The Bipolar Burble is extremely pleased to welcome back today’s guest author: Ross Szabo. Ross is an amazing mental illness educator and advocate. You can read more about him at the bottom.
I’ve often pondered whether bipolar is caused by nature or nurture and even researchers constantly examine the age-old question. The data largely shows that it’s often a mixture of both. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 16. My psychiatrist added anger control problems and psychotic features to my diagnosis at age 17. I love to ponder what part of my bipolar is nature, what’s nurture and what’s me?
Bipolar Caused by Nature
The nature argument for bipolar is straightforward for me. Both of my parent’s families have a history of depression, alcoholism, anxiety, anger and bipolar disorder. I don’t think it was a question of if I was going to have a problem, but more likely what would the disorder be and when would it come out. Endless studies show that bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses are genetic and if these issues are in your family you have a higher risk of developing one. It’s similar to cancer, diabetes, heart problems and other health issues in that way.
Bipolar Caused by Nature and/or Nurture?
There are some blurry parts of my diagnosis — traits that are largely evident in my family and don’t necessarily need to be a part of bipolar disorder, but were for me. I’m discussing these factors, because they are a large part of the symptoms of my diagnosis.
Anger — there’s a long history of anger in my family. It was modeled in my parent’s home. It was modeled in my home. I don’t know if it was part of my nature or part of my nurturing, but it has been something I have had to constantly work on.
Anxiety — the nervousness in my family is palpable. Sometimes it comes out as over excitement and other times it comes out as extreme obsessions. We have a lot of anxiety. Recognizing the role anxiety plays in my moods has been vital to me being able to balance mania, depression, anger and psychotic features. But was my anxiety caused by nature or nurture? I don’t know.
Energy/impulsivity — everyone in my immediate family has an inordinately high level of energy. As a kid, we’d go on vacations where we’d hit four cities in four days. Even my extended family is capable of truly ridiculous amounts of travel, change and workloads. Energy and impulsive behavior certainly play a role in manic behavior. For my family members who don’t have a mental health disorder, their level of energy has resulted in them being extremely hard workers. Was this nature or nurture in me?
Alcohol — this is another issue that has a long history in my family. There are alcoholics on both sides. Using alcohol to cope with emotions was also modeled for me. I had alcohol abuse issues and focusing on where it came from — nature and nurture — allowed me to develop different ways to cope.
My Methods of Self-Nurturing My Bipolar: Nurture or Nature?
The reality for any parent is that when a child is born, he is his own person. He is now a little human filled with his own moods, thoughts, personality and behavior. Parents can do their best, but some point the child will start to regulate his own emotions. Some of the choices I made in self-regulation were dangerous and there wasn’t much my parents could do to change that.
Put on a happy face — from the ages of 11 to 13, I went through a lot of loss. I visited my oldest brother in the psychiatric ward. My grandparents died. One of my friends was killed. I was ushered from hospital to hospital. As the youngest in my family I didn’t have much to offer, but I noticed I could make people laugh. From a young age I developed my own process of making people laugh instead of talking about my feelings.
Hiding emotions — on top of making people laugh I also hid my feelings. When I experienced depression, I hid my feelings so much that no one really knew anything was wrong with me until I attempted suicide.
Self-hatred — with all of the loss that happened at a young age I internalized the feelings and started hating myself. My parents loved me and did everything they could for me. They didn’t encourage a single moment of self-hatred, but were faced with a kid who oozed it. Learning to like myself was a process I had to take on my own.
Sensitivity — Kay Redfield-Jamison says one of the most common traits of people with bipolar disorder is sensitivity. I was a horribly sensitive child and have to continue to work on my sensitivity. My parents did not make me sensitive or lessen the hardships I faced. It’s always been a part of me. My sensitivity was by nature.
No matter where the bipolar symptoms come from — nature or nurture — the most important thing to do is to work on them. Everyone’s path to treatment is different. There’s no quick fix. Changing behaviors that might be from our biology, environment or our own experience is hard.
Let me know if nature, nurture or what you went through influenced your mental health disorder the most in the comments section.
Author Bio
Author BioRoss Szabo is the CEO of Human Power Project, a company that creates mental health curriculum for people of all ages. He’s an award-winning speaker, co-author of Behind Happy Faces; Taking Charge of Your Mental Health and social pioneer. Ross has spoken to over 1 million people about his experiences with bipolar disorder and reached millions more in media appearances. He received the 2010 Didi Hirsch Removing the Stigma Leadership Award, 2012 Changing Minds Award and had his advocacy work entered into the Record of Congress. Find Ross Szabo on Twitter.
