Bipolar Disorder Support Group
Bipolar disorder is not just a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders marked by periods of abnormally high energy and euphoria, often accompanied by bouts of clinical depression. This is the place to talk about your experience with bipolar disorder, learn from others' experiences, and find support.
Anyone out there familiar with buddhism? It's always intrigued me and is the closest thing I could get behind as a devoted way of life having atheist views. I've been reading about cbt and buddhism both and it seems the mindfulness and meditation practices and ultimately the desired outcomes of buddhist enlightenment are very similar to cbt.
Diving more into buddhism along with bipolar disorder, theres a strong emphasis on karma. Good, bad and neutral. It would be hard for me to digest that the "bad" things we do while manic would count as bad karma when maybe it should be neutral karma because they were uncontrollable actions due to a mental illness. Who or what gets to decide?
Obviously I have much to learn and consider but along with thoughts on cbt being straight from aspects of buddhism or if you think practicing buddhism would dig too far into the already damaged psyche of bipolar and actually make things worse? It seems like all the meditation could unleash some beasts. Haha
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Hi All.... It's great to see all of the new people joining the site... I'm loving it!!...smileI'm not sure if people are aware that if you don't have Bipolar Disorder but have a loved one who has the disorder we do have a board for people to go to in order to share their experiences and seek friendship, support or adviseIt's the Friends and Family of Bipolar Board.... I hope you'll take a...
Buddhism is the belief that life is created "bad or in constant suffering" and you subsequently spend your time on earth ending the suffering through enlightenment that allows you to stop the multiple re-births and deaths you're to suffer through.
When you break that down to basics it has nothing to do with CBT, DBT or really any type of Therapy. Enlightenment is "reasoning". The one thing that BiPolar Disorder inherently disallows a person from being is "reasonable" or being able to "reason".
Therapies like CBT and DBT are designed to take learned negative behaviors and turn them into learned positive behaviors. To re-train your brain to process thoughts, emotions, activities, and processes in a different way so that Depressive episodes or Manic episodes can be better managed and controlled/limited to lesser time frames. This, of course, is done in conjunction with the proper medications, because once again back to basics, BiPolar Disorder is a Chemical Imbalance in the brain. Treatment 99.9% of the time is only successful with Medication; chemicals used to treat the imbalance of brain chemistry which causes the disease in the first place.
Buddhism doesn't advocate the practice of medication, its practices are to keep the body as a pure temple. So you've got 2 practices that are from the beginning out of step with each other. A Pdoc is not going to tell you, do CBT, but don't take any meds and you'll be able to manage your BiPolar successfully, it doesn't work. It's like a 3 legged race with only 1 leg left out of the sack, you can't run a straight line, you'll just run in tight circles.
In Therapies like CBT, DBT or Dynamic Directed therapy your also going to learn multiple forms of different coping skills to help manage the symptoms of the 2 faces of the Disease. People often forget to think of Mental Illnesses like a Disease, but they are. They are an illness, just like any other illness of the body, they are just illnesses of the mind. They can't just be plucked from the brain by Will or Belief and disposed of because you believe hard enough.
I am a firm believer and proponent of using whatever modality of Therapies and Treatments you can to manage BiPolar to reach the most Stable state of mind you can. Strong religious practices in conjunction with medication and therapeutic treatment often help with Anxiety and Stress management; faith, prayer, and belief in a Higher Power are often a source of comfort, no matter what your Higher Power is.
I don't believe though, that religious practices replace Psychiatric Treatment for BiPolar Disorder. They may seem similar on some levels, but in many key levels, they aren't.