Living Bipolar by Landon Sessions Read Free Book Online

Having suicidal thoughts, or anything that is a detriment to your health are things to bullet. Any suicidal or homicidal thoughts. Any psychotic processes where you’re thought patterns are way off. Any hallucinations. Making bullet points of these things. Even if it was a short lived hallucinatory period. The doctor is going to want to know these things.
    So whatever that is going to key you to utilize that time the best you can. That’s good.
    Okay, so I am a novice. Can you elaborate further on hallucinatory periods? How would I know I am experiencing it?
    Hallucinations are when you are hearing and seeing things that aren’t there. They are perceptual difficulties, as opposed to illusionary difficulties. Illusions would be like a person misinterpreting real data. Looking at this plant, and thinking the shadow of it looks like a ghost. Well, that’s a little bit bizarre, but it’s a real stimulus. There is a plant there, and it’s a misinterpretation of a real stimuli. Versus interpreting stimuli that aren’t there, like hearing a voice outside of the persons head.
    The person suffering from that would be drawn to it as if someone was actually talking to them. That’s a hallucination. That’s an auditory hallucination: hearing sounds repeatedly, any dialogue of voices, people talking back and forth to each other, maybe talking about the individual or seeing things. It could be a function of drug abuse or sometimes medical problems. Perceptual difficulties with no real stimuli are hallucinations.
    Can you give examples of what it’s like for a person who hears voices?
    Classically it’s a voice of some sort -- male or female -- sometimes the sexual identity of the voice cannot be discerned. It’s mumbled. But it’s typically outside the head. Or often times it’s a disparaging voice, kind of putting the person down. We used to make a joke in training that you very rarely hear a patient complaining about hearing a voice that says, “Get a job!” I’ve had one or two patients say that, but it’s not a typical pattern.
    That’s a little bit of a joke, but conversely you don’t hear a patient’s voice that reports, “Don’t work,” either. Those are not the typical patterns of hallucinations. It’s usually something that’s disparaging, and it usually relates to some themes the patient is suffering from, they might have a paranoid back ground; they might have a sexual background. The patient may have some fear of homosexuality.
    I’m recalling one patient that felt when he walked into a room the most prominent thing he heard was “You’re a fag. You’re a fag. You’re a fag.” He wasn’t homosexual at all, but he had the fear of being a homosexual. This was the theme of the voices that he heard.
    How common is suicidal thinking and suicidal ideations among Bipolar people?
    Oh, that’s very common. I think Bipolar patients -- you could check the statistics on this one -- I’m not sure if it’s 10% to 15% of patients with Bipolar disorder commit suicide. The frequency of patients experiencing suicidal thoughts is -- I don’t know the actual number -- but it’s fairly high.
    I bring this up because I have suicidal thoughts, and for a couple of years I wouldn’t talk about it, instead deeming myself as inadequate. It took me a couple of years to communicate these thoughts with you and other people, because I thought I just hated my life, and I didn’t want to be committed back into a psychiatric hospital.
    See it becomes a condition of the illness, a symptom of the illness. As opposed to something to act on, you know this is your option; you are in the hopelessness of the disorder. You recognize more that it is the disorder talking . This is something you certainly discuss. I’ve noticed a lot of patients when they feel free enough to say something about it they really don’t have a suicidal plan or an intention, but the thoughts are a reflection of the pain they are feeling . And sometimes