And so she was talking.
You know she's talking abouthow you know, sometimes she'll
be really happy and and, and youknow, elevated and make kind of
some bad decisions and then andthen all of a sudden she'll get
(17:47):
depressed and she won't talk toanybody for a while and I
understand from past experiencethat that would have made me
feel very seen when I was goingthrough this, because I felt
like I felt helpless, I feltlike a victim, like I didn't
have any control over it and Iwanted I wanted loving
relationships in my life, but Ididn't have any.
I didn't feel like I had anycontrol or any ability to affect
(18:08):
the symptoms, to stop myselffrom doing these things that
were compulsive, based on thesymptoms I was experiencing with
my bipolar disorder.
And the issue that we have inthis disorder is that it
misleads people into believingthey've been given an answer and
the way that psychiatry hasdecided to treat this disorder.
(18:31):
The best practices, the goldstandard for treatment, is
psychotropic drugs and thiscreates a whole nother level of
issue for treatment ispsychotropic drugs and this
creates a whole nother level ofissue.
So when I talked about at thebeginning of this episode, I
talked about my experience whereI went to the doctor for
answers.
I went to a psychiatrist foranswers and I was first told
that I had depression andanxiety and given psychotropic
(18:55):
drugs and then, a few monthslater, as those drugs built up
in my system and as my brainadjusted, it became manic and I
was told that it had revealedthat I had bipolar disorder,
when in fact what actuallyhappened was I had iatrogenic
symptoms, iatrogenic meaningcaused by the drug.
(19:18):
The drug itself had triggeredmania in me and instead of the
doctor understanding andacknowledging whoops, we
actually triggered mania in youwith this antidepressant.
They said that it revealed thatI had bipolar disorder.
This is a very common source ofsymptoms for people and it's
not just psychotropic drugsPsychotropic drugs are a very
(19:42):
common culprit in this area butother medications.
There's a medication one off thetop of my head is called
gabapentin.
It's a very common drug that'sused for a number of different
things, but it can causedepression and what will happen
is somebody starts taking thisdrug and they start getting
(20:02):
depressed and if they go to thedoctor and start talking about
their depression symptoms, thedoctor does not ask are you
taking medication?
Most doctors will not do this.
They will not ask are youtaking any medications and then
find out that the side effect ofthis medication is depression?
They will diagnose that personwith depression and give them
(20:23):
the antidepressants.
So they will get diagnosed withmajor depressive disorder and
then given antidepressants.
Marijuana there is starting tobe some.
Thankfully there is starting tobe some research into the fact
that marijuana can triggerpsychosis and people.
Because of the prevalence ofthe use of marijuana, it's
(20:45):
becoming legal in a lot ofstates and it's increased use
and because of that we arestarting to see more and more
people presenting with psychosisbecause of smoking pot and they
go to the psychiatrist and aretold that they have bipolar
disorder and put on drugs forbipolar disorder.
There is no acknowledgementthat their psychosis was
(21:06):
triggered by marijuana and theyneeded to detox and needed help
getting off of this.
Another common culprit is ADHDmedications.
There are a lot of people Iknow somebody I don't know them
personally.
I know them through a friendwho started taking ADHD
medications and started abusingthe ADHD medications and
(21:27):
triggered psychosis in herselfand was then diagnosed with
bipolar disorder.
So the medications themselvesare causing a chemical imbalance
in the brain.
I was told for years that thesource of my disorder was a
chemical imbalance.
I've talked about that before.
I've talked about it withguests on other podcast episodes
(21:51):
.
This is not true.
Professor Moncrief was one ofthe lead researchers on this
research project that spanned 20, I think, over 20 years of
research, proving that it hadbeen that this theory of illness
, the chemical imbalance theoryof illness, had been disproven
over and over again.
One of the things that wasactually discovered and Robert
(22:12):
Whitaker talks about this in hisbook is that not only was there
not an underlying chemicalimbalance to begin with, but the
medications themselves cause achemical imbalance in the brain.
They are not regulating thebrain because no underlying
condition has ever beenidentified.
What they have done inpsychiatry is they created this
(22:32):
diagnosis and then they spent alot of time trying to create
drugs.
The original, the firstgeneration of psychotropic drugs
were actually found by accident.
They did not develop them basedon an underlying condition.
They found them accidentally.
They were in use for otherpurposes and the doctors
observed that they impactedpeople's emotional state, and so
(22:58):
they started using them for forpsychiatric purposes and then,
based on, they would study themechanism that was causing this
and then started developingadditional medications that
would would have a similareffect.
And so we ended up with with awhole bunch of drugs that cause
chemical imbalances in the brainthat we don't really actually
(23:21):
fully understand what they'redoing to the brain.
They are dysregulating thebrain further.
So the underlying symptoms, theunderlying sources of the
symptoms, persist, because wehave stopped being curious about
why somebody is having thesesymptoms and we are creating
more problems for people, whichis why people say bipolar
(23:41):
disorder cannot be cured.
The reason why people saybipolar disorder cannot be cured
is the treatment itself ispreventing them from healing.
We believe we've been given ananswer.
We're told that we needmedication, so we take the
medication and we're told allthe things that we're told come
true.
So I was told that bipolar wasa chemical imbalance, that it
(24:03):
was, you know, it was likediabetes and that medication was
like insulin.
That is totally false and therewas never any justification for
it.
It was used for marketingmedication.
And then I was told that it waschronic and incurable and that
it was neurodegenerative, thatmy brain would potentially
continue to get worse.
All of that started to happen,and so I didn't have any reason
(24:27):
to question what I had been told, because everything I was told
was happening and it trapped mein this disease.
I was trapped in this disorder.
So people are told they have adisorder, they're told that it's
lifelong and incurable, thatthey have to take medications.
The medications change theirbrain chemistry and they and
(24:48):
everything, everything that anysymptoms that you experience are
all attributed to themedications.
