What if everything you’ve been told about you is a lie? What if Bipolar Disorder was a choice you made because dealing with this reality was too painful? If it were a choice you made to step out of the pain- could you choose something else now? If you knew it were possible would you choose it or is living as the victim of your “mental health” dis-ease fun for you? If it is, stop reading now, you won’t be able to understand or get anything out of the rest of this article.
Who am I to tell you it’s just a choice? Who am I to say it’s all a lie? I’m someone who has been there, done that, bought the book, watched the movie, told the story and lived it. I know what it is like to think I can change jobs, go back to school for a new degree, become famous while writing a book and becoming the next Van Gogh! Everything you do is better, brighter, faster and amazing, telling anyone who will listen, your entire life story in rapid excitement. Until you get so high that you completely disconnect from yourself, that you begin to watch yourself from outside your body, doing destructive things and not being able to do anything about it.
Only to be followed by a despair and pain so deep and profound that you want to curl up into a ball forever, not being able to get out of bed, to function in any capacity and wishing you had what it takes to just make it all end. Knowing that you are crazy, that you hurt everyone around you and that you would do anything, if you just had it in you, to take that forever escape, to finally end the constant pain, judgement, self loathing that your life has become.
Next you get on the medications and you are told that you will be on them for the rest of your life. You have found the answer. Now you can finally be happy and be functional in this world. You think you have the answer and for a while you do. For a while you finally feel connectedto yourself. For the first time in your life you feel as if you are in control. It feels like freedom. Only you start to need more and more for the same effect, until you become so drugged out of your life that there are no highs, no lows, and no feelings.
So how is that a choice? Who would choose that? To become someone who has been torn into two parts just to survive in this world. “As a child I often felt out of place, like I didn’t fit in and as if I were born on the wrong planet. I was angry, frustrated and confused. The way people were with each other in this world didn’t make sense to me and it hurt me in ways too hard to describe.” (From my blog post Coming Home) That pain, of not knowing how to be the caring, gentle, loving, amazing being that I was, is where I made that first choice to escape.
For me, I innately knew that the drugs could give me a foundation so I could find other tools to get healthy. There had to be a way to get healthy; I didn’t buy the forever motto of the Doctors or others. I began to search out how to rechoose my life and choose something other than Bipolar. It took me over three years to find tools that worked and people willing to help me with them. It took me another five years of doing,utilizing these things to figure out how to be able to find those choice points, so I could begin to get healthy. For four years I rocked being mentally stable. I still identified with the lie of Bipolar. I knew there was more. I didn’t know what that more was; I just knew it was there. When I discovered Access Consciousness, I realized I found something that would get me that ‘more’. That more turned out to be more joy and more of me. With the Access Consciousness tools the Joy was almost instantaneous. I realized that with my knowledge on how to find those choice points combined with the Access tools, getting healthy and joyful didn’t have to take years. It could take months, if not sooner, if a person were willing to choose it. I know where the choice points are and I now know that anyone willing to be vulnerable enough can begin to rechoose their lives of bipolar, too. You will truly have to be as the open wound to do this and when you do, the joy and freedom in your life willamaze you as much as it has amazed me.
It starts with noticing what happened right before you had your episode. Recognizing all that was going on. As you practice it, you start to realize that certain kinds of events might trigger your mania. Then you start noticing, as it’s happening, and realize that that is where the choice is. As you continue to practice you will begin noticing right before you are triggered. This is where you can start playing with choosing.
When I did this it was not easy. It was extremely painful to be that honest with myself. To know that I chose that was the hardest thing I have ever done: that millisecond of a choice, where it is easier to go into the mania or despair than choose to be present. When you can do that you can begin to rechoose your life.
It doesn’t have to take you 5 years or even 2 years. You can do this as quickly as you like because it is a choice after all. With the tools of Access Consciousness, you can find the triggers, ask a question, do a clearing statement and make a new choice. You can be as Joyful and as happy as I am because after all it is all just a choice. What would it take for you to rechoose to have all of your life come to you with ease and joy and glory? You might just find yourself, but don’t do that! Your life might just get better.
Rioha