"Who would I be without it...?"

How much do you consider these conditions to be an actual illness and how much do you consider them to be constituent parts of your personality?

My question is how do you separate the two? I fully accept things like clinical depression and (my own diagnosis) bipolar disorder as true medical illnesses. . .But the mind's a tricky thing.

One of the fucked up things about "mental illnesses" is the very thing that enables us to cope and deal with problems is what is supposedly diseased. . .I mean, it's impossible to objectively separate yourself from what's happening to you biologically if the organ attacked is the very thing that would enable you to do this. Does that make any sense?

I don't how I would think or feel sans depression/bipolar b/c I've never expereinced feeling or living that way. Where does the disease end and myself start? Who knows? Does such a distinction even exist?

Until we have a greater understanding of the exact biochemical reactions that control human behavior and emotions I think our reaction towards and treatment of mental disorders will always be subjective. There's no way around that.

Mental illness is somehow (perceived as?) different because many aspects of mental illness are exaggerations of or perversions of perfectly "normal" human behaviour. In fact many psychologists - and the patients themselves - have differing views of where the line between "Personality quirk" ends and "mental illness" begins, and it's also societal.

Mental illness - in my case, Bipolar (I prefer "Manic Depression" but that's just me) - has had such an influence on my life for so long, that I honestly can't imagine what a different person I would be if I hadn't suffered from it. I can't tell if it's *shaped* my personality, or if it *is* my personality. But it has made me a completely different person that I would have been had I never experienced it. I don't know if I would be better or worse (it has had its positive aspects, which I have been loathe to lose with chemical straitjackets, I mean "treatments") but I would be so qualititively and quantitatively different that I would not be recognisably "me".

Different name, living in a different place, doing a different job, with different friends... maybe that doesn't change some core philosophical "me" but I wouldn't be recognisable to anyone here.

I think the other ones (Depression, dysthymia, anxiety) are trickier. With depression, I think it's easy to fear Prozac will change who you are, but FWIW, having been on and off it-- I've found that fear is unfounded. It's better to have the crushing mental black hole lifted than to suffer so much. The depression changes you for the worse, imho.

Be very careful with early stages of treating depression with meds, though. You can temporarily feel worse. In my case it's because there is another condition piled on top: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and uncovering the depression with meds also takes the blanket off the PTSS, making symptoms rage forth that were previously masked by the dullingness of the depression. I am in fact, at this moment quite seriously unbalanced, and there is really nothing I can do about it until Monday due to the holidays.

I would not advise anyone to go on or off meds because they think they will lose their "artistic-ness"--it doesn't work like that. I'd also advise anyone going on "meds" for the first time to do so in a supportive environment if they can, and don't worry about "not being you" anymore" because unless you're on Thorazine it just ain't gonna happen.

More to the point I didn't like who I wasn't. I wasn't me. Its a real conundrum. But the passions of my misbehaviour are a part of who I am, even if I sometimes hate that.

This is a very very interesting question Nick - thanks for positing it!

Being on lithium - the chemical straitjacket I refered to - *DID* affect my "artisticness".

Without manic streaks, I no longer experienced the freeform runs of association, the blinding inspiration, the sprees where I would stay up for days working on songs, music, drawings, writing etc. It also affected me in very strange ways - it affected my hearing, made me experience low level auditory hallucinations which totally fucked with my ability to be a musician.

It would be nice to get rid of the crushing lows and black hole of depression, but it's a two-sided coin.

I'm not saying that my experiences are indicative of anyone else's. I'm not saying that this should affect anyone else's decision to try or disdain medication. I'm just saying that my experience of medication was that it made me NOT-ME in a way that I was not prepared to tolerate.

But, for me, I have yet been able to find a way to pull myself back from depression without flinging myself into an equally intolerable state of being. I definitely hate being depressed. But being manic is just as dangerous and perhaps even more unpleasant for me.

When I'm manic I feel most like I might do something stupid like run into traffic or do a half-dozen illegal drugs at once. In that state I just might end up killing myself out of pure, blinded, stupidity.

It's 5 am here. To bed with me.

(re: lithium .. . it's the only thing, after over a decade of trying, that stablized my mother. She's always saying that's what I need b/c I've yet to be stable. But medicine has changed, there's new stuff. Doctors are very reluctant to plop you on lithium nowadays till they've exhausted everything else. Well I've been on almost every "new" drug out there so I'm starting to wonder if maybe my mom has been right all along.)