So, for example, when somebodycomes off the drugs, they go
through withdrawal.
Example, when somebody comesoff the drugs, they go through
withdrawal, and those withdrawalsymptoms are then attributed to
the disease or the disorder,not the medication withdrawal.
And I watched this.
(25:09):
I actually had a reallyinteresting conversation with
somebody one time, because a lotof people who have bipolar and
are taking medications don'tlike the medications because
they don't like the way theyfeel, because their brain is not
functioning in a normal way.
I have this.
I felt this way all the time.
I didn't dare come off mymedications because I was told
that that I you know, if I, if I, came off the medications, that
(25:30):
you know, I'd end up at thehospital, and so I was afraid of
coming off the medications, butI did not like the way that I
felt.
I only went off the medicationswhen the doctors told me to do
it, and I experienced withdrawalevery time.
Every time I would come off amedication and it was all
attributed to my bipolardisorder, but what was actually
happening is my brain waswithdrawing from a substance
(25:51):
that it had become dependentupon.
So when somebody comes off ofmedications, one of the things
that Professor Moncrief talkedabout and I think she actually
talked about it in the book, butshe talked about it in one of
the episodes that I interviewedher on Lithium, for example
suppresses emotional response.
It's like pushing a balloonunderwater, and when you take
the lithium away, the balloonwill rocket back up.
(26:14):
If you push a balloonunderwater, when you let go of
it, it shoots back up higherthan it was before, and that is
what they would see withmedications like lithium.
People would take themedication and it would
sometimes suppress the symptomsthat they were having, and when
they would stop taking themedication, the mania and the
(26:35):
symptoms that they were havingbefore would come back.
With inventions, they wouldcome back worse than they were
before and instead ofrecognizing we created a
chemical imbalance and thewithdrawal symptoms were
intolerable.
Maybe we should change the waywe withdraw people from these
medications.
They said oh, you have to be onlithium.
Look see, your symptoms cameback worse, so you have to be on
(26:55):
this drug.
We need to change the way thatwe talk about what is actually
happening in order to helppeople heal.
We need a paradigm shift here.
In my group, in my coachinggroup, we've actually worked on
this.
We talk about bipolar symptomsinstead of bipolar disorder, and
the reason that thatdifferentiation is important is
(27:17):
because symptoms have sourcesand the sources can be treated.
When you talk about bipolardisorder, this incurable
condition, you feel like there'snothing you can do about it,
but when we talk about thesymptoms, we can get curious
about what's causing thesymptoms and then use the
research-based treatments thatactually treat those symptoms so
(27:38):
that you can heal.
When we talk about the sourcesof the symptoms, there are some
main sources.
There's still ongoing researchtrying to help us understand all
the different potential sourcesfor symptoms, but there is
adequate research now that hashelped us to understand.
Micronutrient insufficiency is areally big one.
I've got podcast episodes whereI interviewed like Dr Bonnie
(28:03):
Kaplan, who was wrote the betterbrain, and she is one of the
pioneers in this field ofresearch that helped us
understand that micronutrientinsufficiency can lead to
symptoms like bipolar symptoms,you know, mania and depression.
It can lead to symptoms of ADHD.
It can lead to symptoms of, youknow, of anxiety.
(28:23):
So micronutrient, micronutrientinsufficiency, is a very common
source of symptoms.
Trauma is also a very commonsource of symptoms and it's
interesting because very severetrauma can actually lead to
conditions like, likeschizophrenia.
They talk about this like it'ssome kind of brain disorder,
(28:44):
when in fact it is the brain'sdefense mechanism for severe
trauma.
And there's a woman that I've,you know, I've read her book
where she, when you read thebook and you see the extreme
trauma that she was raised inand that she experienced
throughout her childhood andteenage years, it is no wonder
(29:04):
that her brain becamedysfunctional and she was able
to heal because she got curiousabout what was causing her
symptoms.
So unhealed trauma can lead todepression, it can lead to
anxiety, it can lead to anxiety,it can lead to mania and
(29:25):
psychosis.
And so if you learn how toidentify and heal that unhealed
trauma, you can resolve thesource of those symptoms Health
factors.
This is a big one that needs tobe talked about more, because
when somebody is experiencingthings like hypothyroidism so
when somebody's thyroid isn'tfunctioning in a healthy way
(29:47):
that can lead to depressionsymptoms, and what often will
happen is somebody will getdiagnosed with depression and
put on an antidepressants, whenwhat needs to be addressed is
the underlying health factor.
What needs to be addressed isthe underlying health factor.
The fact that their body is notfunctioning in a healthy way is
leading to mental symptoms, andwe need to not diagnose it as
(30:10):
major depressive disorder andgive them psychotropic drugs.
We need to address theunderlying health issue that is
leading to these mental healthissues.
Drugs, both illicit andprescription and I talked about
this probably a little more thanI meant to earlier in the
episode.
One of the underlying sourcesof my symptoms was iatrogenic.
(30:30):
It was drug-induced mypsychosis.
When I was in the hospital thatchanged my bipolar diagnosis
from bipolar 2 to bipolar 1, Ihad electroconvulsive therapy on
me.
So I was in the hospitalseverely depressed.
I was so severely depressed Iwas in a locked ward because I
was a danger to myself.
So I was in a locked ward for aweek and then they, the doctors
(30:52):
, decided to doelectroconvulsive therapy on me
and I wasn't taking I don't knowif I was taking any medication
on that at that time so theywithdrew the drugs and then
shocked my brain and within afew treatments I became
psychotic.
And instead of saying, oh man,we cause psychosis with taking
(31:13):
away the drugs and doingelectric electroconvulsive
therapy on you, they changed mydiagnosis from bipolar two to
bipolar one, so now I had adocumented psychotic episode and
so they could change mydiagnosis to bipolar one.
You know the medicationsthemselves.
