I made an earth shattering discovery today – I think I’ve unearthed a new mental illness. It’s called Tripolar!  Let me explain. A couple of days ago I heard that unique riff or refrain that underscored the film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And it immediately struck me there [...]

  A pig of a week, relationship issues, wrestling with my stupid brain, a touch of the Farmers due to stress!!  ….aarrggh! I was minded of those infernal games you used to get at Christmas, long before electronic stuff. They often popped out of the better class of Cracker! Then usually the worse for wear [...]

        I’ve spoken at length that mental illness is the last bastion of mass prejudice. And in thinking about this, it suddenly occurred to me that I know of no-one who speaks in the media about mental illness who suffers from mental illness. I exclude from this the Hollywood types who get [...]

      Your mission – should you choose to accept it, is to conquer and manage your Bipolar!  A tough call? Well its far better than self destructing in five seconds wouldn’t you say?   If you are not managing your Bipolar – well maybe you should take on the mission. I did. It took [...]

    Recovering from a bad depressive episode, I was minded of the Edgar Allan Poe classic ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and in particular the opening words, which summed up where I was at: "I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony"   That is as about as close to how I felt as [...]

  Whilst there has been, quite rightly, a focus Cyber Bullying and Trolls, there is a counterbalance evident where the anonymity offered by the web encourages people to shed inhibitions and talk about their problems to comparative strangers. It’s worth considering why that is for a moment. Essentially one can characterise it thus:- You can’t [...]

   Whisper it very softly, but the above term was, I think, coined by psychologists, but haste ye not away at that revelation – bear with me! First a cod description of this tongue twister: it occurs when people make judgements about the probability of events based on what examples easily spring to mind. To plagiarise [...]

          That’s got your attention. I’m aware that my Bipolar hardly imbues with me good grace, or patience, but sometimes you just want to shake the arse of an ever-more nonsensical  world. I’ve previously blogged on Childhood Bipolar, or rather the ridiculous over-zealous diagnosing of same, in which normal angst and teenage hormones [...]

          People often ask me where or when my Damascene conversion took place that enabled me to step back from the brink and share my experiences of living with Bipolar. That’s easy, and as usual with me, it is shrouded in comic sentiment. I tried the painless method of car exhaust [...]

            The term Locus of Control - LOC – was propounded 60 years ago by Julian Rotter, and does not refer to Bipolar or even Mental Illness per se, but seeks to determine one’s approach to life for want of a better description If you believe in fate and that life [...]