Posted by SLS on July 7, 2011, at 3:48:46
In reply to Re: Bipolar Disorder and Imaired Balance / Posture., posted by morgan miller on July 6, 2011, at 21:53:28
> > > >For me, this symptom goes away when the depression goes away. It really isn't subtle when one is walking down a straight narrow hall or trying to walk without drifting side-to-side down a sidewalk.
> >
> > > So it could very well be one of your mind's way of reacting to depression.
> >
> > You are wrong.
> >
> > Instead of trying to explain everyone's experience with mental illness according to your particular school of thought, why not just listen?
> >
> > What makes you think that you are bipolar?
> >
> >
> > - Scott
>
> Scott, what's going on with you man?
I am reacting to your replies to me. Imagine my telling you that your bipolar symptoms are really a conversion reaction to being psychogenically impotent, such that you are having dissonent feelings of guilt for molesting a toy poodle when you were peri-pubertal. Psychogenic impotence exists, therefore you must have it. The poodle has never been the same.> There could be a physiological reaciton to the biological depression that you are experiencing.
What is a "reaction"? How does that differ from an integral symptom?
It is not a *reaction* to having a bipolar diathesis that produces sway and other physical incoordinations. It is most likely the diathesis itself. That's why it can be detected by measurement devices in the absence of overt mood dysregulation. Maybe you are not at all overtly clumsy or otherwise incoordinated. Maybe you really don't have bipolar disorder. Psychodynamic therapy might cure your pseudo-bipolar conversion reaction.
You launched an assault against my reality with insufficient information. I doubt it was your intention to insult me, but I felt very much insulted. You make me feel feeble-minded. You don't think I can bump into walls and other objects without it being some sort of reaction? Reaction to what?
Impairments of physical coordination occurs with me. Obviously, they do not occur with you as you self-report. Maybe you are unaccustomed to self-reporting and have yet to learn the skill. Or perhaps this is a good starting place to investigate a poorly quantified phenomenon.
For what it's worth, prior to de novo treatment, I observed myself sway when walking and bumping into objects during my depressed phase of an ultra-rapid cycle. I was able to compare my ability to coordinate movements when depressed against my normothymic phase. (I was first diagnosed as unipolar because I had never displayed classic manic symptoms until then). Of course, one could easily explain my irritable or agitated temperament when I was younger as being a presentation of a mixed state. This is one explanation currently being studied.
Just as you don't feel like justifying your diagnosis of bipolar disorder to me, I don't feel like justifying my various bipolar physical incoordinations to you. I find it fruitful to have an open mind and simply listen to people when they describe themselves.
By the way, drugs can produce impairments in physical coordination as side effects. I know you knew that. However, what is often lost here is that if a drug can do it, why can't a sick brain do it on its own?
I don't know, Morgan. I just don't know. I am not sure of much except for the nature of the beast as I experience it.
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.
poster:SLS
thread:990318
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110630/msgs/990402.html