So medications themselves andwe talked about marijuana being
(31:33):
an illicit drug that is anothersource of you know drugs.
Different types of drugs cancause a chemical imbalance in
your brain.
They affect your brain functionand that creates symptoms.
And so if you resolve that, ifyou heal the brain and heal it
from the effects of themedications, you can heal those
symptoms.
You can heal the underlyingsource of those symptoms.
(31:54):
We also see people who havedeveloped unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns and unhealthycoping mechanisms that then can
trigger symptoms.
So all of these sources ofsymptoms can be treated and
resolved, and which is why weneed to call, we need to refer
to this experience that somepeople are having these symptoms
(32:17):
, that people are having asbipolar symptoms, not bipolar
disorder.
Symptoms that people are havingas bipolar symptoms, not
bipolar disorder.
When you experience thesesymptoms you do not have, they
are not identifying anunderlying cause.
A diagnosis of bipolar disorderdoes not tell you what you are
suffering from.
It just is an observation ofthe symptoms.
I want to encourage people tochange the way that you talk
(32:38):
about this.
We do this in my coaching groupall the time.
We talk about it prettyconsistently because, especially
when somebody has been intreatment for 20 years, like I
was, you know, from 1998 until2023, 2022, I still believed
that I had bipolar disorder andthat it was an incurable
(32:59):
condition that I would have forthe rest of my life bipolar
disorder and that it was anincurable condition that I would
have for the rest of my life.
Once I started understandingthat that's not true, that I had
symptoms and I, as I identifiedand healed the underlying
sources of the symptoms, theyresolved and that has led to I
don't experience these symptomsanymore.
I was having a conversationyesterday with somebody and she
asked me pretty incredulouslylike you really don't experience
(33:20):
symptoms anymore?
I was having a conversationyesterday with somebody and she
asked me pretty incredulously,like you really don't experience
symptoms anymore.
And I told her no, I said Ihave normal emotional responses
to life circumstances.
You know we've been through alot in the past five years and
thankfully, because I have doneso much work healing, I was able
to handle those situations in ahealthy way.
(33:42):
I had normal emotional responsesto things.
When we lost our son, ouroldest son, to suicide, I had a
normal emotional response.
I was devastated by theexperience.
I was heartbroken.
I went through all of the grief, the grief cycle you know anger
, rage, bargaining, all of thosethings.
I had a normal, healthyemotional response to a tragedy.
(34:08):
When my husband lost his job, Ihad normal emotional responses
to the stressors.
I you know when I, when, when Iwas under all that stress, I
talked about the last episode.
You know we had all of thesestressors going on.
I had normal emotionalresponses to those things and
because of all the work that Ihad done, I had tools in place
(34:29):
that helped me to manage thingseffectively so that my emotional
responses didn't get out ofcontrol.
It is possible to recover andheal from bipolar symptoms if
you identify the source of thesymptoms.
Something that we talk about inour coaching group regularly is
(34:51):
that we need to get curiousinstead of judging, making
choices based on thesecompulsions from the symptoms.
No, we don't want to keep doingthose things, but instead of
judging ourselves as broken or abad person you know low moral
character get curious about whatis causing that compulsion.
Get curious about what iscausing the symptom, about the
(35:23):
source of the symptoms.
Identify the source and thentreat it with research-based
integrated treatment methods.
You can heal.
If you have any questions aboutthis, I know this is a lot of
information and I would love tohear from you, so let me know if
you have any questions orinsights.
I will make sure I go throughand link all of the resources
that I've talked about so thatyou can go do this research for
(35:44):
yourself and learn more about ityourself.
It took me a long time and alot of research to change the
way that my mind thought aboutthese things, because I was so
thoroughly convinced thatbipolar disorder was a disease,
that it was an incurablecondition, and it took a long
time and a lot of research forme to understand that that's not
true, and so I encourage you tolearn more about this.
(36:05):
If you have questions, let meknow, look at the resources that
I link in the podcast episodeand then let me know what you
think.
And this is an important stepon the path to healing is is
understanding what you'reactually struggling with in the
first place.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
If you're ready to start onyour path to wellness with
bipolar, go to myupsideofdowncomand get your free mood cycle
survival guide four steps tosuccessfully navigate bipolar
mood swings.
If you're ready for more, checkout the map to wellness.
Until next time, upsiders.
Bipolar is not a disease.
It is a cluster of symptoms,and what this does is it ends
curiosity.
I stopped being curious aboutwhy I was experiencing those
symptoms because I believed Ihad been given an answer.
I stopped looking for otheranswers because I thought I'd
been told why I was experiencingthese symptoms.
(00:21):
And that was not true.
Told why I was experiencingthese symptoms.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
And that was not true .
Hey, welcome to the Upside ofBipolar conversations on the
road to wellness.
I am so excited that youdecided to join me today.
We're a community learning howto live well with bipolar
disorder and we reject that.
The best we can expect islearning how to suffer well with
it.
I'm your host, michelleReitinger of MyUpsideOfDowncom,
(00:46):
where I help people with bipolardisorder use the map to
wellness to live healthy,balanced, productive lives.
Welcome to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey, welcome to the Upside of Bipolar.
I am your host, michelleReitinger, and I am super
excited about today's episode.
Today, we're talking about atopic.
I actually wrote a blog postabout it and I teased it in my
last episode.
I thought I was going to get toit last time and I ended up
having plenty to talk about withthe review of the last eight
(01:23):
months and the things that I hadlearned, but this topic
deserved not just a little bitof time.
I think I realized that it wasprobably better to focus an
entire episode on this, becauseit's a really important topic,
and what we're talking abouttoday is how we need to stop
referring to bipolar as bipolardisorder and I'm putting that in
(01:44):
scare quotes for anybody who'sjust listening to this on the
podcast and can't see what I'mdoing.