The brain is a physical organ in our bodies and is susceptible to disease just like any other. Bipolar illness is a physical disease of the brain. Just because there has not been the will or resources to figure out physical diagnostic testing doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Think of how many illnesses have the side effects of mood lability. Diabetes Thyroid dementia. I’m really tired of the theories for treatment being called behavioral health. That wording puts the problem all on us. Blame the victim mentality. We should have avoided that gene in our DNA from being switched on by tragic life events. That does nothing but shame us.
I think Bipolar is genetic with a side of nurture. I often think the severity of my illness wouldn’t be as great if tragedy hadn’t struck so early in my life and triggered it. (Maybe the rushing of cortisol for extended periods of time does electrical damage to the brain). I do believe though that I always had it because of memories of my quite nice childhood and the extra moods during normal times.
Also before each major episode I’ve had its come after I’ve been physically ill. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Maybe it’s diagnostics in auto immune. Maybe diagnostics in metabolic. Weight loss is so common in manic phases and weight gain in depression.
Yes we can work work work on our emotions and understanding them and dealing with them like everyone should but it’s pretty weak in terms of treatment for such a debilitating life altering illness. That’s like sending someone home who needs dialysis and telling them to work on there kidney function.
You can’t disentangle nature from nurture. If it runs in your family it just means that it could be environmental. If you are with angry people, you become angry. Nothing to do with genes necessarily.
This was a good post for me. I never heard that nervousness was anxiety. Really! I am Bipolar. I had Migraines for years and the major depression came next, then the out of the blue suicidal ideation. That was 1980.-82.
I was treated for depression and not called BiPolsr till 3-4 yrs ago.
I was raised to hide emotions, there was some verbal abuse, threatening to send me away when I verbally disagreed with Mother and Grandmother. They certainly were manipulative.
My Mother suffered Depression, probably from as early as 19 yo. She and my Dad were alcoholics and both died from it. Dad when I was 12.
Nature: Yes, nurture…what there was..yes
My maternal grandfather had his first ” Nervous Breakdown about age 14(1907) when his elder sister and father died the same spring. Then again abt 1919;1928;19512 and probable suicide in Jan. 1952 when I was 2 yo and There was great coverup of that. I was in the house with mother and she said she didn’t know where I was. She must have frozen or in circles when she heard the gun shot because when I was grown and tackled the issue I suspected she was quite disgusted that I would ask if she saw him! Nama had gone down the basement stairs and held him as he said ” it was an accident”. Then he died. Mother never went into the kitchen, to holler down to her parents even and lost track of me.
I was raised around guns, I handled loaded and unloaded wo problem. Later when a policeman stopped me on a foggy night to ticket me, his holstered gun was nose level and I started shaking and shook for another hr. In college a coop mate who picked up her boyfriends gun waved it around a couple of us in the kitchen and I froze except to yell, put it down.
Anyway nature/ nurture. Nature mainly and I felt migraines triggered the onset for me.
It took years to find meds that worked.
I had two major depressions right out of the blue in 2002 and 2005 that Ivwas off 3,weeks then 4 weeks from work. I had missed work a lot due to migrain over the 17 yrs there and they were more than threatening to fire me that last yr.
My psychiatrist thought I could possibly get SS disability. I was 56 and could take my retirement from an earlier job and from two policies I had for 25 yrs.
I resigned. It took 3 tries for disability and I got it on psych reasons. I Did Not have another major depression for 9 yrs until I developed a vitreous tracture in left eye and Wet macular degeneration in the other zjune 2015.
I have no immediate family, no siblings, spouse past or present or children. I am uncertain about a future in what I call a Sr Lockup but my zcousins call Sr Residence place. I am terrified of those. This has been a whole yr of nervous thoughts, depression, terrible anxiety, impulsive action,. Here we go again.
I am picking myself up again as the shots for wet macular degeneration restored my eye to driving ability, not a cure but a treatment.
Small print is impossible tho.
Thank you for the article and all comments.
I appreciate everyone putting down what they know and are. I am ok being bi polar. I have never talked to any others tho.
