My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Smelling like a Dog (reposted)

The idea of paranormal thought and healing was referenced in a book suggested to me by a friend from college, also a Medical Doctor, about twenty years ago. The book called The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot [1] suggests that paranormal thought and healing may be more common than we realize. This is a tricky insight, but I think one that is worth exploring.

Consider thought as if it were on a continuum from normal logical thought on one extreme to paranoid thought on the other extreme. Where would we place the thoughts of autistic people who are on the spectrum and able to compute incredible math equations or know any date in time without any degree of difficulty? What if every person with bipolar illness or a behavioral health disorder has or had an autistic or quasi-autistic child within? What might be needed to give room to this quasi-autistic child within to develop and gain confidence to move forward in life with the accompanying adult? What if the adult with bipolar illness or a behavioral health challenge could regain health by honoring this quasi-autistic child and his/her inherent fragility? Perhaps if the quasi-autistic child within had an audience who listened to these fragile thoughts, communication exchange might be able to occur before thoughts reach the other end of the spectrum at paranoia? Perhaps if the child within is acknowledged for having some extra set of insights, care givers might recognize those abilities and acknowledge them, perhaps stopping the paranoid thought process before it occurs. This is a hugely large question and one that requires behavioral health scientists to review and explore and evaluate.

I talk about this “paranormal thought” in terms of a dog’s abilities to smell or to hear because we readily accept that a dog can smell and hear things that we don’t smell and hear. However, it is much more difficult for us to believe that some of us humans may see or hear things beyond that of a “regular” person or differently from a “regular” person much like a blind person may have a corresponding enhanced musical ability. For every disability might there be a corresponding ability? The paranormal thought process may also be linked to the age of my inner child who for these purposes may be about six years old – more discussion on that later.

Shortly after reading The Holographic Universe, I wrote a letter to physicist David Bohm requesting that a study be performed that looked at human perceptions of time, including circular time (the world of dreams) and linear time (the world of events). I had no idea that David Bohm was deceased when I wrote that letter to him in the mid-1990s but have felt and continue to feel over the years that work in quantum physics and work in paranormal thought are somehow intrinsically linked. Matter and anti-matter may correlate loosely to real time and to dream time.

Recently in the past few years I have come to understand my six-year-old child within through these lenses. I feel that I must learn to listen to what this child has to say or what she is feeling. I feel that by listening to this child I may be able to connect to the child and the vulnerability before my thoughts have migrated to full-blown paranoia. This is an extremely important but difficult path. There is a huge amount of research out there about honoring the child within. However, there is not a lot of research out there about how honoring extra-sensory perceptions or thought patterns may help quell or disperse or render neutral paranoid thoughts and paranoid perceptions. In addition to dispersing paranoid thought before it begins, this approach may potentially shed light on some insights that are down the scale from logical thought but not at the other end of paranoid thought either.

During the past few years as I have been locating and holding up that six-year-old child, I have felt extraordinarily vulnerable, prone to having extreme bouts of tears as past fears have come unglued. During this time of elevating this child of six, I have sought more frequent meetings with my therapist in terms of translating this new dynamic of an elevated inner child to everyday realities of a job search, getting a healthy dinner on the table, taking and managing meds, getting an exercise regime established and managing moods in general.

Quite late in my own emotional development, I have concluded that this six-year-old child may have certain insights beyond normal sensory perception. The challenge now is to find the means and wherewithal to listen to that child within rather than minimize that child’s “doglike” abilities. The impetus in this world is to discount any sort of extra sensory perceptions we may have (that that child may have) in preference for logic and all things explainable through reason in this world. So far, it is clear that as a society we value perceptions that are logical and shun perceptions that may arise through intuition or some alternate form of perception not related to logic.

I call this type of intuition or perception “unknowledge” or “illogical communication” or “ecological communication.” We don’t expect nature or feelings to follow the linear laws of logic. We expect nature to follow cycles and courses of development that are multi-dimensional and cyclical. It follows that some of us, perhaps those with a bipolar or other mood disorder diagnoses, have trains of thought that are ecologically informed rather than logically informed. Perhaps a lack of reason may not necessarily be a bad thing if we can tease out the dangerous components that are correlated with paranoia before they can even exist or present. Perhaps if we catch illogical and ecological thought at the onset before connections to paranoid perceptions, this illogical and ecological thought can provide insights and awareness that the logical mind cannot perceive.

Question for You?

** This post deals with paranoid thoughts and experiencing them**

We have all been told that paranoid thoughts do not have any value whatsoever. They are thoughts not grounded in reality and therefore something to forget or ignore or get past as well as we are able.

I have been prone to paranoid thoughts off and on since the onset of my bipolar illness in 1984 / 1985. Most times this paranoid thought is confusing, upsetting and painful. However, I am wondering whether to write a blog post that talks about the potential that there may be a small or very small kernel of truth in paranoid thought however hidden or misshapen particularly when paranoid thoughts from several people about the same topic are considered at one time.

