At the end of 2008 my psychiatrist said she thought I was “bipolar 2”. Kayla looked it up on the web and said it was repeated depressions without the manic part of the cycle. It totally freaked me out.
(Written in January 2009)
I think what’s being so hard about the bipolar 2 diagnosis is the feeling of being helpless and vulnerable to the ebb and flow of brain chemistry. With PTSD — understanding the physiology gives me a way to manage symptoms, and some action I can take that will bring some healing and improve my ability to live with ease and grace and compassion. And I have some sense of a real self, a core self that I can return to and rest on. But if feeling like my “real self” is dependent on medication, then who am I really? Is there any “core self” that provides me with an axis for my integrity? How am I different from the alcoholic who drinks to make the difficult feelings go away? Well, at least I’m not creating havoc and misery in the lives of people around me. I also think of the father, dying and in coma, who emerged briefly before he died to say to his daughter “Tell your mother I love her, and that I’m all right.” When the autopsy was performed he had almost no brain left. So the mind is not the same as the brain, and the self is not confined to the body. Maybe what I am calling my “core self” is something larger than the body, the morphic field, a consciousness that rides my body as a person rides a horse, that chooses direction, that chooses not to go down the path of catastrophizing, that keeps reminding me to stay in the present, to invoke lovingkindness, to “soften around” whatever is happening. This part of me can’t choose to feel differently, but I can choose where to put my attention.