She sighed. "There's nothing wrong with you, Nicole. But you do have a collection of symptoms known as rapid cycling bipolar two. It's a mental illness characterized by periods of hypomania followed by periods of depression. In your case, you also appear to have mixed episodes of depression and hypomania at the same time. Based on the history you gave me, it sounds like you've had this for most of your adult life."
"Oh," I said softly. "I just thought I was weak..."
"You're not weak, Nicole. It's a real illness, not a character defect. You wouldn't say someone with cancer is weak, would you?"
"Of course not."
"Then you need to understand that bipolar is the same thing. Just because you can't see it manifesting on your physical body, doesn't mean it isn't real. Mental illness still carries a lot of stigma in our society, but that's just because people don't understand it. They think your depression can be fixed with a bit of willpower and discipline and-"
"Yeah, I tried willpower and discipline. It just made it worse," I interjected.
"Exactly," she said. "You're not weak. You're not going through a phase. You don't need to just 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' That's not how this works, and it's hard for anyone not suffering from this illness to understand that. Having bipolar is nothing for you to be ashamed of. Your brain just functions a bit differently to everyone else's."
"How does it function differently?" I asked. "Like, what's creating the chemical cocktail? Genetics?"
"We're not entirely sure, to be honest. It seems to be a neurodegenerative disease that is caused by a combination of genetics, environmental factors, and other things. When you look at a brain scan, a bipolar brain is physically different from a neurotypical brain in a few key areas. I just don't want you to think that this is all made up, because it isn't. You're not weak. You're different."
"Can you cure it?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You will have this for the rest of your life, but it shouldn't hold you back once you learn to manage it. Some of the highest functioning and most brilliant people in society have bipolar disorder, or were suspected of having bipolar disorder, and you wouldn't even know it."
"Like who?" I asked.
"There are plenty of entertainers, like Carrie Fisher-"
"The actress who played Princess Leia in Star Wars?"
"Yes," the psychologist replied. "Robin Williams had clear symptoms, but he was never clinically diagnosed as bipolar that we know of. You've also got Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Russell Brand, Frank Sinatra, Stephen Fry. You've got brilliant leaders and entrepreneurs like Winston Churchill and Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. You've also got revolutionary artists, poets, and composers like Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Tchaikovsky, Jackson Pollock, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath-"
"Sylvia Plath killed herself in an oven."
"Yes," the pretty psychologist said. "She needed help. But with the right support and a plan in place, you can live a very full and normal life. I understand that it's a traumatic illness that can wreak havoc if left unchecked, but some of my patients wouldn't give the illness up, even if given a choice. They like the creativity that comes with the high periods. People with bipolar are able to see the world in ways that other people can't."
"That makes sense," I said. "When I'm high, I feel everything all at once."
At that moment, a passage from a book popped into my head.
Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.
To seek enlightenment is to seek annihilation, rebirth, and the taking up of burdens. You must become prepared to touch and be touched by everything in heaven and hell.
Andrew Boyd
"It's like my brain is on fire," I continued. "It's just wiring information together at a rapid pace."
The psychologist leaned forward and handed me a book on the coffee table: Touched With Fire. "The author is Kay Jamison," she said. "She is one of the foremost psychologists in America, and has bipolar herself. She wrote this book about the link between mania and creativity."
I turned the book over in my hands and chuckled. "Touched with fire, huh? First comes the fire, then comes the flood."
The psychologist smiled.
"So, how do I get the fire without the flood?" I asked as I placed the book back on the table. "I'm smarter and wittier and faster and bolder and cleverer and brighter and funnier and better in every way when I'm hypomanic. How do I get the sunshine without the storm?"
"You can't," the psychologist said. "You're both sides of that equation. If you want the fire, you have to accept the flood. If you want the sunshine, you have to accept the storm. The more you push yourself into mania, the more severe your depression is likely to become. Your brain chemistry is just trying to regulate itself, and when you push yourself into those extreme polarities, it's not healthy."
Another passage came to mind.
The world is the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornados, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other. The whole birth-death cycle is part of this movement. These are the rhythms of life, and everything in gross reality is subject to them, because life itself is a rhythm. It is a wave, a vibration, a pulsation at the very heart of the All That Is.
