While imbalanced biochemistry may be the central underlying physical feature of bipolar disorder, there are many other factors that combine to produce the particular cluster of symptoms associated with the illness. After all, imbalanced biochemistry can result in a number of disorders. As we have seen, the other four levels of healing—Electromagnetic, Mental, Intuitive, and Spiritual—may be just as implicated as the Physical Level in the development of this particular disorder in a particular person.
Another way to consider bipolar disorder is to explore its deeper message. If you subscribe to the belief that everything in life happens for a purpose, that we are all here to learn and grow as souls, then what is the meaning of bipolar disorder? What is its message for the soul? What does it have to teach? The lessons will, of course, be different for every individual who has bipolar disorder or has a friend, family member, or other loved one with bipolar disorder, but perhaps there are some general themes that run through everyone's experience.
Before we turn to what some of those might be, I want to make it clear that looking for the learning in an illness is not about blaming the victim. Some people have taken the New Age embrace of the ancient idea that every experience has a teaching as license to blame those who are ill for their illnesses, concluding that they must be psychologically messed up or have behaved badly in a past life. This is hardly different from the old, tremendously damaging, and quite false view in the psychiatric profession that “refrigerator” mothers were responsible for their children's mental illnesses.
Looking for the message in illness has nothing to do with blame. It is simply about learning. Every experience in life offers us the opportunity for learning and growth. If we can avail ourselves of that opportunity, every experience has the capacity to make us better people, living our fuller selves and more completely fulfilling our purpose here on Earth.
So what does bipolar have to teach? A common theme might be learning how to bring balance into one's life. Most of us are trying to achieve this, and it is a challenge amidst the juggling act of modern life, characterized by overstimulation, overscheduling, and overproduction. Bipolar disorder may be an extreme way of learning moderation and balance, but sometimes that's what it takes. People with bipolar disorder, having faced this challenge to its greatest degree perhaps, are in a unique position to teach others about balance.
Many people with bipolar speak of the guilt, shame, pain, or regret they feel over what they have done in manic states. Perhaps the lesson here is learning how to forgive and love oneself, which naturally leads to greater forgiveness and love of others. Most of us on the planet could learn more about that. Learning that lesson is the center of soul work and truly a gift. Again, people with bipolar disorder have much to teach in this area.
Every illness has the potential to teach those afflicted how to take better care of themselves. While you might think that you are already doing that—by eating a good diet and exercising, for example—illness has a way of highlighting those areas you have neglected. Illness teaches you to attend to body, mind, and spirit and shows you the parts of you that are hurting. If you seize this opportunity, you can bring the different levels of yourself into alignment and find your way to a sense of wholeness that brings joy and contentment with it. This kind of happiness is sustaining, in contrast to the high of mania, which is transitory or turns torturous.
If mood is an adaptive mechanism, what do the mood swings of bipolar disorder signify? As discussed in chapter 2, people with bipolar disorder may be less adaptable to change and stress because their regulating mechanisms, which maintain internal homeostasis, are more sensitive than those of people without bipolar and can more easily be thrown off. When considered along with the perspective that mood is an evolutionary adaptation, bipolar disorder may be the proverbial canary in the mine, warning us that “[t]he world is too much with us,” as Wordsworth observed.
Perhaps mood disorders are a natural outgrowth of an increasingly toxic, frenetic world, in which mind and spirit receive little attention. Certainly, more people than ever before are suffering from mood disorders. Depression and anxiety disorders are epidemic. In the United States alone, 30 million (1 in 10) people are now on Prozac,231 and the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by the year 2020 depression will be the single leading cause of death around the globe.232 Perhaps even those who do not have bipolar disorder are losing the ability to adapt to stress and change, and also need to learn how to protect and care for themselves in a new way.
Whatever other message bipolar disorder contains, respect is the message for all—respect for yourself if you have bipolar disorder and respect from those who don't toward those who do. Although it may not have been their choice, people with bipolar disorder experience the full range of human feeling, often to its furthest reaches. This is a brave way to live, especially when you consider how many people, particularly in the Western world, are doing everything possible not to feel at all. This is not to romanticize the suffering involved in bipolar disorder, but simply to recognize the great strength required to live with it.
May the information in this book enable you to leave the debilitating aspects of bipolar disorder behind and go forward more fully in your life, enriched by the messages you received.