10. Change in Action: How One Person Got Their Life Back From Bipolar Disorder

This is an interview you are not going to want to miss. Welcome to the get your life back podcast. If you or anyone you know has ever struggled with bipolar disorder, you know how debilitating it can be on your health, your relationships, and even your finances. You don't know what to do, and the option from your doctors is to go down the list of medications and.

Hope for the best.

If you resonate with any of this, then this is the episode for you. We're going to sit down with Jared, a bipolar warrior, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, type 1 rapid cycling. Jared was hospitalized over 30 times in 12 years and is one of the most inspirational warriors that I know of when it comes to this topic. Jared started down an integrative path for healing himself six years ago. And on that journey he has identified strategies to stop and prevent manic episodes from occurring, pursue activities that give meaning, and he's now studying to be a cognitive behavioral healer himself. How did he do it? That's what we're going to talk about today. How to identify patterns and mood changes, create your force field strategies, going beyond your diagnosis, beyond your label, and everything in between. This is going to be a life changing interview. So let's get started.

Hi, this is Dr. Nicole and I'm with Jared, and we are excited to have a conversation with you and we decided to record it to share with you guys Jared's story, his story of hope, and to give you a little bit of an inside scoop on just one warrior's journey. And so, Jared, I want to tell you how grateful I am that you're here. Thank you for sharing and I'm excited to jump in with you.

Oh, thank you, Dr. Kane. It's an honor. You honor me, so I thank you for that. But you know, I wouldn't be where I am today without you, so it's exciting. It's been a journey. We've been at it almost six, over six years now. Can you believe how long it's been? I did some research.

I love reflecting on how I met people and how long I've known people. And so I think back to the world that was Pre Jared and Dr. Nicole six years ago and how far we've come in all of this time. It's amazing.

It really is. It's astounding, exciting, and I'm grateful for the journey we've had. I look forward to the journey. We're lifers. You're stuck with me for life.

I was gonna say the same about you. You're stuck with me, too. I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah, yeah. Since we're both trained in opera, you know, that's true.

That's a fun fact. And so a lot of you guys don't know. I was trained. I was trained to be an opera performer in college. And Jared, I think that's one of the first things that you and I connected on originally is both of us.

Yeah. Because opera backgrounds. I was trained for four years as a vocal performance and opera major by one of the most prestigious men I've ever met in my life. He was at the Metropolitan Opera. But, you know, we could go on and on about that kind of stuff, but, you know, so that's what we mean when we say love it in the comments.

Our fun fact. So you can add the voice to that. Read it. Read it in your mind with the. The vibrato and all of the magic.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. I live for it.

I was hoping that today, what my goal in our time together is to share a story of hope. My mission is to help people to understand, realize, and start taking the steps towards writing their next act. I think about how we've been carrying all of our lives, this saga that's been basically directed by the culture, our traumas, our biological interactions with the environment. And so many people, they find me and they feel like they are just so weighed down by this heavy saga, and they feel like they are put into a corner and they have no answers besides a pill for an ill. And while I think that pharmaceuticals can be life saving and they're amazing that we can put a comma at the end of the sentence and that there are things that we can do in addition to that, and that there is hope and your story of hope. And I was hoping that you would be open to sharing a little bit about your story.

Absolutely. I mean, I pride myself on being an authentic, genuine human being for. For most of what we see from society nowadays, everybody's very fake and vain and vague and, you know, they don't want to commit and this and that and the other. So I have no problem sharing my story at all. Where should we begin is the question.

I would love to learn what your experience was when you didn't feel like you had empowerment over your story. And then we could kind of talk about the steps that you took to turn the page, the steps that you took to get your life back, the steps that you took to help with the sticky factor so that you're not just put into a corner with this label slapped on you and this terrible tragedy playing out. I would Love to hear kind of the juxtaposition. If we start at what it was like in the beginning.

