TRANSCRIPT
I’ve been asked many times to share my point of view on the subject of bipolar disorder. I was asked many times back when I was a psychotherapist, actually, back when I was working with quite a lot of people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I’ve also been asked many times in the comments on this YouTube channel, and so I would like to share my point of view.
The main thing that I would like to start by saying is that people so often end up getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder for arbitrary reasons, for sometimes reasons that have no connection to other people who end up getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Although the mental health system defines bipolar disorder as a brain problem, a major mental illness that actually is taking place in the brain, I haven’t seen the evidence for that. Actually, I would say the evidence is quite weak for that. There’s very weak evidence that it is a genetically based problem, and there are no brain tests that they can do to determine if someone actually has bipolar disorder in their brain. They don’t do MRIs. They don’t do PET scans for people that they diagnose with bipolar disorder. There’s no blood test to determine if someone has bipolar disorder.
Instead, what they do is they diagnose people with bipolar disorder based on their behavior, and often they don’t even ask where did this behavior come from. Sometimes this behavior can come from places that have nothing to do with psychology at all. I’ve seen people diagnosed with bipolar disorder because of thyroid problems, for instance. I’ve seen psychiatrists who have diagnosed people with bipolar disorder because of thyroid problems. They never sent them to a medical doctor to get tested for their thyroid, and I said to them, “Well, maybe you should go to a doctor.” And they did. Oh, after the psychiatrist said it was a mistake, you know, we didn’t realize that. But they should have ruled that out at the beginning.
Then another big one that I’ve seen, I’ve seen a lot of people over the years who got diagnosed with bipolar disorder after having been depressed and then taking an antidepressant. The antidepressant kicked them into a manic episode, and then I’ve seen psychiatrists, I’ve seen this many times, they said, “Oh, this is just proof of their underlying bipolar condition.” Then I say, “No, actually, it’s pretty well known that a certain percentage of people who take an antidepressant get kicked into mania because of their body’s inability to metabolize their antidepressants.” Sometimes people just have a very strong reaction to antidepressants. It may have nothing to do with their underlying psychology at all.
Another thing is I have seen psychiatrists, therapists even, who have diagnosed people with bipolar disorder, got them to take an antipsychotic or a mood stabilizer to hopefully correct this chemical imbalance that they had, even though there’s no evidence of a chemical imbalance. And the person didn’t like the medication they were taking, even though perhaps the medication did calm them down a little bit, maybe numb them out a little bit. But then what the person told me, I’ve heard this many times, “Oh, I felt horrible taking that mood stabilizer. I felt horrible taking that antipsychotic. It made me feel dead inside,” or “It made me have all these terrible physical symptoms.” And so they stopped taking the drug, diagnosed for bipolar disorder, and then they ended up going into drug withdrawal such that maybe whatever they experienced after stopping taking the drug was far worse than anything that they had before they were taking the drug.
And then all the mental health professionals, even the psychiatrist, said, “Ah, that is now the real proof that we have that they were bipolar to begin with. Now we know for sure that they were bipolar.” And then I say, “Wait a second, but at the beginning when you diagnosed this person with bipolar disorder, you didn’t share there was any lack of confidence on your part. You actually gave them that diagnosis on their record. Why didn’t you say back then, ‘Well, we’re not sure if you’re bipolar,’ but no, instead they gave them the diagnosis of bipolar disorder.” And then what happens is when the person goes into drug withdrawal and experiences, let’s say, a reactive psychosis or a reactive mania to the drugs, then they’re even more confident. It actually makes me buy this diagnosis of bipolar disorder even less.
Well, then I’ve seen people who, when I observe them, they don’t seem to be manic at all, and yet somehow they can rub a therapist or a psychiatrist the wrong way such that the psychiatrist says, “Oh, you have a mania,” or “You’re having a hypomanic episode,” and then they diagnose them with bipolar disorder. Yet when I’m talking to the person, when I’ve known the people, I say, “You’re actually not even going through a mania at all.” Maybe they’re just going through a period of inspiration, or maybe they’re reconnecting with some of their old historical post-traumatic feelings, feelings that they blocked for a long time because they weren’t allowed to feel those feelings in their childhood, perhaps. Maybe they’re beginning to go on a healing process. Maybe they’re beginning to grieve. They’re beginning to become empowered, and their feelings are coming out, especially anger.
I’ve seen that when anger, or sometimes just the thrill of realizing, “Oh my God, I am coming back to life,” this may have nothing to do with mania at all. In fact, very often when I’ve seen some of these people and I listen to them, I can think, “Actually, what you are doing is going through a healthy process.” But it can threaten people. It can threaten mental health professionals, especially if the mental health professionals are kind of dead inside. And I’ve certainly met no lack of therapists and psychiatrists who basically are pretty dead emotionally on the inside, and they’re challenged. They’re emotionally threatened by someone who is coming to life, someone who is connecting with their history, someone who is grieving.