But this is something that I'veactually been learning about
over time, and it became verycrystal clear for me over the
past eight months as I was goingthrough some really incredible
life experiences with my familyand recognizing the damage that
(02:05):
that diagnosis actually did tomy life not just the treatment,
but the diagnosis itself and sothat's what we're going to talk
about today.
So, in order to discuss this.
I think it's really importantto go back to my initial
diagnosis.
When I was first diagnosed withbipolar disorder, I went to my
psychiatrist.
I went to the psychiatristlooking for answers.
(02:26):
I had been struggling withincreasing mood swings over the
prior couple of years and Ididn't understand what was
happening to me.
I was, you know.
I'd go through periods where Iwas feeling really happy and
hopeful and my mind would beracing racing and I'd be really
confident that I was on theright path for my life and have
(02:48):
new plans and new ideas.
And then I would crash and getreally depressed and have a hard
time functioning, not want tobe around people, and then I
would get elevated again and itwas starting to get in the way
of my life.
These mood shifts were becomingmore erratic and more intense
and it was starting to affect mylife and the people around me.
(03:09):
And so my parents my aunt anduncle who I lived near, and then
my parents really encouraged meto go seek help from a
psychiatrist, and so when I wentthere, I was looking for
answers.
I needed help understandingwhat was happening to me and why
I was experiencing thesesymptoms, and I didn't call them
symptoms at the time I just wasstruggling and I wanted to know
why I was struggling.
(03:29):
And when I was diagnosed I'vetalked about this in my book and
I've talked about it on thepodcast I was initially
diagnosed with anxiety anddepression.
I was severely, severelydepressed when I went in for my
initial evaluation, so much sothat a lot of the information
was provided by my aunt, becauseI was having a hard time
thinking and communicating.
(03:50):
And so I was initiallydiagnosed with major depressive
disorder and anxiety disordersboth termed disorders and I was
told that I would needmedication.
But medication would help me tofunction better.
And so when I was given thatdiagnosis, I remember feeling a
(04:11):
couple of things.
The first thing that I felt wasrelief.
I felt like this huge weightwas being lifted off of me.
I finally understood why I washaving these symptoms, or these
mood shifts, these erraticemotional changes.
I thought I'd be given ananswer to what was going on with
me.
I also felt some dread.
(04:33):
I felt some apprehension aboutwhat that meant for the rest of
my life.
If I had a disorder, if I had,you know, major depressive
disorder, and if I had anxietydisorders, did that mean I was
broken?
You know who was going to wantme that way, and so I started
taking.
They gave me antidepressantsand I started taking those and
within a few months I startedgetting manic and when I went
(04:55):
back to I had moved.
During that time I graduatedfrom college and I moved home
and my parents had a front rowseat to see that the chaos that
ensued when I started takingthese antidepressants and so I
was.
I went back to a newpsychiatrist in up in Washington
where I moved to aftergraduation, and I was told that
(05:15):
I had been misdiagnosed, thatthe medication by putting me on
an antidepressant and it makingme manic, I was actually it was
actually showing that I actuallyhad bipolar disorder, that it
was revealing that I had bipolardisorder and they said they
called it bipolar two.
And so again I thought, oh,they just misdiagnosed me and
gave me the wrong medication.
So now I'm going to get theright medication and I'm going
(05:37):
to be okay or be able to manageit better.
And again it was this feelingof like relief, like getting an
answer.
It was helpful and I felt likeI was being given an answer to
the struggle that I wasexperiencing.
And this created a trap for mebecause over the following
(05:58):
decade I proactively went toevery psychiatric appointment.
I didn't skip.
So I didn't skip appointmentswith my psychiatrist.
I moved a few times and eachtime I moved I would immediately
contact and get establishedwith a new psychiatrist so that
I could continue my treatment.
I took every medication that wasprescribed to me and I
continued to struggle severely,especially after I had children.
I had very severe postpartumdepression.
(06:20):
I would have mood swings.
I experienced a lot of symptomsthat just made me feel out of
control and it started.
I experienced a lot of symptomsthat that just made me feel out
of control and it started to doa lot of damage to my family.
And because I had this diagnosisof bipolar disorder and I was
told it was, it was a lifelongcondition, I would have it for
the rest of my life it made mefeel very helpless and it made
(06:40):
me feel very hopeless.
I started to get to a pointwhere I thought, well, if, if
I'm going to have this foreverand things are just getting
worse.
I had some doctors tell me thiswas neurodegenerative.
It just kind of tended to getworse and worse and worse over
time.
I thought, if this is kind oflike having I can't remember the
name of the thing All of asudden my brain's going, but
(07:01):
where your body starts to shakeand you start to lose motor
control.
It thing.
All of a sudden my brain'sgoing, but where your body
starts to shake and you start tolose motor control, um, it was
like you know, it was kind offeeling like that, like if I'm
just going to keep getting worse, it's going to ruin everybody's
lives.
You know, my life isn't worthanything.
I started to feel like I wasn't, I didn't have any value in my
life because I I was able to doless and less and less, because
I just couldn't even manage myown life and my own symptoms,
(07:22):
let alone help anybody else, andit started to feel like a trap.
And then, as I've shared in pastpodcast episodes and also in my
book, I had a period of timewhere I ended up hospitalized in
three different hospitals overtwo different months.
They did electric convulsivetherapy on me.
I made multiple attempts on mylife and I was desperate.
(07:46):
I felt totally hopeless,totally desperate.
But then I had an experienceafter my third hospitalization.
I was watching my children mytwo little, my two middle
children they were little at thetime, four and two playing with
each other.
And I had this really clearthought come into my head that
if I ever successfully ended mylife, that it would ruin my
(08:07):
daughter's life, that she wouldbelieve it was her fault and it
would end and it would ruin herlife.
And that turned everythingaround for me.
Even though I didn't believe mylife had value, I knew hers did
, and so I knew that I had tofind a way to live with my
disorder in the best waypossible so that I could give
her a good chance at life.