Sure, sure. So I am 30 years old. I will be 31 this August. Just to give you a time frame of when this all decided to conspire. Not conspire, transpire. Forgive me. So 30 years old. At 18 years old, I had gotten into a little bit of trouble. I ran away from home. And in running away from home, I decided to pursue a lifestyle of just hard, fast, you know, drinking drugs, cigarettes, smoking weed. Like there was just. There was no limit to things I wanted to try because I felt so traumatized in my life by what I thought was kind of like a noose coming around my neck. I thought my parents were trying to control me when they weren't. And so I said, well, I'm gonna go live my life and I'm gonna. I'm gonna do what I want, you know, and what I want is not necessarily what the best is for me. And so in discovering what I want at 18 years old, because everybody's, you know, mature at 18 years old. Everybody knows exactly what they want at 18 years old. Not. And so I decided to do all of those things, you know, kind of test the waters, have kind of a rumspringer, you know, if you, if you follow those teachings, you know, whatever. I was going to just go sell my oats and I came in from that completely psychotic. There was no fixing what I had going on. I was out of my mind. I was strung out on God knows what. I was at somebody's house. I somehow got in touch with my father on a cell phone that I swiped and just called him, and he picked me up in Hammond, Louisiana. I'm from New Orleans, by the way. A little disclaimer. And so Hammond, Louisiana is about a 45 minute drive from where I lived in New Orleans with my parents when they, when they, when I moved back in with them after I went through all of this. And the first thing they did was they put me into a mental hospital because I was just psychotic. I was far gone. And psychosis for me shows up as very hyper spiritual, Very. Wasn't violent at first, but over the years, violence became a thing. So I got diagnosed in this mental hospital. It was very traumatic for me. They didn't give the best care. It's almost like people were there to just collect a paycheck. They weren't there to really help anybody. They didn't have a passion for this. They just, for whatever reason, got stuck doing it. I Guess, you know, and that, to me, just. I still. As we're talking about this, I'm flashing back to the memories of the very first hospital stay that I had. And it was very traumatic in a negative sense. And so that's when I began to hold on to these things. And I didn't know who I was. I didn't know who I should be. I didn't know what to do. All I know is that I somehow got ahold of something that made me go crazy. You know, actually, the thing that kind of sparked this was dxm. I don't know if you remember that. Dextromethane, We've had conversations about that. And basically cough syrup or cough pills. You get high off of those, you know, and you start seeing things that definitely aren't there and hearing things that definitely are not there. And that was the cause of this first psychotic episode. And over the last 12 years, I have been hospitalized over 30 times. I'm gonna let that sink in, because that's a lot. That is a lot of trauma to go through. Because each stay at a hospital, as I've grown in years and as I've grown with this diagnosis of being diagnosed bipolar disorder, type 1 rapid cycling, I will say the care has gotten better over the years, but each hospital stay, I can remember vividly, some more than others, and they come to me and these. These thoughts, you know, sticky thoughts, like you like to say. And so I just. It's. It's been. It's been a journey through the last 12 years of trying to find who I am. And it hasn't been until this year, 2020, as I. Oh, and I always said 2019, like, 2020 is going to be my year. It's going to be my year. I'm going to do well. I'm going to start in my own company. I was flourishing. I was growing the company. And then all of a sudden, for six weeks in a row, I went to four different hospitals. I totaled my car. I lost everything. And I am now at a position where you can see my apartment behind me. I have made a living for myself up until this point. But Right now, as Dr. King can attest, I have no job. I am on disability. I am, you know, no car, and I have nothing to my name. You know, I have been stripped of everything. This disorder has, for the first time, finally stripped everything that I've ever had and built myself up to. Away from me. And if I didn't have my faith, I think I probably would have just. I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be here. I think it's safe to say that. And I don't mean to trigger anybody if that's what you struggle with. But I think suicide and mental illness need to be talked about because it's a very serious conversation that people need to have with themselves and to know that you are not your disorder. You are not your illness. You are not a diagnosis. You are a person who has a purpose in life. And you were created for so much more than this, so much more than hearing voices in your head, so much more than having your hands tremble because you have anxiety through the roof. So much more than going up and down and manic and depressive episodes because you're bipolar disorder. You know, if I could get one thing across to somebody today, it's that you are not your illness, and there is hope. So I kind of went all over there and gave you the, you know, the big scoop of everything. But that's. That's a.

That's a really important message, and I'm really grateful that you're expressing the equal bounds of hopelessness and despair. But then the honesty, I think it's much more honest to acknowledge the darkness, like you were saying, as well as the other end of the spectrum of light. And so there is always hope. There's always change that can happen. But it's a matter of finding the right resources. It's a matter of finding what's going to help you in the midst of finding those resources. You talked about your faith. I think spirituality is vitally important for people. And so I appreciate that you're talking about that. And I was wondering, as you're going through these moments, I like the metaphor of the wave view, and I've talked a lot about that. It's like we have these waves that come in and they can overcome us. And it's so encompassing and so painful and so scary. And then those waves do roll out, and then there's periods where it's a little bit lighter, it's a little bit better, and the waves come and go. And I was curious if you could talk about how you are able to be in that wave where it doesn't overtake you. And because you're here today, you're resilient, you're strong. You have a message of hope. Tell me about how you've been able to be in those waves and hold on to that.