I never told my mother or zgrandmother. I told a cousin and she just said ” you know I would help if zi could but you know I can’t” and didn’t even offer me a cup of tea. A quiet lawn chair and ice tea what I sort of expected. I turned around and went home.
When I once told my mother zi was seeing a councilor she said” how could you do that to US, you don’t trust US to come to zuS..oh me me me” and was tearful. I quietly left.
This article and following comments have been most enlightening, thank you.
My story shares many parallels with other commentators, and yourself Natasha, which has now caused me to rethink the nature part of the debate regarding bipolarity.
I often feel that uncontrollable and often extreme shifts in behavior and thought are a product of mental and emotional abuse from family members, the kind which has been passed down through generations. My parent’s generation (on both sides) endured this abuse coupled with physical abuse (battery), which then morphed into this damaging type of emotional/mental abuse endured by myself. This consisted of extreme rage/manipulation/condescension/control/backstabbing/bullying/victimizing, all of which continues on to this day.
Emotional/Mental abuse can be subtle and not necessarily recognizable as abuse in youth ( I just thought it was normal since my parent’s friends behaved the same way). Basically, you always feel like something is wrong with you because the energy you are given by supposed loved ones suggests that you are bad or wrong all the time and have no clue why this might be…. It’s a really messed up way to grow up and requires digging deep into family history and a lot of painful memories to overcome. Most won’t journey down this path, it is far too painful.
This “looking to the past of answers” is difficult because your mind is in denial ( as is most of your family, if not all….a.k.a Black Sheep) and hard mental work is essential in coming to terms with the fact that you don’t have a wholesome/supportive/loving family. To those who do the work, I commend you. It is a large feat to overcome.
In the case of nature, I do believe in predisposition to ailments via shared genetics. After all the work I have done to get my life back on track after nearly a decade of extreme alcoholism (used for coping and escapism from myself), I still struggle immensely on a daily basis. Therapy, exercise, eating healthy, school, career…all these things have helped me take back my life…yet uncontrollable thoughts and behaviors continue to dominate thereby significantly reducing my quality of life. This leads me to believe that perhaps nature has a hold on me, as well as nurture.
Well, for me, my “mental illness” was definitely the result of shitty parents. I stay away from them now, and all toxic people. I also stay away from toxic psychiatry and treat myself with the love and dignity I always deserved; I eat well, exercise, and I never tell anyone i’m bipolar.
I had every symptom you had but anger was the most destructive. Rage is a better word for mine. I have had some treatment as well as much therapy. I have made the most progress in working a 12 step program, which of course I did compulsively at first. I have now been at it for 21 years and many behaviors have stopped or become more ‘normal.’ I wonder if you have heard of Gabor Mate as his Ted talk explains the nurture of many of my character traits. I can see how there is a new way to change neuro pathways if only just a little. Thanks you so much for sharing your story because it sets me even freer to tell mine.
Here is Dr. Gabor Mate’s Ted talk which I refer to: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=gabor%20mate%20ted%20talk&es_th=1
My bipolar is by nature. As a teenager I was on a constant mania. Life was great grandiose ideas. But then in my early twenties I suffered a loss and went into panic attacks and deep depression. I was finally diagnosed in 2007 at age 40. I have been battling phycosis and depression lately. It’s been a struggle.
Thank you for sharing. I’m 19 years old and was just diagnosed this year. My obsessions have always been my nature (I have had this problem since I was a child.) however, depression and mania were examples to me in my upbringing. I grew up in an abisive home and I’m convinced that mania was a coping mechanism for me to deal with the abuse. In addition, I have suffered from PTSD, this could have been a trigger for bipolar disorder. I’m just beginning to learn how to deal with and control my symptoms of bipolar disorder and so the “nature or nurture” question is unanswered to me. I have been making connections in regards to this question since my diagnosis, but much is still unanswered.
With undiagnosed MI on my mother’s side of the family (more like full-blown avoidance), there is definitive nature, but coupled with NO nurturing and never being told until an early 40’s diagnosis, There is considerable frustration. My biggest concern is that my son will have some type of MI as well. He is such a gentle soul and I would hate to see him go through what we experience.
I would like to know how and if drugs play a role in developing this. I’m sure you would still have to be predispositioned.( my mother had schizophrenia ) But of all my brothers and sisters I am the only one that experimented with drugs and has bipolar. Add oddly a lot of my friends that did have it also.
