I think you come across quacks in any and all professions. Throughout my search for a correct diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I’ve run across quite a few quacks. Many were, quite frankly, a danger to everyone they serviced. The following is a short excerpt on what I believe about the chemical imbalances in my brain. This is my opinion and in no way medical advice.

A Special Kind of Vulnerable

Suffering from a mental illness, like bipolar disorder, puts you in a unique category of severe vulnerability. You are desperate to feel better, to find some relief from the horrible darkness and chaos you’re living in. You are looking for someone to give you hope that you will feel better, that you will feel normal at some point in the near future. But when a counselor/psychologist/psychiatrist tells you to “breath away your depression” a new sense of hopelessness sinks in.

Chemical Imbalance

I’m not a specialist on behavioral psychology but I know it is practiced far and wide by the psychiatric profession. Behavioral psychology has to do with changing a person’s response to environmental influences. I’m sure this can help in some peoples’ lives; but when your brain chemistry is out of whack, I believe there’s only so much you can change by changing one’s behavior, without the use of meds.

Quacks

I recall one of the first depressive episodes I experienced, I was 14 years old and had no idea what was going on. Hoping to find some relief from my suffering, my mom had arranged a meeting with a local psychologist in my small town. I was hopeful that he would have the answer to my misery. After explaining my depression as extreme sadness and circular thoughts, the counselor explained that I simply needed to stop thinking about those things. It was like training yourself not to think in circles. I just needed to practice un-thinking the way I was thinking. This was of no help, and I left feeling more hopeless than ever.

Faking It

I have been told some ridiculous things in my path to wellness; I have been told to breath away the depression. I have been told to scream out my depression. Each time I left feeling like what I was suffering from would never go away. In one of my darkest moments while in the psychiatric ward of a very prestigious hospital in Seattle, Washington I was told by an intern that I was faking it; that I was in complete control of what I was doing and was just doing it to get attention. I was floored and speechless. Here they were releasing me after a month of hospitalization and one of their professionals was telling me that I was faking it all. It was a miracle that I didn’t take my own life. I’m not the only one to experience ridiculous counseling advice. A close relative of mine, who also has bipolar disorder, has met up with some dangerously misplaced professionals as well. They were once instructed to put all their “worries” onto a leaf and float it down an imaginary “river”. A different counselor read them a story about a bear that was learning how to deal with his outside stressors. All of this “useful” advice did them no good whatsoever.

The Right Kind of Chemistry

In my humble opinion, chemical imbalance of the brain doesn’t just miraculously become balanced with a change in behavior, a change in your thinking process. I am in no way a doctor, but I believe that a mental illness like bipolar disorder is an unbalanced “chemical” that needs to be treated as such.

Thankfully I didn’t give up on the hope of getting better.  I waded through a lot of quack counselors/doctors in the psychiatric field. With the support of my family and friends, I didn’t give up. I was lucky, to say the least, to find a nurse practitioner who was diligent enough to expose what I was really suffering from; bipolar 2 disorder. There’s always going to be “professionals” that take behavioral psychiatry to an extreme. I believe that people with chemical imbalances can’t just float their cares away on a leaf, chemical imbalances stand the most chance being treated with chemicals. Like I said before, I’m not a doctor, this is just my opinion.