Yeah, that's. That's excellent illustration. It's one of my favorites that you and I talk about. But I'll be honest with you and your viewers. I have not always had hope. I have been in some very dark places. Some of you may be in those places now. Some of you may be on your way to those places, some of you may be coming out of those places. The message of hope has always been knitted in me because I'm an optimist. I see the glass half full all the time. I'm not a pessimist and I just don't understand people who are pessimists, you know, because it's like how do you live without hope? Like there's always hope, you know, and it sounds so childlike, but it's not. And it the way that I have survived these waves that come in because as we talked about it's waves, everything comes in waves, you know, and as you discussed so beautifully on the live that you did today, if you didn't see this live, go look it up. Today is May 20th and she did a live and we talked about this at length where you're in the middle of a storm, you're on a buoy and you then fall into the water and use it as a way of not being scared, but as a way of as avoiding on to hope. You focus that on now. You no longer hear the turmoil that's going up above your head and you can focus on you being you and you're in your zone and you're in this place that you're safe, the water is enveloping you, very warm, this beautiful illustration. So go check that out. But the way, the reason I'm bringing that up is because it helps in us talking about this waves module, this waves analogy. The way I see it now, which I've been enlightened to by experience, is you ride with the wave, you don't fight the wave, you don't let the wave overtake you, but you ride with it. And in riding with the wave, it'll take you on a journey that you may. It could be, it could be a self discovery journey. It could be a journey of discovering who God is or who whatever you, your higher power, your universe, whatever that is for you. It could be just a self introspection and introspective way of looking at yourself when you're riding this wave. Because the reason that we talk about the wave analogy is because my diagnosis is bipolar disorder type 1 rapid cycling, which means I cycle very rapidly. I'm up, down, up, down. Some days I'm woohoo. Some days I'm oh, I'm depressed. I'M in bed. Thankfully, I'm more manic than, than depressed because I don't think I could do depression very well. And Dr. K knows we've been through some series of depressive episodes in my life where it was. It seemed like I had no hope. And honestly, I'll speak on that because I think that's going to really hit a point with some of you guys. I am not a depressed person. As you can see. I'm, you know, not depressed at all. So for me to struggle with depression, maybe you can't see that on me, but I can tell you happened. And Dr. Kane can attest to that because I went down into a depressive hole for about four to six months. If you remember back in 2017, you remember that when I was after an eight month hospital stay, it was eight months of consecutive hospital stays. Each one was a week to 10 days, 7 to 10 days. This is very extensive and very traumatic and very difficult for someone to experience and go through and come out feeling sane and feeling like you aren't a mistake. You know, I believe the lie. I was a mistake. Nothing's ever gonna help me. I got into this mental headspace where I just then drilled down into a hole into a spiral of depression. And it wasn't until November. So that was March of, March of, excuse me, March 13, 2017. I even remember the date because it's etched in my brain. And from March 13, 2017 until that November, so the third month to the 11th month, that's eight months of a depressive cycle that nothing, not even the best remedy on the world could help. But what it was, was it was deep down in my soul in conjunction with remedies and medication. So, you know, there is places for both of those. But it felt like nothing could help me. You know, the remedies were never gonna help nothing. That's the lies that I was hearing in my head. The remedies aren't gonna help. Your medications aren't gonna help. You're gonna be stuck like this for the rest of your life. You're never gonna get out of it. And guess what happened? Something in me held on to hope. And hope was a silver lining. If you've ever seen the movie Silver Lining Playbook with Bradley Cooper and this is not a sponsor for that movie, we are not affiliated with them. But it bring of dealing with someone who is struggling with the effects of bipolar disorder. And it's like that silver lining. So somewhere etched inside of my being was the silver lining playbook of hope and I started to see the light of day come around November, which was right around Thanksgiving. I've had a lot of grief in my life and a lot of loss in my life. And I think that's part of why I struggled with that depressive episode, because I hadn't ever dealt with grief in a proper way. I was afraid to feel because feeling and feeling emotions and getting emotional, I identified with mania. So in that depressive state, I didn't ever. I was feeling those emotions, but it was not manic. It was depressive. So I wasn't able to cope properly because my coping mechanisms are smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, having rampant sex, whatever. You know, all the classic things that they tell you, you need to avoid alcohol. There's all this stuff. All of my coping mechanisms were so negative for so long. So that that deep depressive episode, I had to hold on to hope. And it finally turned around and we finally came out of it. And I've never had one that bad since. I have struggled with depression because sometimes the medication that I'm on does bring me down a little bit, but that's where the remedies help, and we come back up into a balance in a state of homeostasis. So I hope that answered your question.

It does. And so we're to kind of circle back. We're talking about when those moments are really difficult, when that swell overtakes you. And I was asking you about, how do you. How do you just hold on? How do you get through those moments? And you're talking about hope. You just have to hold on to hope. And the other thing I want to emphasize that you said that I think is really important is that you're emphasizing to not resist it, to just let it happen, let it flow over you. And there's a quote that I like to tell people. It's like what we resist will persist. And if we just allow the feeling to come, allow ourselves to experience, Experience that feeling and think about it as data, I think that's quite a lot more empowering. As opposed to feeling like we have to. We have to force it to go away or force it to stop. And so when you're having a really intense emotion and you're observing it coming in, and you're not forcing it to go one direction or the other, you're just noticing it. How do you do that? What are your. What advice would you give to someone who's like, what the heck? That's a foreign term to me, as you're experiencing these big swells of emotion and Your wisdom is that we can't force it to stop, that we can't or shouldn't try to change it. But rather, your advice, and I think this is really wise, is to just let the emotion happen and notice it and acknowledge it as data. Data. And the example that you gave is that you hadn't gotten to feel for a really long time, and now you're having these extreme feelings. So how did you do that? So if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, Jared and Dr. Kane are telling me to just sit in this emotion, and somebody may be listening who's incredibly anxious and freaking out, and.

Have you seen my hands? I'm with them.

And so intense anxiety or intense despair. And so how do you. How do you do that? What advice would you give to someone who's like, okay, I'm gonna just try to sit in it?

So, okay, I'm with you now, and I hear what you're saying. So I. It's not easy, y'. All. And that's my Southern accent coming out, y'. All. It's not easy by any means. I have learned this. It's taken me 12 years to get where I am today, and in those 12 years, I've learned much. So when I say you need to take this emotion and ride with it, you ride that wave. Think of it like a surfer picture in your head a big wave coming up. And it's a surfer's dream to catch this big wave. And this surfer paddles to it and paddles up with it and then stands up on the board and rides the wave back to shore. If he fights against it, he falls. If he suppresses it. You can't suppress a wave. I mean, you can't. What happens when you try to suppress a wave? You get a feeling in your throat, a lump in your throat. You get a lump in the pit of your stomach. What is that? That's crying. That's tears that just need to come out. That's your emotions needing to be felt. And I know I sound emotional when I'm saying this because it's been such a foreign concept to me to feel emotions and to understand. Jared, it's okay to feel those emotions. And I talk to myself. I will. In my head, I will talk to myself and say, it's okay to feel those emotions. This is what you do. You hold on to it. You hold. This is my water bottle. You hold on to it. And you can either suppress it or you can acknowledge it. You look at it, you feel it. You Acknowledge it, and then you put it away. And it's as easy as that. It's a three step process. You look at it, acknowledge it, feel it, and then put it away. And if that is the. That is the most simple illustration. But it has gotten me through so much. I'll give you a for instance. Today I went to go run an errand. My mother let me borrow her car because she was working from home and I needed to go run to Walgreens. I needed to pick up some toner and some ink and God knows what else I got. I don't remember. That's not important. The point of the matter is as I was listening to this soundtrack by one of my favorite Broadway shows that I've never seen. But I know the soundtrack. It's called I'll Share It. It's Dear Evan Hansen. It's a story about a boy who struggles severely with anxiety. And he talks so fast that he doesn't know how to do anything. He can't shut up because. And so I was listening to this soundtrack today, and I felt this emotion come up and my tears started welling up. Whereas normally I would squelch the emotion, not let tears come up. I'm driving in the car with my sunglasses on, belting out this song that I don't even know all the words to. And I'm just like, you know, da, da, da, da, da. And then all of a sudden I'm like. But it was okay because I felt the emotion and then I let it go. And I took a breath in through the nose, out through the mouth, and I let it go. And Dr. Kane's got a method on this, very helpful. If you close the right nostril and breathe in through the left, and then out through the mouth or out through the nostril, I forget. But that's how you feel. You're allowed. That's why God gave us feelings. You know, we are designed to have feelings. We are emotional beings. Some of us, myself are more in touch with the emotions, as opposed to my father or your father, who never cries, you know, to save his life. Like you said, I can count on five times my father's cried in this life. I'm at 30 years old and five. Five times in 30 years I've seen him cry. It's just different people or different emotions, different emotors, you know. So I hope that helps.