Bipolar disorder along with other mental illnesses run rampant on only one side of my family. Growing up, my time was split between living with dad who has bipolar disorder and living with my mom who is a replica of June Cleaver. At 18 my own hospitalizations started. During the next 8 yrs I was involved in a very abusive relationship and diagnosed with bipolar 1. Now at age 33 I still try to figure out what’s me, nature, and what is the bipolar and what’s the damage from abuse, nurture. I will probably spend many years trying to sort it all out but ultimately feel it’s the key to my continuing success.
I was adopted. NONE of my adoptive family have any mental illnesses. But yet, I have Bipolar disorder, and anxiety. It’s definitely genetic with me. And this makes it hard for my adoptive family to understand my illness. I just have to work on it daily. (I’m having a good day today.) (:
Nature and Nurture
I do believe it is genetic.. it develops, roots itself into the DNA and is streamed through each replication/birth.
Nurture, then, adds the fuel or the fertilizer.
Thing is; you can have a family with 3 or more kids… and only 1 kid, develop a mental illness that is diagnosable by several (though diagnosis not always the same, a diagnosis is there).
Does this mean that the other 2 are normal and somehow skipped that little mechanism in their DNA being switched on?
I have a daughter, only child, age 19. She has had Anxiety, but not mental illness. I’ve taken her to see clinicians and psychiatrists… no diagnosable mood disorders or hyperactivity disorders or even generalized anxiety disorders but yes – she suffers with anxiety. However, it is justified anxiety… meaning, environmental.
Does this mean she won’t develop a MI later in life? I pray she won’t.
i developed mine, at age of 8 due to a parental divorce – a incident involving a baby sitter – a traumatic event involving parents and being way too sensitive to all the changes and events. It then progressed and moved forward with each subsequent difficulty in my life’s travel…
As I’ve often remarked of myself… I’m just wired a bit differently and perhaps a slightly bit oddly…
This is a really interesting post for me. I am a sociologist, so in general I teach the importance of nurture factors. I am also a bipolar sufferer so I think often about the nature of my disease. Reading through these comments and Ross’s post, it occurred to me of what a vortex nature and nurture can be with bipolar disorder.
Most of us reading and commenting suffer from bipolar, and since bipolar is hereditary, most of us have family members that suffer from bipolar. I am the first in my family to be diagnosed with bipolar. However, in the wake of my diagnosis, the behavioral patterns of other family members that are now deceased (all died relatively young) began to make sense. I think as bipolar sufferers most of us are double victimized. We are victimized by our disease (nature) and we are victimized by the residual effects of having family members that had the disease (nurture).
Let’s face it. The presence of bipolar disorder in the home can be a great source of dysfunction. I have to think daily on how I can handle my disease, and in doing so, I strive to break with patterns of behavior that have plagued my family for generations.
My dad was diagnosed with manic depression. I was diagnosed at age 37 with PTSD-bi-polar after taking 58 sleeping pills ( I was done with all the feelings about Vietnam). I spent 7 months at the national center for PTSD learning how to cope with my feelings for both. My 36 yr old daughter has Bi-polar also. I no longer take any meds. I’m able to do this because I write about it when either one is on top of me. ( I was very lucky to be able to go to the PTSD Center). This is my 31st year dealing with both. Feel free to call me if you need help. Thank’s for the the time. Hank. 530-953-7907
I share many similarities with you Ross. I too grew up in an alcoholic home, have seen generations of anger and have relatives with and without diagnosed mental illnesses. From my perspective, I believe it is a mixture of nurture and nature that predisposes someone to a mental illness like bipolar. Ever since my diagnosis, I have been dissecting my life to find answers. All I keep coming up with are more questions. What I do believe from my own unscientific research, is that genes and environment go hand-in-hand to contribute to the madness. Someone who has a familial background of explosive anger coupled with the bipolar gene is going to have rage. For the longest time, I thought my rage was normal because that is what I grew up seeing as a child. It was a learned behavior from my environment. Rage, as you know, is a symptom of bipolar. Of course there were other symptoms and other environmental factors – too many to list.
I think all of the questions you have come up with are great, especially if they lead to some answers for you. It really helped me to trace where some of my moods and emotions were coming from, because it gave me perspective on how to manage the issues. I wish you the best.
