My last post “Poisonous Mind” received a few comments about identifying with thoughts and the influence this identification can have on our perception of things, and meditation was suggested as an excellent practice for loosening the influence thoughts have on our perception of who we are and our emotional reaction to the contents of thoughts. Both of which should potentially benefit a person dealing with bipolar disorder. This topic is of great interest to me, not only from a psychological perspective related to bipolar disorder, but from a philosophical perspective as well so I’ve decided to write a little about it.
From my experience of bipolar disorder, I’ve come to realize that my mood usually changes before my thoughts do. Mood being a state of being that isn’t thought about, but rather experienced. It’s a sensation deep within. Bipolar disorder affects this deep rooted sensation by shifting the sensation from sustained lows to sustained highs, which in turn affect my thoughts and behaviors.
I consider my thoughts to be more of a reflection of my mood, rather than the source of my mood. If my mood is depressed my thoughts are going to be negative, angry and/or melancholic and if my mood is hypomanic my thoughts are going to be goal oriented, excited and/or full of energy. Thoughts and mood are very closely related, but are definitely different occurrences.
I know philosophically that my identity cannot be the content of my thoughts because I’m separate from them and I can see them mentally. If I were my thoughts, then I wouldn’t be able to be separate from them and look at them from the outside. However, when I’m actively living life this clear division becomes much blurrier and I do frequently become emotionally involved in the contents of my thoughts. Merging the sensation of self and the emotional reaction to thoughts together. My thoughts then go from being a reflection of my original mood state, to being emotionally connected to my mood state and helping to further influence my sense of being.
Now where I think meditation may come in helpful with bipolar disorder, is by using it as a relaxation technique to release any emotional association with thoughts by silencing the chattering of the mind and breaking any emotional identification that may occur with thought patterns. Meditation may not be able to remove the biological origin of the mood disorder and the experience of shifts in mood, but it may be an extremely helpful exercise in helping to lessen the effects of symptomatic emotionally fueled thought patterns that occur because of the shifts in mood and prevent them from adding to the intensity or growth of the mood shift. The outcome hopefully being a more relaxed and in control state of mind. Instead of letting your mind run with your thoughts, fueled by your mood, to become emotionally charged. You instead try to relax and focus your mind on something else like breathing or bodily motion and let the thoughts drift away. I guess the objective is to bring your attention away from the constant distraction of your emotionally charged thoughts and try to stabilize your attention by focusing on one thing.
Up until this point in my life I’ve read many books that touch on meditation, but I haven’t formally practiced meditation in a consistent manner. I have had my moments where I’ve sat silently and watched the contents on my mind while focusing on my breathing, but I’m definitely not an expert in the practice. I do however fully support the practice because from what I’ve read and understood, it psychologically and philosophically makes sense and so do many of the insights derived from lifetime practitioners, but ultimately my support stems from supporting a practice that promotes inner peace and deeper understanding of our experience of being, which ultimately will then become our thoughts and the world we live in.
If you guys want to keep track of some of my other writing, feel free to visit the website I’m creating at http://www.globalnation1.com or the quote/unquote ’spiritual’ community I write for at http://sos.zaadz.com
Zaadz is owned by GAIAM, a company that amongst other things sells yoga stuff. My gf is in yoga teacher training, and yoga has helped her severe OCD significantly. I am thinking of starting it myself… all the doctors in Ottawa seem to be saying its the best thing for you.
Thanks for the further clarification on thought, emotion, mood and meditation. I know one problem when attempting to discuss this kind of stuff are the semantics involved. The divisions between thought, emotion, mood, reaction, behavior, etc. become extremely fine and often overlap.
You said, “together, let’s say that thought/emotion is MOOD”.
I’ve always considered MOOD as my base state that thought/emotion grows out of, but you’re suggesting that thought/emotion equals MOOD, right? I guess I feel this way because my awareness appears to always coexist with a deep physical/psychological feeling that I’ve associated with and called MOOD. It’s kind of like the atmosphere of my awareness at any given time. My thoughts, emotional reactions and behaviors seem to stem from this feeling that often fluctuates. What do you think?