So you acknowledge it, which is the first step, and then you feel it, you express it instead of suppressing it. And then you let it go. You Let the emotion go.

When you let it go, it's not saying like, bye, good to see you later, don't come back. Because sometimes emotions are cyclical, and they will come back like the grief of losing someone. Allow yourself to let it go. And that's when you back up and you see the wave crash against the shore. But guess what? You look behind you, there's another wave. And this could be a wave of joy, you know, or a wave of, I don't know, excitement, you know, that's coming up behind you. But that's how life is. Life comes at us in waves. You know, life is meant to be lived in this deep ocean, not this barricaded, you know, crab net on the shore. You know, we're meant to be in this ocean of emotions and feelings. It's just, what do we do and how do we do with it? And that's where I think cognitive behavioral therapy comes in. To help.

I want to emphasize a point you just made, is talking about how so many of us are afraid of having feelings and having emotions. And we live in a culture right now where if we have a negative emotion, we can just swipe the other direction or swipe past it or mute it or turn it off or change the channel. And I think that cultivating a skill for being in difficult emotions is really important. And so acknowledging it, holding that space, and then you're talking about letting it go, and that's where the sticky factor comes into play. And I think it takes a lot of rehearsal and practice to be able to let something go. And something that you said, I think is really important to also emphasize is that it might keep coming back. And I do a process. It's called the boats technique. I borrowed it from Jack Kornfield, and he does a visualization where if you want to practice this, what you do is you imagine you're sitting on the shore, and there's a lake in front of you or river in front of you, and these boats go by, and each boat represents an emotion or a worry or a feeling. And so when you see that boat, you imagine just sending that emotion onto the boat and then just letting and watching that boat continue going downstream. And what can happen sometimes is that boat may go away and go into the ocean, and then you're free of that experience. And other times, that boat will circle back around and it'll come back. And so the exercise is about noticing that feeling, putting it on the boat, and then allowing that boat to continue going downstream, as opposed to, too a lot of Us have the impulses, I want to blow that boat up, or I want to get on that boat, and I want to just stick into that and be in that. And so the exercise is just imagine yourself on the shore. The boats go by. Put your feelings in the boat, watch them. And so that's the first exercise. The second exercise is the protective box technique, which is where we can mindfully imagine that there's a box at our feet. Thoughts and worries and things that are stuck cycling in our minds and things we can't. We don't have the bandwidth to deal with, or the space or the time or the means, we mindfully put them in that protective box, and then we can come back with a helper or at a time that's better for us to unpack that box and deal with those things there. And so I think you're bringing up a really simple yet powerful process of, okay, here comes the emotion. I'm going to acknowledge it, going to be in that space, and then I'm going to mindfully let it go. And either I'm going to put it in a boat or I'm going to put it in a box and then allow those emotions to come instead of resisting them. So part of your journey, you've been talking about how we've had these swells, we've had these moments. And in bipolar type 1, as opposed to somebody who's dealing with just chronic anxiety, is in bipolar type 1, the symptoms can be quite changeable. And so you're talking about, I'm in this wave. Another wave may be coming. It may be a different type of wave, but I think it's similar in if someone's dealing with panic attacks or a manic episode or major depressive attacks, is just to allow yourself to acknowledge, okay, this wave is coming, and to practice being in that space, acknowledging it, honoring it, and then when you can, to try to put that thought, that emotion and experience away. And I was curious about strategies that you have found to be the most helpful for you. And so you talked about old coping skills like smoking or drinking or distraction. And you've been doing a ton of work over the past several years on growing your skillset, and what has been the most helpful for you?