Dear Life Conquering, I agree with what you wrote,, namely: “Someone who has a familial background of explosive anger coupled with the bipolar gene is going to have rage. For the longest time, I thought my rage was normal because that is what I grew up seeing as a child. It was a learned behavior from my environment. Rage, as you know, is a symptom of bipolar. ” I thought my anger and later dx as “mild paranoia” which I think I’ve worked out by now, was “part of life” . That was how I was raised, too. It’s really interesting that you thought rage was normal, too. Although no psychiatrist has dx’d me this way, a therapist once thought I had “explosive personality disorder. ” We used to have telephone sessions, since we lived in different cities. I only met her personally once or twice, and the telephone conferences were my lifeline from an emotionally, financially, and sometimes physically abusive and gaslighting marriage. After our divorce, I moved to another city, where I finally, for the first time in my life, found the professional help/clinic that helped me recover from bipolar.
Thanks for your posts, Ross and Life Conquering, and for the blog, Natasha. Glad I found this website. Jason Renaud recommended it.
Very recently I learned that advanced hypothyroidism can mimic bipolar disorder. It can further aggravate matters, thyroid medication can interfere with lithium absorbtion, and vice versa. Thought I’d had all of this under control a long time ago; apparently not.
The point being that mental illness is genetics, environment, and a who knows/self care factor, same as any other illness. May the odds be ever in your favour. Most of the bipolars I know eschew medication and self care with drugs and alcohol. If you think that’s confusing, think how your brain is.
I can’t talk with any authority about genetic factors in my case. I’m not a geneticist. I can’t look at my genes and I wouldn’t know what to look for if I did.
As far as relatives with a mental illness, I had an aunt who was diagnosed with something, I think, back in the forties. I think it was some kind of temporary mania. As far as I’m aware she didn’t have long term treatment for it. And I have a sister who has suffered from depression. She believes it is to do with her hormones.
The fact that 50% of children of bipolar parents develop bipolar disorder doesn’t seem to me to be conclusive evidence of a genetic origin. It could be an unhelpful response to stress which is learned by observation and imitation. I suppose one would have to study offspring adopted out to get a better idea. I know a lot of people see it as a genetic disorder because it is accompanied by differences in brain chemistry. But does the different brain chemistry cause bipolar, or do bipolar habits of thinking and responding to stress change the brain chemistry. Think of it this way – if a lion jumps out in front of you your body produces adrenaline and you feel anxious. What is the root cause of the anxiety? Is it the lion? Is it they thought “Oh, my God, that lion might eat me”?, or is it the adrenaline in the body. Since brain chemistry is the language of emotion, it would be strange if a person who had been depressed for a long time didn’t have a different mix of chemicals in their brain than someone who had not. This doesn’t mean that the problem of depression can’t be addressed from either end – change the chemistry with drugs and a person may experience themselves as being less depressed because the chemical language has been altered. Or they could change their thinking and, given time, change their brain chemistry that way.
But I’m not a biologist either. So all of that is just the way that I try to make sense of my experience. I can’t provide experimental evidence one way or the other.
What I can speak about with some authority is the role of “nurture” in my history of mental illness. I’m a little uncomfortable with the term “nurture” because it tends to suggest we are specifically talking about the behaviour of our parents. Aren’t they the ones most responsible for nurturing us? But I think that our personality, including our mental illness if we have one, is greatly influenced by environmental factors other than our parents – e.g. our school friends, our teachers, what we watch on television, what we are told in church if we are religious… Of course there is a good chance that we will have difficulties if our home environment is very unhealthy. But I think the human psyche is a complex system, somewhat analogous to the weather. In trying to model weather systems, scientists discovered that small changes in the system tend to flow on into bigger and bigger changes until the whole system is completely different from how it would otherwise have been. In the same way, I think that small events which attract no attention from others can sow the seeds for major changes in a young person’s developing personality. Imagine you are feeling very insecure for some reason and very much in need of reinforcement. You have performed some task, and someone whose opinion you value says : “You’ve done that perfectly.” Your mood is just right for a seed to be sown and put down deep roots, and that is the “lesson” that you can get the reinforcement you need by achieving perfection in the things that you do. It is a simple comment, of little significance to the sayer, and not overheard by anyone else. It’s not something obvious like having been physically beaten or verbally abused. But it could sow the seed of a poison that will negatively effect your mental health, because perfectionism is one of the most insidious underminers of psychological wellbeing, turning any achievement less than perceived perfection into a torment and robbing even the achievement itself of any joy, because it has become something which is expected as a bare minimum. But perfectionism is a habit which can, I believe, be broken.