Neale Donald Walsch
At that moment, another connection fired in my brain. "Actually, is bipolar related to manic-depression?" I asked.
"Bipolar is manic-depression," she replied. "The medical term for the illness was changed back in the eighties."
I recalled something I'd read many times in The Holographic Universe.
Ullman believes that some aspects of psychosis can also be explained by the holographic idea. Both Bohm and Pribram have noted that the experiences mystics have reported throughout the ages — such as feelings of cosmic oneness with the universe, a sense of unity with all life, and so forth — sound very much like descriptions of the implicate order. They suggest that perhaps mystics are somehow able to peer beyond ordinary explicate reality and glimpse its deeper, more holographic qualities. Ullman believes that psychotics are also able to experience certain aspects of the holographic level of reality. But because they are unable to order their experiences rationally, these glimpses are only tragic parodies of the ones reported by mystics. [...]
Ullman believes that certain aspects of holographic thinking are even more pronounced in manic-depressives. Whereas the schizophrenic only gets whiffs of the holographic order, the manic is deeply involved in it and grandiosely identifies with its infinite potential. "He can't keep up with all the thoughts and ideas that come at him in so overwhelming a way, " states Ullman. "He has to lie, dissemble, and manipulate those about him so as to accommodate to his expansive vista. The end result, of course, is mostly chaos and confusion mixed with occasional outbursts of creativity and success in consensual reality.” In turn, the manic becomes depressed after he returns from this surreal vacation and once again faces the hazards and chance occurrences of everyday life.
Michael Talbot
I don't lie, dissemble, and manipulate, do I? I wondered. I think I have integrity. But why the fuck should I trust anything I think about myself? I'm either a mystic, or I'm a psychotic, or I'm both. If I'm a psychotic, I'd probably believe I was a mystic. If I'm a mystic, I would also believe I was a mystic. So which am I? Should I just assume I'm a psychotic, by default? Maybe I am crazy. Maybe she's right. Maybe I've made all of this up in my mind. I mean, I just spent the past few years reverse-engineering the goddamn universe. That project is about as grandiose as it gets. I'd have to be a special kind of delusional to think I could actually contribute something to that endeavor.
"Okay," I sighed. "So how do I manage this?"
"Well," she said as she pulled her laptop off the coffee table. "I'm going to refer you to a psychiatrist who can prescribe-"
"I'm not taking medication," I said firmly.
"Medication is not a bad th-"
"No," I repeated.
"But earlier, you asked me for the blue pill."
"I changed my mind. And I didn't mean a literal blue pill. It was a metaphor. Can you just show me how to manage it with lifestyle changes, first? Surely there are certain choices I'm making that set me off into hypomania. What does this illness respond positively to? How do I get stable?"
"Routine and consistency," she said.
I laughed. "Well, there's my first problem. My routine is very fluid, especially when I move around from place to place. I don't have a permanent home. I need semi-regular change in my life, or I get bored."
"You can have change," she said. "You don't need to stop living your dreams. You just need to protect the key pillars of your routine and keep them consistent through the change. It's a matter of prioritizing your health, even when you suddenly feel like staying up all night to work on a creative project."
"Great!" I said. "Can you help me with that as a starting point? What else affects my stability?"
"Sleep, food, exercise, caffeine, drugs and alcohol, relationships, stress, sunshine-"
"Perfect. There are tons of improvements I can make in most of those areas. If you just teach me how this bipolar system works, and which levers to pull, I can pull them. If I mess up and fall into a deep depression again, you can send me to a psychiatrist."
"Okay," she agreed.
"And it's not that I don't respect the medication," I clarified. "I'm sure it's very useful."
"Then why don't you try the medication?" she asked.
"It just seems like a sub-optimal way of solving the problem at its root cause."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I'm not going to kill myself, so I don't need medication immediately. Let's say I make one small change to my lifestyle that improves my stability by ninety percent. If I make that change while also starting on medication, I will probably attribute my success to the medication. And then I'll be on medication for the rest of my life, thinking I'm dependent on it when all I really needed to do was prioritize certain healthy routines and change some other variables. If I have to use an abductive or inductive process to understand this condition, then I'd rather minimize the number of variables at play."
The psychologist chuckled. "Sure," she said. "Let's do that. I'll email you some homework. You can come and see me again next week."