Things that have been very helpful for me. I've quit smoking cold turkey. I tried to do a nicotine patch. I tried to do nicotine gum. Nicotine gum did help more than the patch. The patch made me feel very angry, believe it or not. I put a patch on and anger would start to Manifest. My body's very sensitive, you know this, but they don't. My body's very sensitive, you guys, to what I put in it. I can't take certain pharmaceutical drugs because they'll set me off in a manic episode. I'll. I'll go off the walls if I have an injection of Celestone or Loratab or anything like that, you know, and I know those things about me. Cigarettes played the same part. Cigarettes would keep me manic, cigarettes would keep me elevated. I smoked on and off for the last 12 years, since I was 18. I learned how to smoke from a friend that I worked with. And do you think quitting has been difficult? Yes, very difficult. So what I've done is it's been, and I'll be honest with you guys, I just recently quit smoking. For on and off the last 12 years. I just quit. It'll be a month ago, day after tomorrow.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot. Because a month of no cigarettes. I literally have not had a cigarette, a cigar, a cigarello any tobacco products in almost a month. And I feel a whole new me now. We're dealing with issues of. Because I'm not smoking, the medicine starting to build up in my system, the pharmaceutical medication starting to build up into my system. And I'm over medicated in some respects. Alcohol, this is what I've done for alcohol. You see me sipping on tea and it's because I brew my tea every morning and then I save the tea bag from the morning, put a new one in for the afternoon. It's my alcohol, it's my whiskey. And I was never an alcoholic. I'm not, I hope I'm not misleading you. I never was an alcoholic. But alcohol was a coping mechanism for me. So I drink tea, I drink tea, I drink these. This is like my wine, it's called ice. I'm not affiliated with them, neither is Dr. Kane. And I drink those when I want a beer or a glass of wine. And I didn't want a glass of wine, I just wanted to drink one. Coping mechanisms for other things that I've struggled with, you know, was, well, I'd rather not get into those. But, you know, I've been successful at finding ways or eliminating ways for me to have access to those coping skills and behaviors that were poor, that kept me in a more elevated manic phase. As you can see, I did my force field.

You just read my mind. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah.

Did I really?

Yes, you just read my mind.

We Are so in sync. We are so in sync. I love it.

Let's talk about force field strategies.

Let's talk about it.

So let me introduce this to people who haven't heard about it before. A force field strategy is something that you can use to create a force field, metaphorically, around you to protect you. And forced field strategies can be used preventatively to help the episodes be less intense, less frequent, and less sticky. And so when I say episodes, I'm referring to panic or depression or even manic episodes. There are things. Yes, and anxiety. And there are things that we can do to help protect ourselves, to help us get into the right space and stay there. And so I love that you did this exercise, because I think it'll really help take a concept and make it more real. And when you guys think about a force field strategy, I want you to imagine a stoplight. There's red, there's yellow, and then there's green. And green is representative of feeling balanced, feeling good, sleeping well, feeling confident. Your body feels calm. It's not revved. Your throat is relaxed. There's no not. And green is when you feel most like yourself. And then yellow is when we start to edge into higher amounts of stress, higher amounts of anxiety, higher amounts of grief, higher amounts of being elevated or agitated. And then if that continues, it can go all the way into the red. And the red is a severe panic attack or a severe manic episode or severe depressive episode. It's the greater and the greatest intensity of symptoms that you have. And so Jared and I were actually talking about this recently, and I drew out example of if you guys do your force field strategies, you have the green, and the green is a continuum, and then the yellow. So there's a very fine line between green and yellow where we're going into good. We're going from good into just a little bit too edgy or a little bit too high or a little bit too.

A little wonky.

A little wonky. We're on that. We're the wonky line. And then we're. We're clear into the yellow zone. And then there's that second wonky line where we're, like, getting into red, and then red can go up to the extreme. So tell me what. Tell me about your force field. I'd love to hear about it.

Okay, so I don't have a problem. Hold on. Let me make sure I don't have a problem showing this, because. All right.

Or you can just talk through it.

I know, I know. No, but I want to see them, because, I mean, I want them to see it because it's, you know, how I learn. I'm very tactile, kinesthetic, how I learn. And so, you know, if there's anybody else out there that can't picture it or can't hear it, I want to be able to make sure we get to them. So this is mine. The lighting. I have a light on behind me. So can you see it? Okay?

I do, yep. You have the green and the yellow and then the red. And then you wrote stable in the green. And then tell me more about what you've written, especially if people listen to the audio and they can't see it.

Absolutely. So I have a green continuum. Yellow continuum says elevated, and the red continuum says manic and then psychotic. Underneath, they're written on top of each other because that is what my life can look like. I can be stable. I can be elevated. I can be manic, psychotic. And that's the stages of digression that we go into. So the first sign that I could be crossing over into the elevated side from the stable side or the side of stability is. Is. I'm sorry, I can't read backwards. Mental stimulation. So mental stimulation for. For those of you that don't know me, which is everyone, probably, I am in the middle of taking a course in cognitive behavioral therapy to become a practitioner. So mental stimulation is something I haven't done since college. And we noticed a few days ago when I started this course that I started having stimulation in the back of the head, which exhibited in a form of tingling, of such excitement, you know, was a big thing. High emotions were a big thing. And that. That goes into what can start to happen in the elevated section, which is anger and extreme emotions. I was getting upset with the smallest things with my parents, my family, my support system, even with my church. I have a church family who I'm very connected with. And I was beginning to experience these extreme emotions. And I was like, what is, like, out of control? Not like the way that we just described. You know, it was out of control emotions. So then what can happen as I progress into this next stage in the elevated stage is pressured speech, which is down here. For those of you following along on the video. Pressured speech is talking a mile a minute, and I can't do it when I'm stable. So that's a sign that I am stable, that I am not in that state. But elevated speeches. Oh, my gosh. How are you doing today, Dr. K? Thank you so much for taking my Call. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Yay, we're doing this. That's pressured speech for me. Now, granted, it doesn't always have those emotions in it. It's just me speaking at a much higher elevated rate, which is a big sign that I'm heading towards mania and psychosis. Crossing over into the. Wait, what's the beginning of. Losing touch with reality is the last step for me before crossing over into the red. I start to get hyper spiritual. I may see or hear things, you know, a little bit of schizophrenia comes in and somatic imagery and all that kind of stuff in the negative sense happens. And then the manic psychotic stage is the only way for me now to get back there. If I ever want to go back to that red stage, which I don't, and I don't know who would wanted to go back if there would be everything that I just discussed. I have abstained from cigarettes, sex, alcohol, drugs, rock and roll. Like, you know, I mean, that's. That's a surefire way to get me to go manic psychotic and end up in a hospital. So that's. That's a quick walk through, you know, my little. I'll show you one more time, that's a quick walk through my continuums of the force field strategy, you know, that we worked on, that I. This is, this is me. I put the work into this one. Dr. Kane has done hers, you know, and it's just, it's brilliant. It's put a visual aid for me to be able to see how did I get from where I came from and how do I stop myself from going back there ever again?