My history of mental illness began in my mid teens when I was diagnosed with endogenous depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. It was not until my early thirties that I was diagnosed as bipolar. I had a breakdown, with dramatic mood swings and periods of psychosis being the symptoms. Depression was not new to me. What was knew was the psychosis. Since the source of stress which brought on the breakdown lay in a double bind that I found myself in, I tend to give a lot of credence to the double bind theory of psychosis which I had become acquainted with through the writings of R. D. Laing. I believe that Gregory Bateson was the originator of this theory, but I haven’t yet read him.
What put me into this double bind was that I had become involved with studying and supporting a radical psychological explanation for the human condition being proposed by a scientist. I desperately wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe that the human race can be saved from war, environmental devastation, mental illness, and all the rest of it. But there were things about the theory which seemed wrong to me. The scientist said “most people can’t face these truths, but live in denial and evasion.” I wanted to believe him, so I started to distrust my own thinking. I started to ask myself the question : “Is my thinking trustworthy when I find fault with these theories, or am I perhaps being evasive?” And he would say : “What I expect from you is to be truthful.” So I would honestly express my doubts and he would accuse me of being “massively deluded”. Then when I lied and said I was sorry, he praised me for being truthful. So I was in a double bind. I saw no hope except with him, and I needed hope. I needed to be truthful in my thinking and yet being truthful in my thinking led me into conflict with my only source of hope. So my capacity for reason broke down and I began having strange delusions which led to me being locked up in a mental hospital.
The psychotic episodes made perfect sense. They were an attempt by my mind to escape from facing up to something that I was not yet ready for. The mind races, never staying with any thought long enough to be reminded of the dreaded truth, and the delusions too are wild imaginary escape routes. But the positive side of psychosis is that the imagination is inescapably prophetic. Taking one’s delusions literally leads one to hospital, but later, if one takes the time to decode their symbolism, they help along the path to self-understanding. For instance my delusional mind said : “Be naked.” I took of my clothes and got in trouble. That was too literal. What was really needed was emotional nakedness – i.e. honesty.
So, for me, a toxic idea, which came from another adult whom I had not met when I read his first book, flowered into what would be diagnosed as “bipolar disorder”. Is this something one can classify as part of my “nurturing”? Maybe.
I would remain prone to mood swings as long as this issue remained largely unresolved. The scientist and I had a falling out at the time of that first breakdown. Contact was not encouraged, but I would communicate with him or his assistants via email at times. About ten years ago I had another major breakdown. But I haven’t had any problematic mood swings now for about eight years. I continue to take mood stabilisers – Lithium and Sodium Valproate. I don’t put my steady moods down to the drugs, but since I don’t experience any major side-effects from them, it seems reasonable to play it safe and keep taking them. Certainly my psychiatrist feels they are essential.
I credit my steady moods to the fact that I was able to resolve my double bind by achieving an understanding of human psychology sufficient to my personal needs. I’ve been able to do my bit for humanity directly by publishing a book which many people have told me has helped them with their problems. I don’t feel the need to compromise my own integrity in order to have a sense of hope.
I asked myself the question : “If you could go back in time and talk to your sixteen-year-old self, what would you tell him? Is there something you have found out the hard way, which you could let him learn the easy way?” So that is what I wrote down in my book.
I’ll just give one example of a problem from which I suffered back then which could have been eased, if not eliminated, by what I have learned since. When I was about seventeen and suffering from depression following a bout of the flu, my sister came for a visit, bringing my baby niece. During their stay I developed severe obsessional thoughts about killing the baby. My depression deepened greatly. I felt like I must be some kind of monster to even think of such a thing.