(08:28):
I was not willing to ruin herlife.
I would continue suffering forher if that was what was
necessary.
And thankfully, over thefollowing decade I actually
found the path to healing, eventhough I didn't understand that
I was healing.
At the time when I was goingthrough the healing process I
didn't know I was healingbecause I believed, because I
(08:48):
had been diagnosed with bipolardisorder, that I had a lifelong
condition, that there was nocure for it, that I would always
have it.
But over time I thought I wasjust learning how to manage it
better.
I thought I was finding thingsto help manage my disorder
better.
I thought I was finding thingsto help manage my disorder
better, and even when I startedmy blog back in the beginning of
(09:09):
2021, I still believed that Ihad this condition.
I just believed that I hadlearned how to really manage it
well so that I rarely hadsymptoms, and I wanted to teach
other people who had thislifelong disease or condition or
disorder.
I wanted to teach other peoplehow to manage theirs better too,
(09:29):
because I thought if you haveit for the rest of your life,
let's try to live the healthiestway possible with it.
It was only when I startedlearning more about what was
actually happening in psychiatryand in the creation of these
diagnosis that I started toquestion what I had been told.
The first book in that processwas Anatomy of an Epidemic by
(09:53):
Robert Whitaker.
I interviewed him on an earlierpodcast.
I can link that in the shownotes, but that was a really
eye-opening book for me.
That one helped me tounderstand that these diagnoses
the diagnosis of bipolardisorder was not created once
they found a disease.
(10:13):
They hadn't identified theetiology.
I think it's called etiologythe underlying condition.
They hadn't identified anunderlying condition.
They had just created adiagnosis based on a cluster of
symptoms and then, over thefollowing decades, the
psychiatry started to try andjustify their diagnosis.
(10:38):
They were looking for a causefor this disorder they had
created and when people didn'tfit within the parameters of
that, over time they expandedthe parameters so that they
could group people into thesediagnostic categories.
And then I started readingProfessor Joanna Moncrief's
(11:00):
books.
She wrote the Myth of theChemical Cure.
Most recently she wroteChemically Imbalbalanced, which
is a book that was based on.
She was a lead researcher in agroup that that did analysis of
years, decades worth of studiesthat proved that the chemical
(11:21):
imbalance theory is not true.
The chemical imbalance theoryis not true.
It completely debunked thechemical imbalance theory of
illness and even now peoplecontinue to use that as a
justification for the diagnosis.
They continue to say that well,we know that bipolar is a
chemical imbalance.
And now I'm starting tounderstand.
No, it's not.
(11:41):
That was a theory that wasdeveloped to justify the
diagnosis, to justify thecategory that was created, based
solely on symptoms.
And then last year I read anarticle in Psychology Today by
Jonathan Shedler he's a PhD andthe title of the article is A
(12:06):
Psychiatric Diagnosis is Not aDisease.
And I actually I wrote a littlesynopsis article in my in my
blog if you want to go and readthat and I would encourage you
to go and actually read hisarticle I've linked that in in
the blog post and I'll actuallylink it in the show notes for
this episode.
But he talks about how, upuntil the most recent version of
(12:38):
the DSM, the DiagnosticStatistical Manual for
Psychiatric Diagnoses, there wasa disclaimer at the beginning
of the manual or an explanation.
I don't know if it's called adisclaimer or an explanation,
but there was a designation atthe beginning of the manual that
said that the diagnosis inthese manuals were not
identifying underlyingconditions.
They were just identifyingsymptom clusters of symptoms,
symptom clusters, that's allthat they were defining.
So anxiety disorder, majordepressive disorder, bipolar
(12:58):
disorder, schizophrenia all ofthose diagnoses.
They were acknowledging thatthey are not identifying the
underlying mechanism for thosediagnoses.
They were acknowledging thatthey are not identifying the
underlying mechanism for thosediagnoses.
They are just identifying acluster of symptoms and it is
not identifying a disease.
It's identifying just thesymptoms.
And it would be like going tothe doctor If you started
(13:19):
running fevers all the time andyou went to the doctor and for
help and an an explanation andthey told you you had fever
disorder.
That is not an explanation.
That is not giving you ananswer, it is just an
observation.
All they are doing is observinga cluster of symptoms and
saying you have this cluster ofsymptoms, and the problem that
(13:42):
that creates is that it misleadspeople into believing they've
been given an answer.
I went to a psychiatristlooking for an answer when I
first went to get diagnosed.
I was looking for an answer tounderstand why these things were
happening to me, and I wasgiven an explanation that led me
to believe that the underlyingcause of my symptoms had been
(14:07):
identified.
And it wasn't true.
Bipolar is not a disease, it isa cluster of symptoms, and what
this does is it ends curiosity.
I stopped being curious aboutwhy I was experiencing those
symptoms because I believed Ihad been given an answer.
I stopped looking for him, youknow, for other answers, because
(14:29):
I thought I'd been told why Iwas experiencing these symptoms,
and that was not true.
It also fosters helplessness inpeople when I was getting worse
and worse and worse, when Iwould do things that were
triggered by the symptoms I washaving.
So, for example, I struggledwith binge watching television
(14:52):
and I didn't understand why Icouldn't stop doing it, and it
might sound silly to people.
I'm not talking about liketaking a break over the weekend
and binge watching, you know afew episodes of a show or
something.
I'm talking about weeks uponweeks of from the time I got up
until the time I went to bed,watching like 18 seasons of law
(15:14):
and order, svu after one move,or all 10 seasons of the office
in one sitting, like back toback to back to back to back,
and I not doing anything else,not taking care of my family,
not taking care of myself.
It was, I was.
That was a coping mechanism thatI had developed, or, like the
quote unquote bipolar rage.
Especially after I had children, I would have these like
(15:38):
rageful outbursts that I had nocontrol over and I felt like a
terrible person and I didn'tknow what to do about it.