I had a period of about two years on anti-depressants and it totally killed my creativity in terms of songwriting, and I'm only just getting out of that musical rut now. There was an initial burst of creativity based on the fact that finally I had an inkling of what was going on in my head and tried to come to terms with it in one of the few ways I understood, then a complete blank for about 18 months until I finally came off them about two years ago. I think going through the joys of seeing psychiatrists and having people assessing my every move had made me get to a point I called "Paralysis by analysis" where I was so busy thinking about myself and my own problems that I saw absolutely nothing around me, and it destroyed my job and almost destroyed my relationship with my wife. Those 18 months are just a total blur, but fuck me was I happy.

(Er, not when I was on Seroxat, no)

As to who would I be without my mental illness? A lot happier, probably a lot less creative, and most of the other things that Kate said oddly enough.

Sorry, I'll shut up now.

So my routine includes being awake for nearly 24 hrs on Friday (up for school at 5:30 friday morning; closing up and leaving the bar at 4am Saturday). That really fucks with the rest of my routine.

If anything has killed my creativity it's teaching. In the years before I made this move I was always playing with different instruments, had started/pursued a few different bands, was always writing, had several different sewing/needlework projects going at a time, read books --- for fun! Since I started teaching almost two years ago. . . . .I come home, I eat, maybe work out, do school work 'till it's time to go to bed, rinse, repeat. All of my creative energy goes to the succubi I work with every day. There is absolutely nothing leftover for myself. I'm hoping that this will improve the longer I stick with it.

I know Nick was speaking more broadly but I guess it just hints at what can really get to me about this argument. Too many times I've been told that I shouldn't seek treatment; that I just need to get over it, buck up etc. But when I listen to that bullshit that's when I end up hoarding pills or going after someone with a broken beer bottle! It's a dangerous path methinks.

(and yes, sleep. . I close the bar the next two nights though so perhaps I'm just adjusting to my alter-routine._)

Stick at it, it's worth it in the end. Admittedly I had to force her to join a gym, but she enjoys that now and gets out with her friends at the weekend too. In time, your teaching life will settle down - I promise!

i think this happens but it's complicated: if you believe you have a mental condition, you're far more likely to be seen as having one.

on another tack, every fuckin thing gets called 'pathological': shopping, smoking, fucking -- the good things in life.

the other week i posted that i wanted to kill myself; well, i've never made an attempt. but i don't want to get into any cycle of dependence on either psychiatric or pahrmaceutical industries.

I feel this is U&K. When diagnosed as depressed I recall writing "I have a name for this beast now". In a way it was a relief but in another, an excuse. But I still maintain I was nowhere near as in deep crap as others I've known with mental illness. Thats actually what stopped me from getting treatment actually - the thought I should simply "get over it" because I was... projecting maybe?

This topic's a difficult one for me.

with all due respect, this semantic stuff won't cut it. when i was at school it was deep and cool to be depressed. i'm not judging here -- i know that many ppl were 'actually' depressed. but ppl like me talked themselves into being depressed -- more or less. IOW, i found that you can't draw a dividing line between, when push comes to shove, 'wanting' and 'needing'.

you can't go generalizing about when you 'really' need treatment or drugs because actually both can lead to a dependence little better than depression in the experience of ppl i've known and loved if not me. on the other hand, both have helped people too.

Horses for courses?

I did pop up on the suicide thread to say that being given three months to live at the age of almost five has definitely affected my attitude towards life which is 'I will not be the one to let go'. Ironically the only reason I'm alive right now is because the neighbour's dog bit me, and when checking for infection the doc felt my side, thought it oddly swollen and sent me for the tests that uncovered a malignant tumour in one of my kidneys. The treatment was so successful I still have both kidneys.

I have peaks and troughs which I feel are more marked because work as a freelancer is kind of isolating, but it's never gotten to the point where therapy or meds are on the cards. What was possibly worse for me, considering my history, is the paralysing anger I felt when my aunt died of cancer about six years ago, probably because her fucking doctor somehow did not give her the results of a very dodgy smear test a year before she was given a terminal diagnosis. This was 25 years after my own treatment and I found it shocking that people could be treated so carelessly. It took me almost three years to get over her loss and made me unattractively cynical (given that I work in THE most cynical industry whoa black mood indeed).