What was really happening there? I had had the flu and I was depressed. Therefore I was feeling selfish. That is normal. Selfishness is just the natural self-directedness of the suffering individual (if you hit your thumb with a hammer, doesn’t all of your attention focus on your thumb?). A selfish person wants all the attention. Babies get a lot of attention. So I was naturally jealous of the baby. I saw a picture of myself throwing the baby down onto the ground and I imagined all the attention focusing on me, with my family asking me why I did it. When this thought occurred I didn’t have a particularly strong emotional response to it. It was only gradually that I began to obsess on it, and the fear that I might actually commit such an act grew with that obsession. I was caught in a negative feedback loop. The more I thought I was a monster for thinking such a think the more I feared I might be capable of doing it. And the more the anxiety sapped my strength, the more defenceless I was against it. What I needed to know then was that the thought, when it first appeared, was a perfectly harmless fantasy. We are all prone to selfishness, to the extent that we are suffering, and to aggressive feelings, to the extent that we experience frustration. Fantasy is a healthy way to deal with these feelings. What I needed to do was to practice unconditional self-acceptance. Have a fantasy about killing a baby? Accept it and it will go away. Feeling selfish? Accept it. Don’t criticise yourself for it, and you will find your selfishness decreasing. Feeling aggressive? Don’t hit anyone, but accept the aggressive feelings, and you will feel less aggressive. Whatever is negative gets worse when you fight against it and eases when you accept it. Of course some things are easier to accept than others. It’s a philosophy that needs some patience and persistence in the practice. That is what I would tell my sixteen-year-old self. And that is the philosophy I promote with my writing.
Great article with lots ringing true for me. Both nature and nurture played a role in my symptoms. Mother has bipolar plus I was fostered, then adopted. Finally self medicated with alcohol for twenty years before being diagnosed with ultra rapid cycling bipolar.
Thanks for sharing. The self-medication piece of this can also be a cycle that seems to have a couple of causes. I’m glad you found a diagnosis and I hope your journey goes well.
I come from a family where on both sides there have been mental disorders. I have a great grandmother on one side who almost certainly was bipolar, and anxiety and depression issues are common throughout that side of my family. On the other side, anger was a major issue, one which my father carried on during my childhood. I never thought of my childhood as “bad”. but I realized later on this is because I simply believed that the punishments I received where well earned (and they were). But conflict, confrontation and raised, argumentative voices were the norm, and punishments where corporal in nature. I remember laughing secretly inside when it was my brother or sister receiving the spanking instead of me. But once again, I didn’t think of my childhood as a bad one, and I believed (and still very much do) that my parents loved me. It was just anger that was expressed quite frequently. Alcohol abuse was not common in my family except when my grandmother passed, and my grandfather had little to live for until the end. So I do believe that nurture had a lot to do with my condition, but also the genetics I received from my mother’s side. Are they equal in weight? Probably close. But that is why I worry so much for my young daughter.. I read somewhere that the child of a bipolar parent has a 25% chance of inheriting the condition themselves. Can anyone address this? Is that a factual percentage? Regardless, I am very worried for her
Hi Jim,
Offspring of parents with bipolar have around 50% chance of have a serious mental illness (bipolar or another).
This will tell you lots and lots about genetics and bipolar disorder.
– Natasha Tracy
Hi Natasha –
Do you mean when one of the two parents has Bipolar or when both of the parents have Bipolar? I am assuming you mean just one parent but would like to clarify. Thanks!
My Bipolar ex-fiancee has a son who I am quite certain has Aspergers, and I did read that there is a well-known and established correlation between a parent having Bipolar and a child having Aspergers (as opposed to other types of autism). In other words, when a child of a Bipolar parent does have autism (not sure of the stats for how often that happens), they are much more likely to have Aspergers than other forms of autism. This also speaks to the genetic component being such a significant factor and to the relationships that exist between Bipolar and other types of mental illness.
Its a combination of both. In my case there was a lot of heavy duty depression on one side of my family (to the point almost everyone was affected in some way). I also grew up in a rural area where being ‘gay’ was not acceptable. That had the ability to cause major anxiety in myself from the probably 13 to 21 years old and by then I’d moved away from that type of area and knew more about myself and the world too. For several years I used alcohol and to a certain extent and it did somewhat stabilize my mood. My life didn’t really completely fall apart and become unmanageable until I was 27, and that’s when it went into full swing. It would have happened sooner but I was smart enough to work around a few things. One thing that I’ve noticed is say for example if one has always been a little anxious then a little anxious feels like ‘normal’ because he has never known any different.
Nature and nurture and free will all play into bipolar. There’s a family history of mental illness on both sides of my family (undiagnosed on one side). Outside influences affected some of my problems, but I think genetics and feeling lonely or guilty at times affected me the most. Few people actually ostracized me, but my faulty thinking and chemical imbalance made me feel lonely, inadequate, and angry. I think my choices of sleeping affect me the most now. When people hurt those close to me, I hurt and it can trigger some bipolar symptoms too. I agree that what matters is just dealing with the hand dealt to us.