I think that's really empowering because sometimes it's sneaky. It can sneak up on us. And so I'll do my force field strategy and I'm going to do it now with you guys so that you can see an experience of it. And so I showed you just the general picture. And when I go out of balance, I tend towards anxiety. And I think it's important also to talk about the language that we use. That's like Jared said in the beginning, loves, you are not your diagnosis. You are not bipolar, you are not anxiety, you are not depression. These are symptoms that you need support. These are parts. And so when I'm out of balance, I have parts that express that out of balance by producing anxiety. And so signs that I'm feeling really good is I feel confident. And I'll write that down. Confident, relaxed, I feel connected. And then I can sleep well and Then signs that I'm going into yellow is my body always tells me first. And it's like this sense of pressure in my chest, and that's like, the wonky zone is. My wonky zone is a little favorite word. Wonky I really like that is that's when I am not quite anxious yet, but if we can. And it's another word for it is a canary. It's like you were saying, it's like you're well into the yellow when you're. When your speech is pressured. But in that canary, that, like, little wonky zone, if we can catch that moment, then we can stop you from going into yellow and into red. So I have pressure in my chest. That happens first. And then as I become more anxious, I get restless, I get very annoyed, and then I feel like, constriction in the throat like you were talking about.

Yeah, that comes around a lot for me when I'm in the yellow or if I'm suppressing an emotion, which, you.

Know, happens, and that could push us into the yellow is suppressing completely. And then I need to identify my second wonky zone. I think that's a really good thing to sit down and try to identify that. Because what is the tipping point for me to get into sheer panic? And I think of times when I get into sheer panic is getting on an airplane is really difficult for me. So, like, when I'm in a state of sheer panic, it's like burning. I know some of our warriors have talked about burning and tingling. And I know, like, some people have told me that they get burning in their tongue and in their mouth and their face and their skin, and that's my panic symptoms. And so burning and tingling. So what we want to do is we want to identify what we look like and we feel like in each area. Then the second part of the force field is to give us a directional correction. And so above.

I like that word.

Yeah, directional correction. And so we want to create momentum towards the green and away from the yellow and away from the red. And so there are a few tips for directional correction. So if at any point that you notice, okay, I'm getting into the wonky zone, or, oh, wow, my parts are telling me they're really out of bounds. There are several categories. And so if you guys are all taking notes, I'm going to write them with you. So, number one, you should be.

I do that on every one of your podcasts. I take notes when I hear something. I like that you say that I like.

I can't remember it if I don't write it down. Right, you got to take notes. And so one is emotional work. And that could be anything from, like, Jared was talking about CBT earlier, seeing a spiritual mentor, watching these kinds of videos and taking notes and doing the exercises. The seven Day Freedom Challenge is an example. So doing your emotional work. Number two is sleep. And so when I get into my wonky zone, I know that if I don't make sure that I sleep, it's going to be a problem and I'm going to escalate. So the question that often comes up is, okay, well, I have insomnia as a part of my anxiety, or I have insomnia as a part of my mania. How do I make myself sleep? And so, Jared, before I kind of tell people about what I do to help asleep, tell me what has been the most helpful for you.

And that's a topic we talk frequently about between you and I on our patient visits. So I'll share a little insight about what we talk about with them now. And that's. Guys, frequently I don't sleep. The thing that my doctor has told me about bipolar disorder is while the normal human. I hate using that word, normal. The average human thinks two to three thoughts at a time. A person who's got the type of bipolar that I have and the diagnosis that I have, bpd, which is a whole nother story, but he's like, you think two to 300 thoughts at a time. And I'm like, yeah, that's pretty much how it's been my whole life. So I've had trouble sleeping more recently, not less recently because of these things that I do. I practice mindfulness. I write down things that are bothering me. I write down things that I need to talk to Dr. King about. I mean, look, I'll show you guys this. You know, this is the. We talked. When we talked about doing this zoom the other day, I was writing down issues that we needed to talk about. These are my notes for her that I brought up in a visit. You know, these are all the notes, but these things come at the most random times. And you know what? We need to train ourselves that when it's time to go to sleep, we need to stop doing things that are going to stimulate us. Put your phone down, take a nice bath or a shower. Make some tea that has. There's a tea that's sold by Whole Foods. Again, not affiliated, but it's called Nighty Night, Anything with Lavender. And it works really well. And then also, if you find that you've gotten yourself to the state where you're about to go to sleep. What works for me if my thoughts keep running, which they kind of did last night, I'll be honest with you, Dr. Kane, but I ended up being able to calm them down. And I visualize my brain getting turned off. This is something that helps before the last final step I'm going to share with you guys. The thing I do before this last step is I visualize a guy running around in my brain and just shutting the different departments down. If you've seen the movie Inside out by Disney, very helpful in visualizing what I'm talking. Great movie by the way too. And it's just visualizing this person running around in my head and turning all these different things off. And then next thing I know I'm asleep. And then the next thing I know at 7:30 in the morning. I've slept wonderfully the last couple of weeks, really some nights on and off. But you know, for the most part, I've wonderfully slept. The last step that I'm going to leave with you guys on this particular part is melatonin. Liquid melatonin helps like nobody's business when I absolutely can't fall asleep. 16,000 milligrams of melatonin and I'm out for the next month. No, I do recommend like 3 to 4 to 5 milligrams is what I would do. That helps me sleep. So. But that's just. That's a case by case basis, you.

