Moodathon Athlete

                I've discovered my next prescription thought to help me! It's called "Moodathon Athlete". What do athletes do with their mind while they are competing that I might be able to use while I am on my own moodathon? Luckily I have a friend who is a marathon athlete. I asked him what he does and he said on his last race he focused on his previous training as motivation to continue. He knew that he had already been there and that he could consequently continue pushing till the end of the race. This immediately affected my own mood. I thought about all the times in my life where I had been low and that if I could do it then, I can do it now.

He also explained that he used distractions near the end of his race to get his mind off of the pain and fatigue that he was experiencing. I too use distractions to help me when I am feeling down. Distractions are a handy tool in your thought-box to have on hand. But they can't make up the sum and substance of your tools. 

High performance athletes certainly have some ideas to offer me. This got me thinking who else might have thought tools to help me fight my illness. Immediately, I thought of astronauts. What do they do with their thinking to remain so resilient and focused in the face of difficulties?

Integration by Parts

             There are three different sides to my soul. Integration by parts is a method to bring those parts together as one. It's a very strange experience. Progress can be made by focusing purely on thought. The depressed side of my soul has a set of thoughts that corresponds with it. As do my other two moods. It wasn't until I started examining these three sets of thought that I was able to start having centered thoughts while I was manic or depressed. Depression is hyper-focused on the past and the future. Mania is hyper-focused on the present. And a centered mood focuses a little bit on all three directions in time. However, there's more to it than just that. Mania is an almost unrestricted uninhibited state of mind, whereas depression is completely restricted and bounded as if there are no options, hence the despair.

I've found that I can artificially have centered thoughts while I’m depressed or manic. It is as if I am integrating the various parts of my soul by depositing the thoughts that mark the other states of mind into places where they previously were not occurring. Much to my surprise and delight, mania while under the influence of centered thoughts begins to restrict itself and think about responsibilities. And depression while under the influence of centered thoughts doesn't find itself trapped by the circumstances of my life.

Always Bring Something Home

Altering the course of your moods isn't a simple task. When I discovered this prescription thought I was experiencing mania. I had decided to stop drinking alcohol and I didn't know that my decision would have that effect. Alcohol is a depressant. So, it actually does make sense. I wasn’t worried though. It became obvious to me that I had never actually tried to understand mania, in other words, its mechanics. How does it work? What are the mechanisms behind this mood that make it so unruly? By asking these questions I began making enormous progress. And that's because my thinking changed. No longer was I the victim. When I experience any mood, I'm always bringing something home with me. I'm bringing home insights, observations, theories, anything that I can use to turn right back around and change my future. Look at your moods as research opportunities not unfortunate events.

Mooded, Mooding, and Mood-Furcation

The idea behind this prescription thought is to gain a better understanding of your illness past present and future. Moods are a lot like music. They are abstract and spread out through time. What I realized is there are smarter ways to think about my past present and future. I need to stop thinking about my past with regret, see the present as precious, and the future as open to my design. So, I came up with these concepts to help me do so.

Mooded is the ordered sequence of all moods I've experienced from birth until the present moment. I could in theory create a graph that shows the sequence of moods I've experienced from birth until the present moment. If the sequence is accurate I could use that data to help myself open up the future to new possibilities. What I've realized is that my past isn't something to run from. It is the single most important data mine that I have available to me. And it is vitally important to my ability to design my future that I keep accurate record of my moods.

Mooding, is the mood you are experiencing at present. Mooding is precious because it is an opportunity to do research on that mood. I had a manic episode shortly after discovering this prescription thought and I actually wasn't upset I was experiencing mania. Why? Because it was an opportunity to better understand mania so that in the future I can prevent it if I so desire. Mooding is where the action is at and it is always worth being in your present mood.

            Finally, Mood-furcation is the set of all possible ordered mood sequences I might encounter in the future. In mathematics, bifurcation is the splitting off of something into two paths. Think of your past as a sequence of moods up until the present moment and think of your future as a tree branching out from the present moment into four possible states of being which are sleep (S), depression (D), centered (C), and mania (M). Once it occurred to me to think of my future as a tree branching off in many directions I'm now invigorated with enthusiasm! There are so many possibilities! I'm not doomed. I can handle this without a doubt. What mood is going to come next? It's very exciting.

Put A Fence Around It

“Put a Fence Around It” is a way of thinking about Mania and Depression while you are manic or depressed. Consider the following analogy. Suppose you have a dog and a fenced yard. You leave your dog in the yard while you go to work. When you get back from work what can you expect? You can expect your dog to still be contained within the confines of your fence. However, it is uncertain what your dog did during those hours you were gone. Within this bounded region there exists uncertainty. Your yard is like your moods and your mind is like your dog. Mania and depression are bounded events in time despite their encompassing chaotic behavior. Each mood definitely has a beginning and an end regardless of the uncertain behavior of your mind within that mood. However, to help you gain certainty over the duration of your moods you must “fence your yard.”