For example consider that someone is paranoid about the water quality in the town where he lives and reports that to police. In that same week, police get reports from 5 different people that there has been a suspicious character near the water works for that town and 2 to 3 neighboring towns. These reports each taken by themselves these might be examples of paranoid thought but taken together might hint that there is a potential risk with the water supply in a nearby town.

The key is that there would need to be some independent entity that is recording the paranoid thoughts from individuals and looking for trends in them, then verifying whether the trends are grounded in reality or not.

Does this type of suggestion of trending paranoid thoughts interest you or cause you anxiety? I would like to write more about this potential hidden kernel of truth in paranoid thought but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in any way. I also do not wish to glorify paranoid thoughts in any way since most of what paranoid thought is is confusing and upsetting. I am looking for your feedback as to whether this type of discussion would be helpful to you or not?

My Sojourn through Bipolar Illness – Intermixing with Police and First Responders

I am of the mindset that police and college campus police could do well with more training as to what constitutes a paranoid episode that is largely safe and what constitutes a paranoid episode that is largely unsafe. I feel that the police serve in a hugely defining role as to whether someone experiencing an episode of bipolar illness should go the hospital or be incarcerated. There is no such distinction for any other type of intervention that the police are called upon to mediate. It takes a great amount of training about paranoia and how it operates particularly in the minds of our youth. If psychiatrists are largely unable to determine when paranoia is linked with violence or not after days or months or years of working with that person, think what a challenge it is for a police man or woman intervening with no case history on the patient while being charged with the safety of that patient and all bystanders. It is a huge responsibility that falls on the police and college police.

I have worked through NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Health) in their In Our Own Voice Program to talk with these First Responders and provide more insight into the patient’s point of view when these incidents occur. I found the reception at that event quite welcoming as if the police or campus police had never had a conversation with someone prone to paranoia when that person was outside of that paranoia event.

In any case, I find the work of police and campus police to be a gargantuan task. It almost requires the intervening police officer to be all-knowing and to be able to size up the situation in a matter of minutes as to whether the person before them is paranoid and a danger to others or paranoid, a danger to themselves and needing hospitalization. I feel that additional training in differentiating these behavioral health outcomes should be mandatory both for crisis interventionists as well as medical and clinical professionals. As a person who has experienced mania and being a danger to self and perhaps others, I readily do not see a clear line for police to follow from which to determine how best to intervene. If I am unclear on that intervention after 30 plus years of managing (or trying to) the illness, I would imagine most police and campus police feel that they are overwhelmed and alone as First Responders in assessing the case of a behavioral health incident.

I feel for the police and the campus police and their courage in this line of work and believe that greater training like that of NAMI’s In Our Own Voice Program is extremely important. I had one first responder come up to me at that In Our Own Voice presentation and thank me. The officer had never talked to someone with a tendency toward paranoia when they were not in a paranoid state. All he had ever seen was the patient at the height of a paranoid event – he must have assumed through no fault of his own that that state of paranoia was the norm for that person rather than a state that comes and goes and can be managed for the most part through medications and talk therapy.

The First Responders should have some sort of script that allows them to assess if the danger is being directed internally toward the patient or if the danger is more generalized to people external to the person experiencing the breach of reality. I do not claim to have the content to that script in full, but my current thoughts about how questions for this script might go is something like what follows. This script below should be vetted by a team of first responders, therapists, doctors and other professionals and is only a “strawman” from the point of view of one patient.

I am going to ask you a series of 20 questions. I would like for you to respond to each question to the best of your ability. OK, are you ready? First question:

1) What is your name?

2) Are you a student here?

3) Are you feeling OK?

4) What is the date today?

5) Are you feeling suicidal?

6) Have you ever felt this way before?

7) Do you have a mood disorder illness? Have you ever been hospitalized for a mood disorder?

8) Are you hearing voices?

9) What are the voices saying?

10) Are the voices asking you or telling you to harm yourself?

11) Are the voices asking you or telling you to hurt anyone else?

12) Do you have a weapon? Are you intending to use it?

13) Where did you get it? Have you had it on you for several days or just a few hours?

14) How long has it been since you took a shower?

15) How long has it been since you had a full meal?

16) Have you been using any mind-altering, recreational or prescription drugs?

17) If so, what are they?

18) Do you feel safer now that the paramedics are here and we are talking?

19) Is there someone in particular you would like to talk to? Your parent? Your friend? Your psychiatrist? Your therapist?

20) What do you need to feel more calm?

If there had been such a script available for use by First Responders at the West Ferry airport back in 1985, perhaps my first episode would not have been so cataclysmic. Perhaps I would not have been plagued by security concerns for several years after this first episode if that episode had been less threatening and less dramatic.