Know, And I'm writing, I'm writing this all down. And to emphasize is mindfulness. I call it brain dumping. Journaling, which is what you're talking about is just like everything in your brain, even if it doesn't make sense, just dump it onto a piece of paper, write it down. I like that you're talking about sleep hygiene. Turning the screens off an hour before bed, a hot shower, a sleepy tea that you like. I love the visualization. The person running around and shutting off the things.

I think is turning off all the lights like you do in your real house. Just imagine you turn off every light in your house before you go to bed. You know, imagine somebody turning off the lights in your brain and then the next thing you know, it's like counting sheep. You're out.

That's amazing.

It sounds crazy, but it works. And I'm amazing. Who has struggled with quote unquote insomnia, you know, I mean, it's insane. It works.

I love that. And I feel like we could do a Whole episode on sleep. Because it's such a profound. It's a profound issue for a lot of people.

Absolutely.

It's very healing and very important. And so we can definitely expand on this more. We could do a live about this. And I want to get through the rest of our force fields before we run out of time together. So we talked about doing emotional work, we talked about sleep, and then the next one is relationships. And I think it's really important to do an audit of our relationships and to identify who in my life lifts me up, who in my life can speak truth to me, who in my life is triggering to me, who's an antagonist in my story, and who are my protagonists. And so I think that relationships are profoundly important. I know in my life, one of my greatest mirrors is my husband. And if I'm getting a little bit short and agitated with him, if he expresses that to me, I could be like, oh, yeah, I wasn't even noticing that wonky factor, that pressure in my chest. I'm already in the yellow zone. Having those relationships and having that trust that they can give you, that feedback is really helpful. Having a counselor or a therapist or a spiritual mentor might be an example of that. Things like this, where people get it, I think is really helpful. Like you're saying, Jared, is you're able to speak with experience and authenticity, and people know that you're being honest when you express, you know, these are tips that have helped me because you've actually been there. And so I think that you were making a joke. But I think it's really important to have people like you who get it. Exercise is really important. And I was talking with somebody yesterday about exercise. And there's a type of exercise that'll be right for your nervous system. And listening to your body is really important. And so some people, when they exercise, they feel more revved and they feel the same feelings of anxiety, or it can make them more in the yellow or the red zone. And so listening to your body on the type of exercise is important. Whether you need to do something more like a yoga nidra, which is a relaxing, stretching yoga versus going for a run. What have you found has been helpful for you?

Yeah, that's a great point for me. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. It's walking. I walk, but I walk with music in my ears. So my headphones like these always in my ears when I'm walking. And I have specific songs picked out to promote faster walking because of the beat and the rhythm. It's a Faster. And it's pick me up songs. Because who wants to walk and be like, I don't want to do this. No, you want to walk, you want to exercise. So you get a song that's going to pump you up. I used to run, but I have bad knees now and can't. So this is my form of exercise that I do. That's what I do when I want to get my blood going. It's one of the first things I do when my feet hit the floor. In the morning as I get dressed, I go for my walk, I brush my teeth, maybe I'll have a cup of tea and then I'll go for a walk. But if I want to calm myself down, because like you said, one of the things is it could put us into the yellow or red zone exercise. And I have noticed that with me, sometimes I get a little too excited. I start slipping into the yellow and I think to make a point real quick before I tell what this particular thing is, if you don't mind. People think it's stages. Once the light is green, then the light is yellow, then the light is red. No, you can flow in and out of these stages, these continuums. You're not just stuck in one particular continuum. You can flow in and out of these quickly. As someone, that's what my diagnosis is, is type 1 rapid cycling. I cycle in and out real quick of any. I could be full blown manic and then calm myself down. I mean, that's not realistic. Most of the time you need medication or remedy to help with that. But just to prove a point. So when I am in the red or the yellow, one thing that I will be mindful of doing is Tai Chi because it focuses on the breath and it focuses on simple movements and it focuses on you. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and then we go over into. It's all very calm and still. And one thing I noticed by the time I'm done doing five minutes of Tai Chi is that I'm no longer in the red or the yellow stage. I'm back at stable.

I love Tai Chi. That's so good. I always forget to mention that. Thank you for bringing that up because it's one of the best tools. There are three more. So we've talked about emotional work, sleep, relationships. Exercise number five is nutrition. And nutrition we can think about in a couple of different ways. There are ways that we can eat that can heal the gut, or there are ways that we can eat that can be inflammatory for the gut. And we Know that there's a strong relationship between the gut brain access. We've also seen that the way that our body and our genetics processes food can create an impact on our emotional well being. And so, for example, some people, they don't process seafood and sulfites very well. And so eating a bunch of that can cause metabolic instability, it can cause mood changes. And then we've seen in the research that the diet that seems to be the best for bipolar anxiety and panic disorder is the Mediterranean diet. And so finding what works best for your body is really important with nutrition.

Absolutely.

I like your dance.

I mean, because that's, I don't know, that's my Mediterranean dance. I've got this.