I have had struggles with bipolar disorder — hospitalized twice years apart— unable to stop the mind going round and round and round– once it was attempted suicide, the next time it was– I know I’m circling that suicidal drain, better send myself for some help. they suggested serious drugs. I feared / despised the psychoactive prescription drug world and said no. shortly after– I began practicing bikram yoga. I have been practicing since then and my bipolar tendencies seem to be more and more under control. I love my yoga practice, so much so that I became a certified bikram instructor in 2006 and I’m considering getting certified to teach other “brands” of hatha yoga. I’m constantly learning more about the why’s and how’s of meditation & yoga which is described by some as a “moving meditation”. I’ve also read about some monks that do walking meditation, just pacing back and forth and back and forth, usually out of doors. I don’t do well talking about moods vs thoughts etc– I just know that my practice works. they say yoga is 1% philosophy and 99% practice. for me the magic is in the doing. bikram’s being “hot” yoga, seems to make the stilling of the mind even easier. there are too many physical sensations to be fascinated by for me to think much about anything while there. after the difficult 90 minute class - the rest of the day seems like a piece of cake. I think sometimes my class is like a reset button for my life.
I am glad you chose to share your experiences here. I’ll try to figure out how to subscribe to your blog. I’m not always that tech savvy.
That’s one of the most sensible things I’ve ever read.
Thank you.
Anonymous people on the internet can be total assholes. Consider it ‘line noise’ and ignore it. Don’t waste your time responding to or resisting these people. Your first instinct of deleting that useless as shit comment would have been right. This person that left the anonymous flame has absolutely no clue. None. At all.
At any rate… thinking-lots can be a mood. You’re in the mood of ‘intellectually stimulated’ lets say, and whatever the thoughts are, depressed or manic, psycho-sensory distortions, your mind is in ‘the mood’ to think lots. We have a mood disorder, not a thinking disorder. Thinking can be trained much more easily than mood (ie. for playing chess well, or for debate).
Emotions are thoughts also. Emotion-thoughts have more grip because they encourage the body to produce chemicals or release adrenaline or aphrodisiacs or whatever. So the thought takes up a more ‘physical’ spot, it builds itself a kind of fortress. Then, whenever you get in that mood you are in a ‘mental state’. Anxiety is a mental state, so is relaxation. So is dreaming.
Things that you learn in a mental state are easier to recall while you are there. So when you are anxious, that is why ‘everything’ that makes you anxious comes up all at once. Also, you may fail your final exam if you have a panic attack, because you were relaxed when you studied (and maybe you had a lot of coffee, which you now don’t have while writing the exam). So when you freak out, suddenly the new mental state can’t remember things from the one in which you studied. Get it?
This is why you can’t remember your dreams easily, and they don’t seem to make much sense even when you do, although they did at the time. Even dreams are like moods — your body is DOING something, so a mood takes hold, and certain thoughts are more learned in that state than others.
Meditation is the process of learning how to get into a certain mental state and staying there more abundantly. Clearly now you can see how this ‘anchored’ state — which you can learn to get to from any thought, any mood, any situation — can curb the extremes and blunt the edges. Suddenly there is an ‘eye of the storm’, and that is the ‘I’, the Self that watches. Cultivating that eye of the storm will allow even hurricanes of mood to pass but not blow you around so much.
It’s not as if you are not going to ‘feel’ emotion or ‘think’ beautiful thoughts anymore, though the mind might fear this. It’s actually quite the contrary! You feel into emotions and witness your thoughts: all that really is happening is that they are no longer seen as entirely in control of your actions. Meditation after a while puts a ‘gap’ between the thought/emotion and what you DO because of that thought/emotion.
What we DO, the behaviors we carry on with, have waaaay more affect on our mood and thoughts. You can’t help WHAT feel, and you can’t help WHAT you think… but what you do you can help, and the consequences of what you do will affect thought/emotion (together, let’s say that thought/emotion is MOOD) inevitably and radically. For someone suffering from OCD, this realization is actually the key to recovery. It may help the bipolar sufferer too.
Although it seems like you are doing nothing while meditating, just sitting there, breathing, waiting, watching… this is a tremendous doing. I’m sure you’ve already discovered that its hard to do, that the mind will come up with every excuse it can not to. So yes, DOING meditation is a behavior — and consequently, it has profound (and in this case positive) effects on your mood.
I tell you what if that’s Anonymous “cheered up” I’d hate to see him in a bad mood…lol
I suggest that someone like that gets a buzz from being angry and provoking everyone and is hoping for the adrenaline buzz from a swift punch in the guts, which I’m sure happens often…:-)
I wouldn’t waste you breath on him!
Anyways..do carry on, many more of us appreciate you!!