Often people who are grieving and crying a lot, if they go to a mental health professional who is very dead inside, they can end up getting diagnosed with depression. But what about when their feelings are even more coming out loud, strong? When the person has passion, when the person doesn’t like being told, “You’re depressed, you have a problem,” when the person can feel that they’re becoming healthier? Well, sometimes the therapist says, “Oh no, you’re not depressed, you’re manic now. Now you’re out of control. You need to be controlled. You need to have your intense feelings damped down. You have bipolar disorder.”
But I don’t want to say that everything that gets diagnosed with bipolar disorder is actually disconnected from having deep emotional problems because I actually have seen quite a few people, quite a lot of people over the years, in fact, who ended up getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder when they were actually going through some real problems. They were exhibiting some really problematic behavior, and I’d like to talk about some of those behaviors now. Even though I want to make sure I’m clear about this, that doesn’t mean I think those people are necessarily bipolar at all because I don’t necessarily buy this whole concept of bipolar disorder. Rather than put a label on people, “Oh, you are bipolar, this is who you are, this might be who you will be for the rest of your life,” I’m much more comfortable looking at a deeper level at what are these people going through.
So what are some of the things that people go through, troubling things that they’re going through that can end up getting them diagnosed with bipolar disorder? Well, one thing that I have seen is that when people are depressed, especially depressed for a long, long time and really, really stuck, many, many people can feel horrible being in this place. They really don’t like it. And what I’ve seen is that sometimes the mind can use its own defense mechanisms against feeling depressed. One of the defenses a person can use against feeling depressed is jumping emotionally, mentally into mania. So basically, instead of feeling shut down, feeling stuck, feeling blocked, having all their feelings blocked, the person can go through a reaction that defends against all those feelings of deadness by coming massively to life. But it’s not really based on a strong foundation such that the person can go like in the opposite direction of being depressed, and it feels great to them. It’s almost like, “Oh my God, I just jumped out of depression immediately. I have flipped to the opposite side.”
Want to call it mania, where they love life. They start sleeping so much less. They can have so many great ideas. They can feel like, “I was dead, now I’m completely alive.” I’ve heard of people in that state feeling like they are really connected with God. They can say that they’ve become instantaneously enlightened.
I’ve seen people who sometimes stay awake for days and days and days. I’ve seen people who are sometimes using lots and lots of drugs in this state. Sometimes the drugs can actually kick them into that manic state. People using cocaine, sometimes smoking a lot of marijuana even, can kick people into this. People using speed, other different drugs. People can feel omnipotent. People can feel like nothing can touch them. They can feel, “Finally, in my life, I am right. I have all the answers.” It can be scary to see people like this, especially when they’re not at all open to reason about the negative sides of their behavior.
I’ve seen people spend all their money. I’ve seen people get sexually transmitted infections. I’ve seen people get pregnant or get other people pregnant. I’ve actually seen guys get multiple women pregnant when they’re in manic states. It can be, you know, pretty unpleasant.
I’ve also seen sometimes that people can get kicked into a manic state simply by not sleeping enough. Sometimes people can have real sleep problems, especially when extended over several days. If you don’t sleep for two, three, four, five, six days in a row, I’ve seen this with people where their mind literally unravels, and they can really actually lose their mind. Sometimes it can be very hard for them to get back to sleep.
Sometimes also when people haven’t slept for two, three, four, five days in a row, they can start to feel exuberant, especially if they were really depressed, feeling really miserable, isolated, lonely, unhappy beforehand. Something can emerge from deep within them that feels so wonderful in this sleepless state that they actually don’t want to go back to sleep. Sometimes they’re afraid that if they do go back to sleep, they’re going to go right back into depression. And so they stay awake, and they keep staying awake, and it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Sometimes the consequences can really be awful.
But now I would like to talk just a little bit about what I told people when they got diagnosed with bipolar disorder back when I was a therapist. Back when people came to see me, what I told people, first of all, was something very along the lines of what I’m saying now: that I don’t necessarily buy that they have this thing called bipolar disorder at all, or that I necessarily even believe that there is an actual diagnosis of bipolar disorder. But I would like to study why they ended up diagnosed with this. And if they ended up diagnosed with this because of actual real problems that they were having, I think it would be very helpful to talk about what they might do to help themselves get rid of these problems, help themselves live a healthier lifestyle. And that for me is really the key.
So often with people who end up getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder, they have very, very unhealthy lifestyles. And so that was one of the main things that I worked with people to change: is their lifestyle. And what are some of the things that people can do to make their lifestyles healthier? Well, some of the things that I told people right away are, let’s figure out how to help you get a good night of sleep, if at all possible. Let’s figure out how to help you get a good night of sleep every night without any sort of external substances. If you can figure out how to go to sleep on your own every night, chances are this is going to massively help your life such that you may not be able to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder anymore.
Also, what I told people is if at all possible, I think it’s best if you don’t take any psychiatric medications, especially if you’ve never taken them before. I had many people come to me after having talked to two, three, four therapists. Maybe they heard someone say, “Oh, this guy, back when I was a therapist, they said this guy is someone who’s not gonna send you to a psychiatrist to go on drugs so quickly. He’s going to help you work out your lifestyle.” So I had people come to me, maybe they were sort of in a manic state, but they didn’t want to take psychiatric drugs. So that’s what I’d say: great, let’s try to figure out how to change your lifestyle.