On the problem side my mum does tend to hit the guilt trip/emotional blackmail button when she disapproves of or misunderstands me. When I was last home I finally snapped and said 'so, you kept me alive purely to have someone to bitch at 30 years later?'

When I went off that particular drug, I had a withdrawal where I just sobbed continuously (though not feeling sad) until I went back to the full dose. (I discovered that way that doctor's offices will actually call back when you call them sobbing). I ended up having to really taper the dose to go off of that drug. It really struck me, though, after having such an extreme withdrawal, that these drugs effect our minds really profoundly, and not in a way that's well understood.

when it comes to clinical depression, enrique, you're totally off-base. It does not discrminate. You can have the best life in the world but wake up one morning unable to get out of bed. And that morning goes on for weeks, months until finally you can't take it anymore.

And as far as my condion goes. . .yes my job does not help at all but it certainly did not create my "problems". I've been suffering from depression/bipolar disorder since I was a teenager. Whatever's been going on in my life has very little to do with it.

I used to think that meds were some kind of short-cut treatment for persons too lazy or uncommitted to engage in therapy, but I don't believe that anymore for sure.

Yeah, get some sleep Sam.

I would be completely fooling myself and others if I were to say that this didn't completely affect my life, though. How could it not? I've felt these feelings for about ten years; they've become a part of me, this supercritical nature, this pessimism, this sensitivity. I can be chipper and think positive thoughts, but at the end of the day, when I'm alone with my thoughts and analyzing what's gone on throughout the day, those demons start to come out and can overwhelm me.

Granted, I don't have things as badly as some of the others here who have posted on this thread or who are regulars who have yet to contribute anything. I had no idea there was a measurable percentage of you in here who suffered from bipolar disorder. Kate, did you know that John Taylor is also bipolar? Apparently he wrote a song off Feelings Are Good And Other Lies that talks about that. I don't know why I mention that; maybe it'd make you feel a bit better knowing one of your former heroes shares in that suffering, I don't know.

Oh yes, this reminds me -- I heard one time that one can't really eradicate all pain in the world. This world is bound to be filled with pain. The truly charitable try to eliminate suffering, not pain, because suffering is what weighs us down. But I digress.

So... where would I be without what I go through internally? I have no earthly idea. Maybe I wouldn't be as nice, because I wouldn't have as much of a reason to be nice to others (you know, wanting to do unto others what I would want to have done unto me). Maybe I'd be boring and have a totally gray and faceless personality. Maybe I'd have accomplished more... or less. There's a whole lot of room here for the "what if"s and it's just all so confusing and such an unanswerable question for me.

I'm of the opinion that a little emotional pain/depression/unfocused dissatisfaction is actually a POSITIVE thing in evolutionary terms. An organism which is happy and contented all the time has no impetus to change anything about themselves or their environment. An organism which occasionally suffers from bursts of unhappiness will be motivated to try and do something to *change* that happiness. And many of the things that human beings do to compensate for that unhappiness - change their environment, eat more, engage in sex, be creative - are things which actually *help* their survival or the propegation of their genes.

*Especially* in a cold-cyle climate - manic depressive seasonal cycles of lots of work during good months combined with sluggishness and disinclination to move during bad months is a sensible survival strategy! The hunter-gathering lifestyle that our ancestors evolved under requires periods of intense activity and periods of lying fallow.

Hence the argument that a genetic predisposition towards mood disorders (in small doses) is actually evolutionarily advantageous!

Now obviously, in the past few hundred years with industrialisation riding roughshod over our natural patterns, we're expected to be productive over the whole year. (In fact, with Winter Consumerfest, we're expected to be *more* productive during our lowest point.)

Unhappiness, in my order of things, was supposed to be a spur, a tool. However, when you lose the ability to change things - or else if the goalposts of what you consider "happiness" have been moved (by societal pressures, by the emotional conditioning of advertising and consumerism) - the unhappiness will be reinforced into learned helplessness, and the result will be unlifting clinical depression.

So, like I said before, but didn't clarify, many "disorders" are exaggerated aspects or perversions (sorry - loaded word) of PERFECTLY NORMAL AND EVOLUTIONARILY LOGICAL HUMAN BEHAVIOUR.

