Hopeless Problems, Perfect Answers in Bipolar Disorder

Joseph Burgoin
Depression and Bipolar Disorder
35

It’s difficult to discuss depression because that word describes a whole spectrum of experiences.  People often say, “I’m so depressed,” when they mean they’re disappointed, frustrated or sad.  I got a ‘C’ on my midterm – I’m so depressed. Then there’s the kind of depression that occurs with loss, what we might think of as part of the grieving process.    Further along the spectrum and we have the clinical disorder with true signs of depression.  While these various experiences have some features in common, they are very different psychological states of mind.

Many of my clients over the years have suffered from personality disorders, often with severe depressive features.   At some unconscious level, they all felt as if they were so damaged that their psychic life was a catastrophe, a kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, and there was no hope that anything could be done about it.  When I was able to understand this and could articulate it to them, it brought a kind of relief:   until then, that feeling of being damaged-beyond-repair was so agonizing as to be intolerable, impossible to acknowledge; the fact that we could think about it together made it seem a little less hopeless, at least for a moment.

Often when the hopelessness became unbearable, they’d take flight from it.  One day, a client might come in so depressed he or she was practically mute; the next, giddy, talkative and full of optimism.  They often made no mention of the prior depression, as if it were a thing of the past.  A sudden industriousness had come over them and they began to tackle each and every item on their to-do list.  They were going to do everything, change everything, conquer the world.  When they were in this state of mind, I often had the feeling that they were keeping me at an emotional distance; if I said anything that called this new enthusiasm into question or tried to remind them of their recent depression, they could easily turn against me and the treatment, as if now I were the problem.

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Self-Hatred and Self-Criticism

Joseph Burgoin
Detours
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Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
74

Self-Criticism

[I expand upon the themes expressed below in two later posts, one about shyness and self-hatred as defenses against vulnerability, and another concerning the role of unconscious anger and refusal in self-loathing.]

Browse the self-help aisle at the bookstore, or comb through the online material about self-esteem, and you'll mostly find advice on how to take "conscious control of your self-talk," to stop negative self-statements and replace them with affirmations, to love yourself, to conquer this or that experience, etc.  In an earlier post, I discussed why such verbal techniques don't work, but even for those people who do find them valuable, I'd like to suggest a different way of approaching this issue.

These other techniques tend to view "negative self-statements" as if they were something almost alien to the person:  internalized parental criticism we must identify and reject; perfectionistic standards imposed upon us by advertising, our peer group, society at large; mental tape loops that reflexively repeat horrible things about us, almost like a critic-virus implanted in our brains.  Instead, you may find it more useful to "own" the critic and  take a look at what it is that you (and not somebody else) actually expect.

Let me give a personal example.  I play the piano, and sometimes when I'm confronting a new technical challenge and get frustrated, I can come down hard on myself.  If I listen closely, I'll be saying things like, "You're a lousy player.  What's wrong with you?  You should have mastered this piece already!  You'll never be any good."  Those thoughts aren't merely critical.  They reflect attitudes and expectations I've struggled with my entire life:  1.  I should be able to master things quickly and easily.  2.  Learning should not involve frustration.  3.  I want to be the best at what I do; anything less is without value.

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Hatred in Politics

Joseph Burgoin
Social Behavior
·
Society and Culture
28

In an earlier post on love and hatred, I briefly discussed how religion and politics often provide us with sanctioned outlets for our hatred, reflecting the processes of splitting and projection.  The current election cycle is a perfect example.  While Fox News and the Tea Party movement dominate televised discourse with their hateful attacks, in private liberals are often just as hateful.  I've had friends shout me down for saying I could empathize with parents of underage daughters who felt they had a right to know if she were having an abortion.  Within certain circles, to suggest that there might be reasonable limits to abortion-on-demand is to question the Faith and to arouse hatred.  I've known Democrats who wouldn't even consider dating a Republican.

Given the enormous challenges we face, the political arena is a place where we ought to be having reasoned discourse about what's best for our country; doing so depends upon the ability to think in the presence of intense emotion, a very difficult thing to do.  Intense emotion is the enemy of thought, whether it's a sentimental glow that blinds us to harsh reality, or hatred that makes us unable to see the other side of an issue.  Many of the conservative voices in our country today are fanning the flames of hatred in order to squelch any realistic debate about the direction of our country and the sacrifices we'll all have to make.  For many of them, their sole aim is to win.

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Winners and Losers

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
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Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
25

Competition is a fact of life; the desire to win at games, get the highest grade in the class or bring home a blue ribbon from the county fair is a feeling most of us can understand.  Playing sports provides an outlet for competitive urges; watching your favorite professional teams allows us to compete vicariously.

Competitive urges may also pervade our lives in many other areas:  Who has the bigger house?  Whose kid got into the better college?  Who drives the nicer car?  Who has the more prestigious job?  Who is better-looking or fitter?  Who is more popular, smarter, wittier?  People regularly make such comparisons and often feel in competition with their friends and acquaintances, whether or not they realize it.  As long as it's not a preoccupation or source of great distress, this is "normal" -- that is to say, competition is everywhere.

Competition becomes toxic, however, when you add the element of triumph.  I don't mean that word in its positive sense, as in "His victory was a triumph of self-discipline and fortitude."  The triumph I have in mind goes hand-in-hand with the humiliation of others.  In this sense, when you are victorious it means there must be a contemptible loser.  "Personal best" doesn't apply in that instance; seeing others go down to defeat is a major part of the gratification.  Feeling superior to and better than those losers is the goal.

I think this feeling is more commonplace that you might expect.  Why, after all, do so many people tune in to reality-based TV shows like "American Idol" or "Project Runway," where week after week, the "losers" are dismissed from the competition by contemptuous judges, often in extremely degrading ways.  A very large part of the viewing public must derive satisfaction from witnessing this humiliation, no doubt identifying with the triumphant winner or the sneering judge.

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Breathe More, Think Less

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Destinations
19

You're probably familiar with the cognitive-behavior technique known as "thought stopping," used to cope with stressful and anxiety-intensifying thoughts and ideas during panic attacks, as well as with negative self-statements in depression.  I've never found this technique particularly useful, for me or my clients; even worse, its emphasis on replacing such thoughts with verbal affirmations means you're trying to address a maladaptive mental habit by prescribing that very habit.  In other words, the problem isn't negative verbal thoughts but verbal thought in general.

This isn't true for everyone, but many of my clients turned to verbal thought at a very early age in an effort to master trauma, anxiety, major depression and the kind of emotional damage that leads to shame.  They've spent a lifetime coping with every emotional challenge by thinking about it.  That might sound like a positive endeavor -- thinking is supposed to be a good thing, right? -- but in fact, it's a kind of defense mechanism where mentally/verbally describing an experience feels like a way of exerting control over it, in an almost a magical way.  The person who has developed this kind of defense tends to be very articulate, was often verbally precocious as a child, and over-values language.  As one of my clients once told me, "The only good to be found in suffering is if you can describe it well."

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