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Re: Help!! Bipolar, off meds, losing it » fenix

Posted by Tomatheus on January 29, 2006, at 15:24:21 [reposted on January 30, 2006, at 0:34:58 | original URL]

In reply to Re: Help!! Bipolar, off meds, losing it, posted by fenix on January 29, 2006, at 5:03:22

Fenix,

See below for my responses to various sections of your post...

> Yes, when chemicals act in different ways they produce different actions. Different situations cause your body to respond in different ways, cause the neurochemistry to change, etc. When you are in a bad environment, your mind becomes ill of it, but not just your mind... your brain and its chemicals as well.

I don't doubt what you're saying at all. Your suggestion that a person's neurochemistry changes in response to different environmental stimuli is completely valid from my perspective, and it has lots of support in the psychiatric literature. To the extent that one feels "ill" (i.e., anxious or depressed) in response to environmental stimuli that are clearly anxiety-inducing or depressing, then I guess one can say (in a way) that one is feeling ill mentally. But when a person feels depressed in response to depressing environmental stimuli, this is not the sign of a depressive disorder. It's a sign of the body's ability to respond to environmental stimuli in a healthy, appropriate way.

You seem to understand the phenomena of feeling depressed, feeling anxious, and feeling traumatized in response to environmental stimuli quite well. But what you don't seem to realize is that there are individuals who experience true affective disorders (i.e., the "mood disorders": depression and bipolar disorder) and anxiety disorders. Individuals with affective disorders, for example, do not "feel" (mood-wise) in a way that is consistent with how the body and the brain would normally react to environmental stimuli. As I mentioned in a recent post (http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060122/msgs/603790.html), in the years that I tried treating my depression by making positive changes in my life and by going to therapy, I still felt depressed no matter how positive my surroundings were. There were times when everything inside of me was telling me that I should feel happy, but instead I'd feel depressed and couldn't even enjoy the things that I really liked the most. It is only now that I feel close to remission (thanks to being on the right med, even though it may require some augmentation) that I feel some joy when I know that I should be feeling joy and that I feel extreme despair only at the times when it is consistent with my environmental surroundings.

The member who started this thread (Catmint) stated in her post that she has bipolar disorder. Even though there is no question that environmental factors contribute to the way that bipolar disorder manifests itself in an individual, there is strong evidence in the psychiatric literature suggesting that bipolar disorder also involves one or more genetically mediated biochemical abnormalities -- in most bipolar patients, if not all of them. Between this board and other discussion forums and groups, I've read at least hundreds of posts from patients with various forms of bipolar disorder. And one of the most common trends that I see is that bipolar patients almost without exception do not do well without meds. The process of finding the right med or med combo is clearly very trying and frustrating. Sometimes it is unsuccessful. But generally, based on all the experiences I've read, patients with bipolar disorder fare significantly better with meds than they do without them.

> The whole thing is ridiculous about the imbalance, and this is where I will have to be more specific. It is not that a chemical imbalance doesn't happen, it is that drugs are not the answer, at least no the ultimate answer. The real problem is, you are in a trap, you are given drugs to cope in the trap, the suffocating box. The trap is the environment that you are in, what the environment is doing to you, it is established deeply in the survivalist nature of humans and of course in that of other living species.

If you're referring to the experiences of "feeling depressed," "feeling anxious," and/or "feeling traumatized" in direct response to environmental stimuli, then I agree with you that drugs are not the answer. But for patients who have psychiatric disorders that are characterized by abnormal and often disabling abnormalities in their emotional, cognitive, and/or behavioral responses to environmental stimuli, lifestyle changes and therapy are often insufficient.

> ... However, just leaving a certain place that you have been at for a very long time... can do profound things on you regardless of your past experiences. I know this from personal experience s myself, and not just me, but from various people that suffered from rape, incest, and other such things in there past.

I'm glad that you were able to find some relief from the suffering that you were experiencing by leaving a place that seems like it was associated with some negative experiences in your life. And it's even better that you've been able to find the relief that you've found without having to stay on meds indefinitely. But as I'm sure you're aware, everyone is different. What worked for you won't necessarily work for someone else. I know that I personally spent years blaming less-than-ideal working conditions, busy schedules, and countless other people, places, and things in my environment for causing me to feel as terribly as I did when I was depressed and not taking any meds. But then, no matter what changes I'd make to try doing more things that I knew I liked and fewer things that caused me great distress, my depression did not get better. There was nothing terribly wrong with my life when my depression fully set in -- certainly no trauma to speak of -- it was the way that I was responding to things (mostly cognitively and emotionaly) that was the problem. And I tried just about as many things as I could to try to address this problem before seeking psychopharmacological treatment. Unfortunately, nothing worked. And for years, the meds that I was taking didn't give me what I would consider to be even an adequate partial response. But now, I think I have at least one of the right meds in place, and I actually feel like I'm not too far from remission.

Tomatheus


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poster:Tomatheus thread:604370
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060124/msgs/604377.html