Please note - this is NOT the same as the callous suggestion that many offer to "get over it" or "snap out of it". It's a fundamental paradigm shift. I don't deny that there's a problem, I just think that there are different reasons for it, and thinking differently about "it" and coming to terms with "it" is a more constructive strategy.)

Yeah, I stopped my counselling sessions because I didn't think they were doing any good, and if anything they were just making things worse by stirring up old things that should have remained left alone.

I'm also trying to make the decision whether to "wean" myself off SSRIs. They were never intended to be a permanent thing. I'm just scared of the come-down which is supposed to be a bitch.

I suppose it's just a case of trying to figure out what is "normal" for me. I don't think I'm ever going to comply with an external standard of mentality. But I'm trying to remember what the default mode or "normal parameters" is for me.

I took about 8 therapy sessions and then quit. I should have continued. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not sure. But I do know that it wasn't completely resolved. But I had the feeling I had to do this myself. That particular therapist was not good for me, she made me too (self-)aware (of how the process of therapy worked).

Control is slightly better now but as you will know from ILE two Thursdays ago it only takes one little thing to drive me back down to the depths (although the day job is currently also playing a major part in this). I could say that I'd improved in terms of social situations, but perhaps that's only because I only deal with them when I'm in a relatively "up" mood. When I'm "down," I find it best to avoid such situations altogether, but I realise that isn't actually getting me anywhere.

The pattern would appear more manic D than bipolar, but the changes are too extreme not to rule out the latter, even though in my case it's never been diagnosed.

And it was just too distracted by whatever was the particular annoyance of the day, rather than trying to examine or adjust any underlying behaviour. Which was OK short term, but did nothing for me long term.

How much do those of you suffering depression think that the myth of the "tortured artist" (I am talented thus I am miserable) helps feed feelings of depression?

It doesn't at all. In fact, if anything it's completely the wrong way around. I am miserable comes first. Being "talented" is just a way of dealing with it. Art is the by-product of living the way that shit is the by-product of eating. It's a way of digesting and dealing with things. Shit doesn't cause eating, so art doesn't cause the tortured artist. (At least in my case, I don't think. The times I've decided to give up art as a waste of time, the mental problems got much, much worse.)

In my case it's mostly self-torturing that goes on. You look at Cobain's life and you realise that he would probably have ended up like that anyway, fame or no fame (cf. Steven Jesse Bernstein). But I certainly do get quite a lot of the "I am talented so WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE REALISE IT?" type of feeling which is only really the reverse side of the "I'm the only one in step here, it's everyone else who's out of line" coin - not realising that it's up to me to encourage other people to realise it, if indeed "it" exists.

Then again you could argue that if an artist were really tortured in terms of clinical depression, then he wouldn't be able to create any art...hang on a minute, when's the last time I blogged?...

Your comfort mechanisms are like a romm with the light switched off. You know the room well, there are sofas, kettles, tables and food/drink, all the things you need to make you feel better. Even the floor.

Things that change that zone may seem on the face of it to aid the comfort, but they might well be like adding scatter cushions, a beanbag or something in the way of the kettle. Too much of this, and the ability to use your natural comfort zone constituents is impaired.

That's all fine if your zone is one hard chair and a bottle of water. It's also fine if the added comfort items stay where they are and you can work out where they are and how to get round them if necessary.

Some people might seem to have great ability to cope with things. This does not mean you can do the same, you would just be trying to walk round 'their' living room with the lights out.

It's also too tempting to add a sofa to someone elses. Or blatantly remove a chair from someone who seems to be coping wrongly.

Anyhow. That's all off the top of my head, so apologies if it's gibberish.

For a long time I felt smug that I knew how the process worked. Now I realize that I ignored what the real problem was. This wasn't a contest. Not about knowing how therapy works. It's about giving up. I didn't switch off my *brain* and let her guide me though the process. In a way it was some form of self-defense, as though I didn't want to be helped.

xxpost

OTM.

Some people are more technically accomplished at it than others, or more "perceptive" or expressive or practised - or more "creative"?

But to try and claim that it's anything else or something special is pretentious and self-aggrandising and smacks to me of the whole "tortured artist" routine.

But then again, that just gets into the whole argument about what creativity actually is and I don't think this is the place for that. "creativity" is about making connections between things. Processing information rather than just reciting it. So maybe that's what Artistic Creativity is at its basis - connection/synthesising your own daydreaming artshit into something recognisable by others.