Depressed Adolescents Have Altered Brain Structure
Rootsie:
There is the plasticity of the brain to consider. It is possible for example to improve neocortical function and 'lift' out of the reptilian brain. It is possible to grow your brain.
My concern is that when people are told they have a 'defective' brain, they develop a fatalism about their 'disease' which blocks transformations that can occur and certainly do.
I am not denying your experience or your suffering. But the way we are taught to think about things certainly effects outcomes.
If you lived in a traditional society for example, your 'disease' would quite possibly have made you a treasured member of your community. I have observed that the 'manic' state in very many has visionary aspects.
It is also interesting that bi-polar disorder is becoming the disease of our time, diagnosed more and more. I think it is worth asking what it is in the world that is manic-depressive. The 'war on terror' is manic-depressive for example. Our pace of life in the West. Our cities.
I think it is safe to say that when the children start getting symptomatic it's the adults who are the problem. Collectively speaking. Ramakrishna is right when he says that it is our psyches that create the reality we see, but it is a feedback system, and so our psyches are also permeable, and we are affected by the world.
I hope you pick up a book by James Hillman and Michael Ventura called
We've Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse. There are many ways to look at things.
Rootsie
Rootsie:
Here are a few quotes from the various works by James Hillman.
'My practice tells me that I can no longer distinguish clearly between neurosis of self and neurosis of world, psychopathology of self and psychopathology of world. Moreover, it tells me that to place neurosis and psychopathology solely in personal reality is a delusional repression of what is actually, realistically, being experienced.'
'Soul enters only via symptoms, via outcast phenomena like the imagination of artists or alchemy or 'primitives', or of course disguised as psychopathology. That's what Jung meant when he said the Gods have become diseases:the only way back for them in a Christian world is via the outcast.'
'When we are told what is healthy we are being told what is right to think and feel. When we are told what is mentally ill we are being told what ideas, behavior, and fantasies are wrong.'
'Reflection in the mirror of the soul lets one see the madness of one's spiritual drive, and the importance of this madness'
'Sometimes, the genius seems to show only in symptoms and disorders, as a kind of preventive medicine, holding you back from a false route.'
'If therapy imagines its task to be that of helping people cope (and not protest), to adapt (and not rebel), to normalize their oddity, and to accept themselves 'and work within your situation;make it work for you' (rather than refuse the unacceptable), then therapy is collaborating with what the state wants. Coping simply equals compliance.'
'By accepting the idea the I am the effect of a subtle buffeting between hereditary and societal forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn't do...the more my biography is the story of a victim'.
'Loving in safety is the smaller part of loving.'
Kebo:
Interesting. Why is it that as soon as we start to hear about medications for mental disorders, half the population has a mental disorder. Did people have as many disorders before medications were developed. I pray to God that the government isnt sabotaging the brains of infants in the hospital as mothers are giving birth. Another paranoid conspiracy theory. Can we be too paranoid? I definitely don't like the way most of these anti-depressant medications also give people sexual side-effects. Its like you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. Your mind and your sex drive are equally important. If it is all a government conspiracy then its another effective way of defeating many strong people before they have a chance to compete.
Kebo i
out_of_Zion:
An important thing to realize regarding these disorders is that, like any physical ailment, there is a spectrum. There are people, like myself, who literally could not live without their medication; and then there are those who would live much more difficult lives; and last, those who medicine is just a minor improvement to an relatively ordinary life.
ROOTSIE:
What you say about if I was in another time period or cuture that I could be regarded as a visionary was mentioned to me by my mom's boyfriend. He's a deist of sorts and his viewpoint on prophets and visionaries is that they all suffer from "mental illnesses" and to a degree much like mine. Such that, they are able to stay awake in trance-like states, reaching that euphoric level of harmony with the universe that I described to him regarding the few times I have gone manic (it can be such a powerful and incredible experience, really). Then, from there, these people staying out of the realm of normal brain wavelengths begin to project what is regarded as prophecy for x amounts of days and the result is "The Book of _____", "The Qu'Ran", "The Book of Mormon", et al.
In a period of about 62 hours once I wrote a 42,000 word document called "The Unsacred Doctrines." It was a collection of about thirty essays on various topics...Some of the essays were decent, others I'm not so fond of admitting I wrote. But the point is that, when in a hypomanic state, it's possible to think and process information at a high speed. (You probably already know this).
I dream about the days toward the end of my life, because I've determined I think I would like to go off my medication and just let my brain runs its wild & natural course until it kills me when I am in old age. That sounds fatalistic maybe, but there's an element of beauty in there - it's hard to understand or explain.
gman:
Hey Out-of-Zion
I'm bipolar too and I know what you're talking about. I only ever had one real episode but it was like you say, impossible to sleep, limitless energy, wild ideas and non-stop screamed prophecies (I dunno if you did that but I did, 24/7 to everyone everywhere I went)... I gotta go now but I just thought I'd mention that, maybe we can discuss it later. It's at least as much a blessing as a curse, as I look at it.
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