Yes, your mood is not you, nor is it your capacity to observe. We can reliably say that you ARE your ability of observation, you are awareness. You are not conscious, but you are consciousness itself. Anything that comes and goes, anything that is an object of your awareness cannot be your awareness. It cannot be YOU. Yes, yes, we could get metaphysical about it and say everything is you but we’re being pragmatic here, practical. Not semantic at all, you’re very right about that.
Mood is a kind of electro-chemical storm in your brain that gives context to whatever you’re experiencing. Meditate and watch your moods and you’ll see that they come and go like the weather.
These moods are a combination of behavior, learned reflex or reaction, thought, emotion and the physical chemicals involved in maintaining an emotion. It becomes automatic because everything you DO wires your neuro-circuitry so that it becomes easier to do. This helps you not have to think about pressing the keys to type at your computer while you’re using it to write, for instance. But it also helps those bad habits from being broken.
It’s a closed system, until you impose your deliberate awareness upon it. Meditation will stop many of the ‘autopilot’ aspects of mood. It will gradually give you more control so that you don’t need to fly your plane into that dark storm after all. You can also learn to study the effect of how you feel after eating certain meals. One of the best gateways you have is to change factors in your physical environment that are influencing mood. Sunlight, drinking enough water, eating 3 meals, 4 food groups, uninterrupted sleep (I like to have 9 hours)… tiny changes can have profound effects, especially because we are so sensitive to begin with.
Mood altering substances such as alcohol, pot, cigarettes, caffeine and sugar should be avoided as they are the most common and disruptive depressants and stimulants available.
I’ve also been unsure as what “mood” means…
Anyway just to interject for a sec on meditation and such…
I’m sure you’ve read a lot on the subject anyways but in case you haven’t seen it the following book is interesting especially because it’s written by a guy who suffered from severe anxiety when he was young, and shows how he was able to overcome it using meditative techniques.
The Joy of Living by Mingyur Rinpoche
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307346254
If you really want to test out how your brain is behaving, when you try to be calm, then try this out if there’s one near you. I’ve tried the one in Vancouver and it’s way cool…I managed to beat my Mum in a few seconds by trying to recreate the same feeling in my brain as you get when a hypnotherapist tells you to “relax”.
Mindball:
http://www.haas.ca/articles/20041104-mindball.cfm
I was surfing around today and found a couple more sites on here, about brainwaves, that were interesting:
http://synthesislearning.com/article/brwav.htm
http://home.dmv.com/~tbastian/files/brain-wv.txt
It’s as well to note that although there are many gadgets on the market for stimulating certain brainwaves, there is always a warning for folks who have mental health issues to tread with care as we might not respond in the same way as “regular folk”. Meditation certainly seems the safest way to go.
My first thought was to delete your comment, however I think it’s important that people see it.
To answer your question, “What do I want?” I want to share my experiences with bipolar disorder with other people who have the disorder in their life. My initial intentions for writing about my experience with Bipolar Disorder was, a) to document my mood and b) to share my experiences with family and friends so they might get a better understanding of where my head is at. The reason I decided to add my blog to directories is because I personally found reading others bipolar blogs very beneficial to my own understanding of my experiences and I wanted to share my personal experiences with other people that might be living with bipolar disorder. If they can’t find my blog, they can’t share in the dialog. Despite what you might think people do read, share and appreciate being able to relate to common experiences like bipolar disorder, regardless of whether you consider them a noble cause or not.
I do empathize with people that may be suffering from other conditions, but I myself am diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I write about it because it affects every aspect of my life. You obviously don’t know very much about the disorder because of your misinformed rant and I would strongly suggest that you do some research on the disorder so you don’t do this to someone else who may also be dealing with a serious biological mental disorder.
I actually have some questions for you.
1) Why did you read my blog if it bothered you so much? Nobody forced you to read it or comment on it.
2) Why did it bother you so much? Perhaps you are dealing with something painful in your life and it made you feel better to vent on someone.
3) Your comment assumes that you know so much about the psychological reasons behind my blogging and the inherent value of the contents of my blogging. I can’t help but see how self-righteous and self-important this make you appear. Who is the narcissistic one really? Maybe you can go tell the world what is important and what is not because you obviously know the ultimate value of things and what people should be allowed to write about.
4) What was your intention behind leaving your comment? Did it make you feel better about yourself?
Enjoyed your post. Mike