 An imaginary “fence” can be constructed around your mood by actively predicting its duration while you are experiencing the mood. It's very easy while you are depressed or manic to forget that these things have beginnings and ends with or without your conscious prediction. These feelings as I’m sure you already know can be all consuming. You might feel like light trying to escape the event horizon of a black hole. There's no turning back despite travelling at the greatest possible speed in precisely the opposite direction. The gravity of these feelings becomes so immense that time itself becomes warped. A minute can feel like an hour and hours can feel like minutes.

When I came up with “Put a Fence Around It” I created a running tally of my moods on an Xcel spread sheet. However, I decided to add the mood called centered. I call it centered because it's somewhere in-between mania and depression. Centered turns out to be my dominant state of mind at least in terms of the amount of time that I experience it. However, the other two moods are so much more powerful than being centered. So they must be weighted in terms of their contributions. The amount of energy required to be either depressed or manic is greater per unit of time than being centered.

Prescription Thoughts for Manic-Depression

Cell-phones used to have only one function. They were hardwired to operate in one and only one way. Now cell-phones are computers. They serve multiple purposes and can even be repurposed by downloading new software that expands their functionality. Cell-phones or any computing machine with these kinds of capabilities are called universal machines. They can simulate any computer with a fixed program. In an abstract sense, both you and I are universal machines. As part of our input we accept data that describes the operation of other minds. The knowledge that you will encounter here is precisely of this nature. It is a collection of ways of thinking that you can “download” that will make up the difference that prescription medication alone cannot make. I have never been able to by force of will improve my mental health. There were times in my life when I believed I could. I had a very strong will before my diagnosis. It subsequently was irrevocably shattered.

Bipolar disorder used to be called manic-depression. Mania and depression are fairly easy to distinguish between because they are essentially polar opposites of each other. Thoughts and moods have a distribution or a shape spread out over time. Some ideas or memories I’ve discovered are "stored" or only occurred in conjunction with specific states of mind or moods. I have manic thoughts or depressed thoughts and mostly won’t remember those thoughts until I am depressed again or manic. It used to be the case that I would make changes to my soul frequently but then I couldn’t remember the work that I had done until I found myself in the same state of mind. Even after years of dedication to my prescription regiment I was still trying to pick up the pieces of my mind and restore continuity to my soul. It's humbling to realize that when you go to sleep tonight you won't be picking up where you left off today.

However, my confidence was restored when I discovered that I have a saving grace. The universe has blessed me and you with something very valuable and especially given our circumstance i.e. that we suffer from mental illness. Intelligence has some kind of protective effect when it comes to bipolar disorder. As IQ increases the likely hood of someone who is bipolar needing hospitalization decreases. My experience has shown me that I can't fight my illness and win, nor can I be proactive and defeat it with strength of spirit. It seems my only option is to outsmart it! But how does one handle fixing a broken mind with the very mind that is broken? It’s not easy but it can be done. The main idea here is to use intelligence not force and the problems you face will begin to reveal their secrets.

Prescription medication takes center stage in most of the literature on bipolar disorder. What I realized I was lacking was medicine in the form of pure thought. There are no manuals written specifically for my thoughts, no words to show me how to live with this illness in my mind. From the date of my diagnosis until the day that I began working on prescription thoughts not my psychiatrist, religious leaders, friends, others with bipolar disorder, or online sources and books had any ideas to share regarding what I need to do with my thinking in order to restore continuity to my soul and gain dominance over my illness. Since no one had produced medicine in the form of words for me, I decided to do it myself.

The Product Rule (Calculus)

Assume u = f(x) and v = g(x) are both positive differentiable functions.  Then the product uv can be interpreted as the area of a rectangle. If x changes by an amount △x, then the corresponding changes in u and v are 

△u = f(x + △x) - f(x) and △v = g(x + △x) - g(x)

And the value of the product (u + △u)(v + △v) can be interpreted as the area of the largest rectangle above. The change in the rectangle then is 

△(uv) = (u + △u)(v + △v) - uv = u△v + v△u + △u△v

Or in other words the sum of the three shaded regions above. Now dividing by △x, yields

△(uv)/△x = u(△v/△x) + v(△u/△x) + △u(△v/△x)

Now take the limit of △(uv)/△x as △x ⟶ 0 and you get the derivative of uv:

d(uv)/dx = u lim△x⟶0(△v/△x) + v lim△x⟶0(△u/△x) +  lim△x⟶0(△u) lim△x⟶0(△v/△x)

d(uv)/dx = u(dv/dx) + v (du/dx) +  0 (dv/dx)

d(uv)/dx = u(dv/dx) + v (du/dx)