And when I went to the doctorand talked about that, you know
they were trying to tweak themedications or whatever, but it
was all attributed to mydisorder, which made me feel
like I had no control over it,like I couldn't do anything
about it and I was doing damageto other people.
(16:01):
I was doing damage to myhusband.
I was doing damage in myrelationship with him.
I was doing damage to mychildren and I felt like a
terrible person and I thought,if I have this disorder and
these and I can't don't have anycontrol over these things I
need to remove myself from theirlife so that I don't keep
hurting them.
The other thing that it does isit creates a victim mindset in
(16:22):
people.
I experienced this myself, andI've also experienced it through
relationships with other peoplewho are struggling with this
quote-unquote disorder, wherethey feel like they can't help
it, and so people just need tounderstand.
I see this online all the time,this bringing awareness.
(16:42):
People want people to be awarethat they have this disorder
that they can't do anythingabout, and so they just need
people to excuse their badbehavior.
There's a television show or amovie I'm not sure if it's a TV
show or a movie.
I've never actually seen theshow itself.
I've only seen this one clip ofit where Anne Hathaway plays
(17:03):
somebody who has bipolardisorder.
Her character has bipolardisorder quote unquote and she's
having a discussion withsomebody that she, I think is a
coworker, who she wants to befriends with, and she's trying
to describe her bipolar to them.
And the reason why this hasgone viral on, you know on
(17:25):
social media is because so manypeople feel seen by this, this
scene.
They feel like it.
You know it's a great way tointroduce to people what you
suffer from.
And so she was talking.
You know she's talking abouthow you know, sometimes she'll
be really happy and and, and youknow, elevated and make kind of
some bad decisions and then andthen all of a sudden she'll get
(17:47):
depressed and she won't talk toanybody for a while and I
understand from past experiencethat that would have made me
feel very seen when I was goingthrough this, because I felt
like I felt helpless, I feltlike a victim, like I didn't
have any control over it and Iwanted I wanted loving
relationships in my life, but Ididn't have any.
I didn't feel like I had anycontrol or any ability to affect
(18:08):
the symptoms, to stop myselffrom doing these things that
were compulsive, based on thesymptoms I was experiencing with
my bipolar disorder.
And the issue that we have inthis disorder is that it
misleads people into believingthey've been given an answer and
the way that psychiatry hasdecided to treat this disorder.
(18:31):
The best practices, the goldstandard for treatment, is
psychotropic drugs and thiscreates a whole nother level of
issue for treatment ispsychotropic drugs and this
creates a whole nother level ofissue.
So when I talked about at thebeginning of this episode, I
talked about my experience whereI went to the doctor for
answers.
I went to a psychiatrist foranswers and I was first told
that I had depression andanxiety and given psychotropic
(18:55):
drugs and then, a few monthslater, as those drugs built up
in my system and as my brainadjusted, it became manic and I
was told that it had revealedthat I had bipolar disorder,
when in fact what actuallyhappened was I had iatrogenic
symptoms, iatrogenic meaningcaused by the drug.
(19:18):
The drug itself had triggeredmania in me and instead of the
doctor understanding andacknowledging whoops, we
actually triggered mania in youwith this antidepressant.
They said that it revealed thatI had bipolar disorder.
This is a very common source ofsymptoms for people and it's
not just psychotropic drugsPsychotropic drugs are a very
(19:42):
common culprit in this area butother medications.
There's a medication one off thetop of my head is called
gabapentin.
It's a very common drug that'sused for a number of different
things, but it can causedepression and what will happen
is somebody starts taking thisdrug and they start getting
(20:02):
depressed and if they go to thedoctor and start talking about
their depression symptoms, thedoctor does not ask are you
taking medication?
Most doctors will not do this.
They will not ask are youtaking any medications and then
find out that the side effect ofthis medication is depression?
They will diagnose that personwith depression and give them
(20:23):
the antidepressants.
So they will get diagnosed withmajor depressive disorder and
then given antidepressants.
Marijuana there is starting tobe some.
Thankfully there is starting tobe some research into the fact
that marijuana can triggerpsychosis and people.
Because of the prevalence ofthe use of marijuana, it's
(20:45):
becoming legal in a lot ofstates and it's increased use
and because of that we arestarting to see more and more
people presenting with psychosisbecause of smoking pot and they
go to the psychiatrist and aretold that they have bipolar
disorder and put on drugs forbipolar disorder.
There is no acknowledgementthat their psychosis was
(21:06):
triggered by marijuana and theyneeded to detox and needed help
getting off of this.
Another common culprit is ADHDmedications.
There are a lot of people Iknow somebody I don't know them
personally.
I know them through a friendwho started taking ADHD
medications and started abusingthe ADHD medications and
(21:27):
triggered psychosis in herselfand was then diagnosed with
bipolar disorder.
So the medications themselvesare causing a chemical imbalance
in the brain.
I was told for years that thesource of my disorder was a
chemical imbalance.
I've talked about that before.
I've talked about it withguests on other podcast episodes
(21:51):
.
This is not true.
Professor Moncrief was one ofthe lead researchers on this
research project that spanned 20, I think, over 20 years of
research, proving that it hadbeen that this theory of illness
, the chemical imbalance theoryof illness, had been disproven
over and over again.
One of the things that wasactually discovered and Robert
(22:12):
Whitaker talks about this in hisbook is that not only was there
not an underlying chemicalimbalance to begin with, but the
medications themselves cause achemical imbalance in the brain.
They are not regulating thebrain because no underlying
condition has ever beenidentified.
What they have done inpsychiatry is they created this
(22:32):
diagnosis and then they spent alot of time trying to create
drugs.
The original, the firstgeneration of psychotropic drugs
were actually found by accident.
They did not develop them basedon an underlying condition.
They found them accidentally.
