Dear Bobby,
I have learned not to anticipate the future.
Of course I am worrying, but I am trying to worry less. And sometimes I can succeed for a few moments or a few hours.

My students often take an attitude that if something is meant to be, it will happen. It's is sort of fatalism combined with a version of Christianity. It can be calming in a way -- to realize that my life is not within my control.

Regarding ignoring our emotions:
I think that I learned that lesson very well from my mother. She said things like
You don't have to like it; you just have to do it.
(She is a huge control freak.)


That's a parent thing that other parents say perhaps. But my mom said it and other statements like it all day long. And she often denied herself what she wanted, so I learned from her teachings and her behavior. Dad was not as nuts but he was bad enough.

Sometimes I call my sister to ask if I am remembering and interpreting something correctly. My sis had remarked in a phone call that most people don't like to go out in the rain.

Rain never stopped my mother. She did not make any adjustments due to weather -- always pushed through. So if we kids were expected somewhere, we showed up wet and frazzled with rain coat and umbrella, but we showed up. We even did this if we didn't have to go anywhere. If we would normally go outside in the yard to do something, than we were expected to go out, good weather or not.
This is so small that I hate writing it out for others to see, but I have had to re-learn how to live and I am using weather as an example.

What is hard is that with bipolar I was originally taught (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) not to trust my emotions. I did argue with the therapist tremendously about that and over the years he made adjustments and pretty much dropped CBT altogether.
It's hard as a bipolar to trust our emotions. We're told by the docs that our brains are lying to us and that we need to push on anyway.
I'm not sure that is true.

Maybe the trick with bipolar is to learn when the brain is right and when it is wrong. Sometimes I have to give in and sometimes I have to put up a little fight.

Current tdoc thinks that relaxation techniques can kind of get us to the other side of the emotion -- so we are not giving in to it, but we are not fighting it either.
That's why she does not spend too much time in session on talking about problems. She validates the emotions and then encourages me to to think of it in a different way or to think about the problem only in terms of right now and not in terms of what it means for tomorrow.

And if the emotion is caught up in an issue that can be solved, she offers solutions. I think that is what I mean by "practical." If it can be solved, let's fix it to the extent we can. If it cannot be solved, lets reframe the issue so it is less of a problem.
Something like that.

I'm not really here yet.
I'm working on it.
M.