You're Mediterranean.

That's been very inspiring. And Indian is not Mediterranean, but I'm like, this is my Mediterranean dance.

I love it, I love it. Mediterranean is awesome. And for individuals who aren't familiar with that, it's very high in omega 3 fatty acids, like fish. And make sure if you're buying fish that it's wild, Alaskan, fresh caught cold water fish instead of warm fish that's been farmed. And so the last two are timing and medicine. And timing is important. And Jared, you touched on this in the beginning is that if we're finding like the timing is you started a new program, like you're starting this new CBT program. And so knowing, okay, in this time there's more stimulation, you were feeling it in your occiput. There's this time may be a time when I need to do more of my force field strategies. And some people, they find that they get more anxious in the winter. And so that timing may be when they need to use their force field strategies. Or people could be very cyclical, especially women in their hormone cycles are cyclical. Days of the week are cyclical. And so I think knowing when you're building out your green, yellow, red and putting timing in there so that we know, like, okay, I started a new job, this may be a time where I need to use more force field strategies or I'm starting a new career, or I'm starting a new exercise routine, or it's the fall, like that's always hard for me is keep in mind the timing so that we can extra employee support. And then the last one is medicine. And I think that there's a very important relationship between the pharmacological prescription realm and complementary and alternative medicine. And Jared, you've touched on that too. Like using your pharmaceuticals can be really great and stabilizing. But Then remedies have also been game changing. You talked about supplements that are really helpful for you. And so I think using smart pharmacology and using smart remedies is so important. And some of my patients or consultees will call and they're like, I am having a manic episode. Is there an herb? And I will tell them, I'll be like, let's just do a rescue dose of your medication. And then we'll find a nerve underneath of it or other people, which we've.

Had to do, you and I, you know, which is important. It is, Mark. Pharmacology. The problem is, don't be scared of. Because I'm very. I'll tell you for myself, I'm very fearful of the fact that I may need to be on medication the rest of my life. You know, instead of bipolar people that they don't like taking their medication, I take seven pills a night. Yeah, I don't like taking them because I don't like what they do to me because my body's so sensitive. And like we've talked about processes. Just like we process food, we process medication very differently too, because each body is different. We have found out a lot about how my body processes medication. And I don't respond to it the best. It's the remedies that I do respond the best to. But there is a marriage relationship that is happening between the two of them right now that is beautifully working into why I am my true self, my stable self right now, if that's what makes sense.

So what we're both emphasizing, what I hear, is that finding a synergy, a marriage between the both of them can be really profoundly helpful. And using the force field strategies can work to help you keep the medication levels down. Like you were saying in the beginning, like if you were smoking cigarettes, then your metabolism of the medications will change. The way your brain is processing, your neurotransmitters will change, and your dosages were going to have to change. And so by using these force field strategies, you're going to be more able to keep yourself in the green zone and not need the medications to do that as much. And so I think that this goes back to the beginning. That message that you had that you wanted to share is there is hope. Force field strategies are a part of it, and having connections with other people are part of it. What else do you want to make sure that people hear in terms of, like, your message, your mission that you want to share?

Sorry, I'm feeling an emotion right now. Just because of what you just, you know, it's. This is the last word I want to leave you guys with and that you're not alone and the best is yet to come. Forgive me. I'm allowing myself to do what we talked about today. I'm feeling this emotion and I'm feeling it in front of you because I think it's valid and necessary for you to see this. Because I thought I was alone. I tried to kill myself. I thought I was alone and I didn't think there was hope and that the best, the worst, was yet to come. I'm here to tell you as a product of Dr. Nicole Cain and Dr. Nicholas Vergara, who worked beautifully together on behalf of me, my psychiatrist, and my naturopathic doctor, there is hope and you're not alone. And the best is yet to come.

Thank you so much for being here, Jared, and for that message of hope. I honor you, I love you and I'm grateful for you.

Right back at you, Dr. Kane.

Thank you everyone for listening. To learn more about the things that we talked about today, we're going to have information posted in the private Facebook group, the Engine Anxiety One Week Freedom Challenge, the Warriors Group, and then I have a ton of blogs and free content on my website, which is www.Dr.nicolecane.com. we have a ton of information coming out in podcasts and so keep an eye on what we're doing. Subscribe and if this would help anybody that you know or love, please share it with them. Thank you so much for being a part of this. And Jared, thank you for sharing your story and message of hope.

Always. Dr. Kane, thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening. This has been Dr. Nicole Kane. Today we interviewed bipolar warrior Jared and his mission is to go beyond the formula for bipolar disorder treatment in mental health. His passion is the message that you are not your diagnosis. His personal hope, conviction and continued tenacity definitely provide me with inspiration that you can truly get your life back. If you want more free information on how to get your life back, check out my website@www.Dr.nicolecane.com. you can send us questions, learn about consulting with me, direct and even preview our online courses. There is a course on bipolar disorder coming soon, so stay tuned for that. And now for the disclaimer.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Caine, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical psychology. While these opinions are based upon literature, her counseling, education, medical training and clinical experience. Experience this content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911-OR call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area. Area Dr. Nicole Kane is so passionate about people getting their life back. If this resonates with you and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. Stay in the conversation with Dr. Nicole Cain about writing the next chapter of your life so that it plays out just the way you want it. Explore your options for working with her at www. Dr. Nicolecane.com that's Dr. Dr. R Nicole N I C O L E Cain C-A-I n.com when you're there, be sure to take advantage of the Free Anxiety Freedom One week Challenge. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the get your life Back podcast. Here's to your next chapter.

SA.