They were in use for otherpurposes and the doctors
observed that they impactedpeople's emotional state, and so
(22:58):
they started using them for forpsychiatric purposes and then,
based on, they would study themechanism that was causing this
and then started developingadditional medications that
would would have a similareffect.
And so we ended up with with awhole bunch of drugs that cause
chemical imbalances in the brainthat we don't really actually
(23:21):
fully understand what they'redoing to the brain.
They are dysregulating thebrain further.
So the underlying symptoms, theunderlying sources of the
symptoms, persist, because wehave stopped being curious about
why somebody is having thesesymptoms and we are creating
more problems for people, whichis why people say bipolar
(23:41):
disorder cannot be cured.
The reason why people saybipolar disorder cannot be cured
is the treatment itself ispreventing them from healing.
We believe we've been given ananswer.
We're told that we needmedication, so we take the
medication and we're told allthe things that we're told come
true.
So I was told that bipolar wasa chemical imbalance, that it
(24:03):
was, you know, it was likediabetes and that medication was
like insulin.
That is totally false and therewas never any justification for
it.
It was used for marketingmedication.
And then I was told that it waschronic and incurable and that
it was neurodegenerative, thatmy brain would potentially
continue to get worse.
All of that started to happen,and so I didn't have any reason
(24:27):
to question what I had been told, because everything I was told
was happening and it trapped mein this disease.
I was trapped in this disorder.
So people are told they have adisorder, they're told that it's
lifelong and incurable, thatthey have to take medications.
The medications change theirbrain chemistry and they and
(24:48):
everything, everything that anysymptoms that you experience are
all attributed to themedications.
So, for example, when somebodycomes off the drugs, they go
through withdrawal.
Example, when somebody comesoff the drugs, they go through
withdrawal, and those withdrawalsymptoms are then attributed to
the disease or the disorder,not the medication withdrawal.
And I watched this.
(25:09):
I actually had a reallyinteresting conversation with
somebody one time, because a lotof people who have bipolar and
are taking medications don'tlike the medications because
they don't like the way theyfeel, because their brain is not
functioning in a normal way.
I have this.
I felt this way all the time.
I didn't dare come off mymedications because I was told
that that I you know, if I, if I, came off the medications, that
(25:30):
you know, I'd end up at thehospital, and so I was afraid of
coming off the medications, butI did not like the way that I
felt.
I only went off the medicationswhen the doctors told me to do
it, and I experienced withdrawalevery time.
Every time I would come off amedication and it was all
attributed to my bipolardisorder, but what was actually
happening is my brain waswithdrawing from a substance
(25:51):
that it had become dependentupon.
So when somebody comes off ofmedications, one of the things
that Professor Moncrief talkedabout and I think she actually
talked about it in the book, butshe talked about it in one of
the episodes that I interviewedher on Lithium, for example
suppresses emotional response.
It's like pushing a balloonunderwater, and when you take
the lithium away, the balloonwill rocket back up.
(26:14):
If you push a balloonunderwater, when you let go of
it, it shoots back up higherthan it was before, and that is
what they would see withmedications like lithium.
People would take themedication and it would
sometimes suppress the symptomsthat they were having, and when
they would stop taking themedication, the mania and the
(26:35):
symptoms that they were havingbefore would come back.
With inventions, they wouldcome back worse than they were
before and instead ofrecognizing we created a
chemical imbalance and thewithdrawal symptoms were
intolerable.
Maybe we should change the waywe withdraw people from these
medications.
They said oh, you have to be onlithium.
Look see, your symptoms cameback worse, so you have to be on
(26:55):
this drug.
We need to change the way thatwe talk about what is actually
happening in order to helppeople heal.
We need a paradigm shift here.
In my group, in my coachinggroup, we've actually worked on
this.
We talk about bipolar symptomsinstead of bipolar disorder, and
the reason that thatdifferentiation is important is
(27:17):
because symptoms have sourcesand the sources can be treated.
When you talk about bipolardisorder, this incurable
condition, you feel like there'snothing you can do about it,
but when we talk about thesymptoms, we can get curious
about what's causing thesymptoms and then use the
research-based treatments thatactually treat those symptoms so
(27:38):
that you can heal.
When we talk about the sourcesof the symptoms, there are some
main sources.
There's still ongoing researchtrying to help us understand all
the different potential sourcesfor symptoms, but there is
adequate research now that hashelped us to understand.
Micronutrient insufficiency is areally big one.
I've got podcast episodes whereI interviewed like Dr Bonnie
(28:03):
Kaplan, who was wrote the betterbrain, and she is one of the
pioneers in this field ofresearch that helped us
understand that micronutrientinsufficiency can lead to
symptoms like bipolar symptoms,you know, mania and depression.
It can lead to symptoms of ADHD.
It can lead to symptoms of, youknow, of anxiety.
(28:23):
So micronutrient, micronutrientinsufficiency, is a very common
source of symptoms.
Trauma is also a very commonsource of symptoms and it's
interesting because very severetrauma can actually lead to
conditions like, likeschizophrenia.
They talk about this like it'ssome kind of brain disorder,
(28:44):
when in fact it is the brain'sdefense mechanism for severe
trauma.
And there's a woman that I've,you know, I've read her book
where she, when you read thebook and you see the extreme
trauma that she was raised inand that she experienced
throughout her childhood andteenage years, it is no wonder
(29:04):
that her brain becamedysfunctional and she was able
to heal because she got curiousabout what was causing her
symptoms.
So unhealed trauma can lead todepression, it can lead to
anxiety, it can lead to anxiety,it can lead to mania and
(29:25):
psychosis.
And so if you learn how toidentify and heal that unhealed
trauma, you can resolve thesource of those symptoms Health
factors.
This is a big one that needs tobe talked about more, because
when somebody is experiencingthings like hypothyroidism so
when somebody's thyroid isn'tfunctioning in a healthy way
(29:47):
that can lead to depressionsymptoms, and what often will
happen is somebody will getdiagnosed with depression and
put on an antidepressants, whenwhat needs to be addressed is
the underlying health factor.
