If you have an episode of depression, how can you tell if it is bipolar or unipolar depression? The simple answer is, you have bipolar depression if you have ever experienced an energized (not necessarily pleasant) state that qualified as a hypomanic or manic episode. And if you only have had depressed episodes, you are considered to have unipolar depression. …
How To Build Self-Confidence
A discussion with a patient this past week really brought into focus the power of the mind to affect the world. Or maybe it would be better to say how we decide to live in the world. Our patient, I’ll call her “Amy”, is a teacher’s aide in a crowded, underfunded special ed. classroom, and she was saying she is …
Oxytocin: Hormone of Love… and of Mistrust?
Oxytocin is a neurohormone that is produced in the human brain and helps us form loving connections: mother-child bonds as well as the connections between romantic partners. When we are with a person who stimulates our oxytocin-producing neurological system, we feel warmed, supported, in a word: loved. However, making us feel loved doesn’t seem to be exactly the function of …
Resolving Quarrels and Conflict in a Relationship
Conflict happens in every relationship, no matter how good it is. The key to handling quarrels or conflict in a relationship is to recognize when one or both partners have entered an emotional hot spot, are activated, agitated, and defensive, and are unlikely to be able to continue the conversation without something being done to address how they are feeling. …
Mental Health Awareness 2021
For now over 70 years, Americans have delegated the month of May as “Mental Health Awareness Month” (since 1949). And with medical experts and researchers across the planet sharing their observation that the Covid-19 pandemic is going to continue to have an array of mental health impacts into the foreseeable future, mental health awareness needs to remain in the forefront …
Tripolar Disorder
Mixed mania is a type of depression, but it’s very hard to explain it to people I work with. In the view of mental health professionals, it makes a lot of sense to talk about a “mixed” state, which is a state of depression that generates lots of energy and agitation. The lethargy and slow speech of “typical” depression looks …
New Year and New Hopes, Beginning with Self Care
Happy New Year to Moodsurfing readers. Nothing needs to be said about 2020 that hasn’t already been said. While acknowledging how hard things are for many people right now, Moodsurfing is looking ahead with confidence to the future. 2021 has to be a better year. Regular readers will probably remember that we like Rick Hanson and his educational programs, newsletters …
Staying Active in a Covid Winter
I was reminded this past week about the importance of staying active during the winter, as well as some of the challenges people face during this COVID-19 winter Why is this Hard? Our brains are somewhat poorly adapted to modern life. Our distant ancestors would go into hibernation mode during the winter. Food was not as plentiful, and going outdoors …
Fall Back? Mood and the Time Change
For those of our readers who live in the northern hemisphere this is the time when many people experience symptoms of seasonal depression. It is the time when the length of the day is shrinking most rapidly. And this weekend in the United States we will switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time with the result that many of …
Stress, Pregnancy and the Infant
Women who are pregnant, especially if it is a first child, are usually extremely protective of the child, so much so that it can sometimes be hard to convince the mother-to-be that taking care of her need for emotional stability is as important as protecting the child from risk. This makes it hard to explain the potential value of continuing …
Medication Effect on Creativity
How does medication for bipolar affect creativity? The effect of medication on personal creativity and artistic productivity is often a concern for people beginning to manage their bipolar. A widespread belief is that mania produces creative power that artists and writers can transform into works of art; and conversely, that the medication which dampens manic episodes also reduces the ability …
Vital Signs Home Monitoring Kit
Since getting in to see a doctor these days can be very difficult (for example, we are not going to be seeing patients in person until 2021), now seems like a good time to get a home monitoring kit. For around 200$ you can purchase a set of devices that will measure your blood pressure, heart rate, weight, temperature and …
Black Lives Matter
It seems appropriate today to notice the fact that the largest civil rights movement ever is responding to the shame of ongoing racism not only in the United States, but in communities around the world. On June 19, 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read out publicly in Texas, the last state to surrender in the American Civil War. The states …
The Inactivity Pandemic: What to Do About It
A woman who is an HR manager complained that working from home has made her more physically inactive than ever. This seems to be a common complaint. Because of the risk of social isolation, she encouraged her team to use the chat application to check in with teammates more often. But what began as an effort to make people feel …
Sleep Apps
Getting better sleep – longer, deeper, more restful – is an important part of managing mental illness and healthy lifestyle. Lack of sleep, and interrupted sleep, is one of the most common problems mentioned by our clients, and helping people get better sleep is one of our first goals for management of moods and especially major depression. Sleep technology is, …
Coronavirus News Sources
Moodsurfing has often commented on the importance of limiting reading and watching sensationalist stories during a time of crisis. But a question that seems to be coming up these days is where one can turn for reliable information that is not sensationalist. I have created this blog post as a place to store some recommendations for keeping up with the …
Depression and Altered Learning
Depression, particularly recurrent depression, has pretty significant effects on how we perceive the world and how well we make plans for the future. In an article published in Biological Psychiatry in March 2020, Tobias Kube and co-authors develop a model of how depression affects critical cognitive processes that expands and extends the traditional model of cognitive changes associated with depression …
Sleep – How Much is Enough
How much sleep is enough? The question might seem simple. Most of us heard that we were supposed to get about 8 hours of sleep a night. But with the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, many of us don’t get that much sleep. What are the consequences of this? A recent study in a cardiology journal answers the question …
Change Talk versus “Should” Talk or Loss Talk
For many years I thought that if I berated myself enough for not making some positive change in my life it would motivate me to make the change. A colleague with an interest in motivating people to make big changes got me thinking about this strategy… He would often ask people “how did that work for you?” and after years …
Lack of Sleep and Weight Gain
Lack of sleep is associated with weight gain, but why is this? Is it just because sleep deprivation makes us grumpy and we “self-medicate” with food? People who get poor quality sleep, or not enough sleep, start craving high carbohydrate and high fat foods that are more likely to cause weight gain. And sleep deprivation makes us less likely to …