If you don’t change your lifestyle, yes, psychiatry might really get its hooks in you such that you might not have a choice about taking medication. But if you change your lifestyle, you might be in a position where you don’t need to even consider taking drugs at all.
But then there’s the question of what about people who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder who are already on psychiatric drugs? Well, one thing I would say is if you are already on psychiatric drugs for bipolar disorder, don’t stop taking them abruptly. That can be incredibly dangerous. Much better to taper off and taper off very slowly.
I’ve heard some people say, “Yeah, I went into a manic state after I tapered off my psychiatric drugs for bipolar, and I tapered slowly. I did exactly what I was supposed to do.” And yet when I really listened to them, what I realized is they didn’t actually taper off their psychiatric drugs slowly. Often they tapered off their psychiatric drugs over a period of two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months even. And I say that’s not slowly at all. Often people, especially if they’ve been on the drugs for a while, better to taper off over a period of six months, a year, maybe for some people even quite a bit longer than that. Sometimes it really takes a long time for the brain—and now we’re talking literally the brain—to recalibrate its chemicals after having been invaded by psychiatric drugs.
But then there’s some other things that I told people just across the boards: very healthier ways to live a lifestyle such that whatever problems that you are experiencing that get diagnosed with bipolar disorder may just go away, sometimes very quickly.
One, stop doing cocaine. Stop drinking so much alcohol. Stop drinking alcohol at all. Often taper off coffee. No more caffeine. I’ve met people who say, “I have trouble sleeping at night. I can’t figure out how to go to sleep no matter what I do. I can’t sleep at night.” And then I hear that actually they have a strong cup of coffee at eight o’clock at night. And I’m like, “Whoa, of course you can’t sleep!” And people say, “Oh no, the coffee doesn’t affect me.” And I said, “Well, if it doesn’t affect you, then maybe try for a month or two not drinking any at all.” Sometimes it can make a big difference for people.
Another thing I’ve seen: many people who, like I said, had a lot of problems around sex, having lots and lots of sex. Sometimes I think going celibate for a while, returning to a relationship with one’s own inner self, can help people find a center such that they’re not maybe bursting at the seams looking for love and physical release and rescue even on the outside.
I’ve seen sometimes people when they go celibate, especially going celibate from things like going to prostitutes, things like that, it can be incredibly helpful in people returning to their center and thinking about what their real needs are. And that ultimately is what can be the most helpful in therapy.
What I’ve seen, or even people who do it in a self-therapeutic state, or even talking about it with friends, figuring out what happened to them in their history, what traumas they went through, what losses they suffered, ways in which they were neglected, violated in their lives, and slowly making sense of it, feeling their feelings, reclaiming their history, grieving. So often the depression that underlies the mania is actually caused by unresolved grief, blocked feelings, a disconnection emotionally, sometimes even in terms of memory from one’s own history.
And when people begin to reconnect with their history and reconnect with their feelings, they can start to dry up the fundamental depression, the fundamental stuckness and confusion and lostness at its root. And when they do that, the thing that was fueling their mania can also get dried up at its root. I’ve seen that many times when people become less depressed in a…
Fundamental route way, they have much less need or motivation, as it were, to ever jump into mania. And when they say, “oh bipolar people can cycle between depression and mania,” maybe over a period of weeks or months—depression, mania, depression, mania—and I’ve certainly met a lot of people who talk about their lives as going through that cycle.
Well, if you take the depression out, a lot of times there’s no need to go into mania at all. And that’s not to say this is easy. Sometimes it’s really, really hard. Sometimes what I’ve seen is that people who end up getting diagnosed with bipolar, people sometimes who are in an abject manic state, can actually come out of the mania pretty quickly if they change their lifestyle. Getting rid of the different drugs they’re taking, figure out how to go to sleep, figure out how to live a healthier lifestyle, live in more healthy, respectful ways with whoever they’re living with, removing a lot of the stress in their life. I’ve seen that a lot too.
When people are under a lot of stress, sometimes they compensate for that by doing things that make them feel better. That can actually kick them into mania, such that if they can remove some of the fundamental stresses from their life, their mania can go away. A lot of this actually can happen pretty quickly. But the drying up the fundamental depression, the fundamental cause for being kicked into mania, often that takes a lot longer. That’s more of an assiduous long-term healing process.
And to me, that really fundamentally is the cure for what psychologically can kick people into mania. But I think as I end this video, I would like to state again that I always remain cognizant that just because someone ends up getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it doesn’t mean that it fundamentally had this psychological root at all—the psychological root of a problem. Because a lot of people nowadays just so arbitrarily get diagnosed as bipolar.
In fact, I’ve known some therapists who can diagnose two, three people a day as bipolar. They just like diagnosing with bipolar. In fact, I’ve met some therapists who themselves embrace the diagnosis of themselves being bipolar. And I think sometimes when people embrace their own diagnosis, they like giving it to other people. And sometimes just handing that diagnosis out like candy.