You’re wrong, Doctor ! I’m not bipolar! How can you say that to me? You just met me – how can you possibly know??!! I’m just depressed and I get agitated and anxious and hyper – sometimes but everyone gets moody ! It s normal to have moods. You re pathologizing me! No other doctor has ever told me I have bipolar, …
Managing Tasks without Pain
A young woman who is attending architecture school mentioned a sudden dip in mood that happened the previous evening. She told me that this had to do with a day of working very hard to try to get tasks accomplished, and the anger and frustration at the end of the day when she hadn’t done as much as she wanted to, …
Internet Therapies Generate Interest
There is increasing interest in “apps” that can support mental health (one of our most enthusiastic readers recently posted a query on this topic on the forum). Apps are rarely intended to deliver “therapy” – they are usually not written by mental health professionals (although mental health professionals may be consulted along the way). Their goal is to be appealing …
Evolutionary Psychology and Understanding Depression
We are glad to finally have a summary of a fascinating conversation with Dr. Julio Ozores up on this site in our “Conversations” series. Dr. Ozores challenges us to think about depression in a new way. Although many of us struggle with the negative effects of depression in our lives, are (or were) there benefits to depression that have led …
Social Media Makes Moods Go Viral
Previously we reviewed evidence that the people we live with (family, neighbors, even the larger community of people in a metropolitan area) have an effect on our mood, so it is not surprising to learn of a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Yale, and Facebook that found that moods can go viral, just like ideas and …
Family Therapy Effective for Bipolar Teenagers
Family Therapy– Family-focused treatments have been shown to be effective adjunctive therapy to mood stabilizing medicine in adults with bipolar disorder (especially young, female adults), but whether this approach holds true in adolescents, has been unclear. Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) assessed 145 adolescents with bipolar disorder to see if adding 9 months of family …
When the Grown-ups Disappear: On Self-Destructive Behavior
A brilliant young man I know has been stuck in a pattern of self-destructive behavior and constant and terrifying self-criticism. Nothing seems to be helping him get out of this cycle. We have thoughtful conversations about the problem and come up with various solutions but then, the next time we get together, the behavior remains unchanged. I often feel as …
My Motivation Is Gone
Several of the people that I saw this week have been struggling with a loss of motivation. A lack of motivation can be one of the most prominent symptoms of a major depression, but there were other aspects of their loss of motivation that I found fascinating. I asked one of these patients, a man in his 40s who is …
Extreme Moods and Memory
I can think of no better example of the phenomenon of state-dependent learning than the mother of two who came into my office one early Fall morning experiencing extremely intense emotions (racing thoughts, and panic attacks) who had had a very similar mood experience 10 years ago when she gave birth to her first child. As the result of the …
Media Makes PTSD Much Worse
It was a sunny October day in 1989. Game 3 of the Battle of the Bay baseball World Series between Oakland and San Francisco. Then the largest earthquake in almost a hundred years hit the bay area. I was, as it happens, in my therapist’s office, my wife was at work. I rushed home to make sure that all …
Reduce Your Social Stress
Regular readers of this blog know that I really like the writings of Rick Hanson (he has a wonderful email list called “Just One Thing” and a new book that is an excellent resource for personal transformation called Hardwiring Happiness). For the last couple of months, however, his posts have seemed a bit repetitive. Just in time for the New …
Reinvigorate Your New Year’s Resolutions: Connect Change with Your Values
The celebration of a new year is frequently accompanied by hopes, wishes, and goals for the coming year, which take shape in the form of New Year’s resolutions. I will start exercising. I will spend more time with family or friends. I will get a hold of my finances. I will start volunteering. New Year’s resolutions are wonderful for providing …
The Trap of Stress Disability
The other day I was asked to evaluate a fellow physician by his disability insurance company. When I do disability assessments I take particular care, because what I say has big implications for the person I am evaluating, and I try very hard to do an extremely careful and thorough job of assessing the person’s situation. Three quarters of the …
Distress Tolerance
I have been doing some blog – surfing and happened upon a wonderful series, on the “disorderly chickadee” site that I have referred to in the past, about the skill of “Distress Tolerance.” In working with patients with depression, we often find ourselves encouraging them to learn about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). And of the many parts of DBT that …
Endurance of Pain and Suffering
He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand. Then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink …
I’m In An Abusive Relationship… with Myself
Many people I see with chronic depression carry around with them a tormentor who says the most terrible things imaginable about them, their abilities, their worth, their very right to live. That tormentor is their own inner critic (hardly a strong enough term for the cruelty that can be unleashed by these inner voices). Often it is clear where this …
Learn How to Hardwire Happiness
As many of you know, I am a big fan of the new book, Hardwiring Happiness. One of the blog’s readers sent me this link to an upcoming class by the author. The class is this coming Saturday, and should be a GREAT experience. If you go I would love to hear from you.
Bipolar Treatment: The “Quick Fix”
A young woman came in to see me today. She was in a hurry. She wanted to make a change in her medication, and she wanted to make that change now. She told me that medication she was taking for bipolar was making her sedated and sluggish. She said she thought the medication was a “trap.” The medication was why …
Winter Leads to Spring
Someone shared with us a wonderful video about John O’Donohue, a Celtic poet, philosopher and writer. In it we found this quote that resonated very much with our experience. It is about winter. And depression. And how life blossoms from the seeming dreariness of a period of fallowness. We think you might appreciate it. If you like this clip we …
Mania and Depression Aren’t Opposites
Recently I found myself thinking about the similarities between two mood states that appear to be extremely different: mania and depression. I was talking to a young man who is now quite depressed, and who was sharing with me his incredibly negative internal though processes. One of the things that he said caught my attention. He said he felt that his illness and …