What needs to be addressed isthe underlying health factor.
The fact that their body is notfunctioning in a healthy way is
leading to mental symptoms, andwe need to not diagnose it as
(30:10):
major depressive disorder andgive them psychotropic drugs.
We need to address theunderlying health issue that is
leading to these mental healthissues.
Drugs, both illicit andprescription and I talked about
this probably a little more thanI meant to earlier in the
episode.
One of the underlying sourcesof my symptoms was iatrogenic.
(30:30):
It was drug-induced mypsychosis.
When I was in the hospital thatchanged my bipolar diagnosis
from bipolar 2 to bipolar 1, Ihad electroconvulsive therapy on
me.
So I was in the hospitalseverely depressed.
I was so severely depressed Iwas in a locked ward because I
was a danger to myself.
So I was in a locked ward for aweek and then they, the doctors
(30:52):
, decided to doelectroconvulsive therapy on me
and I wasn't taking I don't knowif I was taking any medication
on that at that time so theywithdrew the drugs and then
shocked my brain and within afew treatments I became
psychotic.
And instead of saying, oh man,we cause psychosis with taking
(31:13):
away the drugs and doingelectric electroconvulsive
therapy on you, they changed mydiagnosis from bipolar two to
bipolar one, so now I had adocumented psychotic episode and
so they could change mydiagnosis to bipolar one.
You know the medicationsthemselves.
So medications themselves andwe talked about marijuana being
(31:33):
an illicit drug that is anothersource of you know drugs.
Different types of drugs cancause a chemical imbalance in
your brain.
They affect your brain functionand that creates symptoms.
And so if you resolve that, ifyou heal the brain and heal it
from the effects of themedications, you can heal those
symptoms.
You can heal the underlyingsource of those symptoms.
(31:54):
We also see people who havedeveloped unhealthy thought and
behavior patterns and unhealthycoping mechanisms that then can
trigger symptoms.
So all of these sources ofsymptoms can be treated and
resolved, and which is why weneed to call, we need to refer
to this experience that somepeople are having these symptoms
(32:17):
, that people are having asbipolar symptoms, not bipolar
disorder.
Symptoms that people are havingas bipolar symptoms, not
bipolar disorder.
When you experience thesesymptoms you do not have, they
are not identifying anunderlying cause.
A diagnosis of bipolar disorderdoes not tell you what you are
suffering from.
It just is an observation ofthe symptoms.
I want to encourage people tochange the way that you talk
(32:38):
about this.
We do this in my coaching groupall the time.
We talk about it prettyconsistently because, especially
when somebody has been intreatment for 20 years, like I
was, you know, from 1998 until2023, 2022, I still believed
that I had bipolar disorder andthat it was an incurable
(32:59):
condition that I would have forthe rest of my life bipolar
disorder and that it was anincurable condition that I would
have for the rest of my life.
Once I started understandingthat that's not true, that I had
symptoms and I, as I identifiedand healed the underlying
sources of the symptoms, theyresolved and that has led to I
don't experience these symptomsanymore.
I was having a conversationyesterday with somebody and she
asked me pretty incredulouslylike you really don't experience
(33:20):
symptoms anymore?
I was having a conversationyesterday with somebody and she
asked me pretty incredulously,like you really don't experience
symptoms anymore.
And I told her no, I said Ihave normal emotional responses
to life circumstances.
You know we've been through alot in the past five years and
thankfully, because I have doneso much work healing, I was able
to handle those situations in ahealthy way.
(33:42):
I had normal emotional responsesto things.
When we lost our son, ouroldest son, to suicide, I had a
normal emotional response.
I was devastated by theexperience.
I was heartbroken.
I went through all of the grief, the grief cycle you know anger
, rage, bargaining, all of thosethings.
I had a normal, healthyemotional response to a tragedy.
(34:08):
When my husband lost his job, Ihad normal emotional responses
to the stressors.
I you know when I, when, when Iwas under all that stress, I
talked about the last episode.
You know we had all of thesestressors going on.
I had normal emotionalresponses to those things and
because of all the work that Ihad done, I had tools in place
(34:29):
that helped me to manage thingseffectively so that my emotional
responses didn't get out ofcontrol.
It is possible to recover andheal from bipolar symptoms if
you identify the source of thesymptoms.
Something that we talk about inour coaching group regularly is
(34:51):
that we need to get curiousinstead of judging, making
choices based on thesecompulsions from the symptoms.
No, we don't want to keep doingthose things, but instead of
judging ourselves as broken or abad person you know low moral
character get curious about whatis causing that compulsion.
Get curious about what iscausing the symptom, about the
(35:23):
source of the symptoms.
Identify the source and thentreat it with research-based
integrated treatment methods.
You can heal.
If you have any questions aboutthis, I know this is a lot of
information and I would love tohear from you, so let me know if
you have any questions orinsights.
I will make sure I go throughand link all of the resources
that I've talked about so thatyou can go do this research for
(35:44):
yourself and learn more about ityourself.
It took me a long time and alot of research to change the
way that my mind thought aboutthese things, because I was so
thoroughly convinced thatbipolar disorder was a disease,
that it was an incurablecondition, and it took a long
time and a lot of research forme to understand that that's not
true, and so I encourage you tolearn more about this.
(36:05):
If you have questions, let meknow, look at the resources that
I link in the podcast episodeand then let me know what you
think.
And this is an important stepon the path to healing is is
understanding what you'reactually struggling with in the
first place.
All right, until next time,upsiders.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Hey, thanks for joining us today.
If you're ready to start onyour path to wellness with
bipolar, go to myupsideofdowncomand get your free mood cycle
survival guide four steps tosuccessfully navigate bipolar
mood swings.
If you're ready for more, checkout the map to wellness.
Until next time, upsiders.
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