"On Healing" April 2005

Posted on Mon, Apr. 18, 2005
Bipolar patient feels angry and alone
By Dan Gottlieb

Dear Dr. Dan: I am a young woman who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder nearly 10 years ago. But I manage to work and am in a relationship.

Yet I struggle daily with feelings of isolation and anger. Somewhere along the way, I lost my ability to make friends. It's embarrassing and shameful. I feel as if I've been deprived of the one thing in life that is supposed to be really important.

I do see a therapist and am on medication, but even on my good days, I feel empty. I can't fill this hole that I have inside. And it's killing me.
- Alone and lonely

[I wanted to know more about this hole she feels inside and why she is trying so hard to fill it. She added this:]

"The hole has to do with feeling that nothing I do matters. And it's got to do with being lonely and feeling different from others. I don't feel as if my life means too much, the way I live it now. This is not really living; it's surviving and I know that life is more than that."

Dear Alone: Some of your suffering could stem from the bipolar disorder. I know it's easy to blame everything on one thing, but feeling unimportant, anxious and angry could be symptoms of depression.

You are also describing classic symptoms of social anxiety, which is quite treatable.

But let's look beyond the brain at your very human struggles. Your letter begins with themes of anger and isolation. That tells me that you are fighting either with your environment or with yourself. Often anger is a reaction to a more tender emotion. In your case, I would guess that under the anger is longing for relief from the lonely, empty feelings.

But feeling alone and empty inside are just facts that don't automatically cause suffering. And like most people, you look for a way to end that suffering.

Perhaps much of your pain is because you are fighting against yourself and your life. Internally, you might be fighting with your illness or your personality. That makes sense. But the question becomes what is causing your suffering? Is it your life or is it your fighting against your life? My initial advice is to stop fighting.

Once you do that, you might find yourself sitting with some pretty difficult feelings. Perhaps you will feel grief about your diagnosis, or that painful aloneness that goes with feeling alienated. Once you can tolerate these emotions, you will discover that you are just a young woman who is suffering in this moment. This is the beginning of compassion for yourself. You don't have to change anything; all you have to do is experience today's life with genuine caring.

To do this, start by just noticing that you are fighting and feeling pain. Then notice the critical voice inside. Then observe your entire being through caring eyes. This is not self-pity or self-absorption. This is just being aware of your experience - and caring.

This is a new kind of thinking, and might take years to perfect. But it takes only a moment to begin. If you can interrupt the cycle of suffering with a moment of compassion, you have begun a critical process.

None of this may change your sense of being small or unimportant, but it will diminish the suffering. And once that happens, you may feel more a part of the human family.

So you and your therapist may want to check your medication and explore cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety. And stop fighting. Have faith in the health and sanctity of your own being. As you embark on this journey, I think you will meet many kindred spirits.

Posted on Mon, Apr. 04, 2005
Emotions? We can all manage them
By Dan Gottlieb

Last month the journal Nature published research showing that women are more genetically complex than men and that our differences are greater than we thought.

That could have been published in the Journal of Duh!

The old joke about men knowing eight different colors while women note 20 is pretty close to true. We men are either incapable of keeping the subtleties in our heads, or we just don't care about them.

We know we are different. And we are learning more about how we are different. So what? Perhaps the more important question is what we have done about these differences in the past and what we can do about them in the future.

Over the last several thousand years, women have been oppressed, repressed and suppressed by religion, law and social mores. Until recently in this country, women couldn't vote, rarely went to college, and lived in a culture where spouse abuse was quietly condoned. Even today women do not receive equal pay for equal work.

Most social scientists agree that racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are based on fear of something that confuses or frightens us. So in the face of that fear, we are inclined to act aggressively.

And I think that's true. For men. A man's primordial instinct is to perceive difference as danger and react. But women, with their chromosomal complexity, are more likely to react with curiosity, not aggression. They are more likely to move toward understanding.

This difference may help explain what men have done to women over the millennia. We oppress women because we fear them. And we are afraid for many reasons including our physical attraction to them.

But most certainly we are afraid of their emotions. The Salem witch trials were triggered by a young girl who had a seizure and made emotional outbursts. Others apparently caught this fever and behaved in similar ways.

Extremely emotional women have been called "hysterical," based on the Greek term hystera, which means uterus. Before Freud, it was thought that women who were very emotional had a floating uterus. And the prescribed treatment was often pregnancy in order to anchor the uterus and ultimately control the emotions.

Because of our ignorance, we blamed women for everything from autism to schizophrenia. Then we discovered the magic of mood management through pharmaceuticals. Librium and Valium were seen as "mother's little helpers." Many women actually suffered severe depression and anxiety, and medication often helped. But many drugs were used in the service of men's anxiety about women's emotions.

And now many marital therapists are trying to help couples by teaching men how to be more like women and get in touch with their deepest feelings. Won't work. Remember, eight colors.

Over the last 30 years, and along with their mothers, I have been involved in the raising of three sets of girls. And, after being exposed to these different kinds of women, I am prepared to share with my male readers the most important lesson I learned:

They are only emotions!

We really don't have to be afraid of them, control them, make them better, or explain them. They are just feelings.

I know most of us were taught that to be a good man, everyone in the family must be well cared for and therefore happy and content. So if someone is upset, that means we are not doing our jobs. But if we just listen, honestly try to understand, and care about the person speaking, most of the time things calm down, and a dialogue begins.

For thousands of years, we have been doing whatever we could to manage feelings that overwhelm us. But the more we try to manage them, the bigger the emotions get. When we get defensive, the feelings get bigger. And when we deny they exist, the problems get larger still.

When an emotion makes us uncomfortable, that means someone we care about is in distress. Saying nothing and listening carefully can be the most courageous things we can do.

Our Partners and Sponsors