The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is Bipolar disorder? (Manic Depression renamed) Symptoms & Treatment

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. What is bipolar disorder?

Starting point is 00:01:04 What does it look like? How do you treat it? How might you recognise it? And how do you learn to live with it or live with somebody you love who might have it? My guest today has bipolar disorder himself and we are answering all of these questions and more. I hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent. I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. I love introducing you to topics that help you to learn more about key clinical areas, which might be of significance for you in your clinical area of work or for those that you love or care about. Today, my guest and I

Starting point is 00:01:52 are taking a deep dive into bipolar disorder, and it is a completely brilliant episode. Even though I've been qualified for many years now, I learned so many useful things from talking to my guest, Sam. So I hope that you will find the same. I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side of this. Hi, I just want to welcome our guest for today, Sam Swidinski. Hi, Sam. Hi, lovely to be on. Lovely to have you here. And thank you so much for reaching out. I'm really excited to talk with you and to kind of bring information about your specialist subject, this is not Mastermind, but which is bipolar disorder. So it's lovely to have you here. No, it's good. I mean, any opportunity that I can

Starting point is 00:02:37 have to be able to talk about this important topic is a great pleasure. So thank you. Yeah, so just to help our audience to kind of get a feel for who you are and why you're talking to us about bipolar disorder could you give yourself a little intro? Yeah I mean I'm Sam so the reason why I care so much about bipolar disorder is because of my own lived experience so when I was 18 I was, but it took a few years to be able to get that diagnosis in the first place, which caused some troubles during my teen years. But I was very, very fortunate to meet people that took me under their wing and were able to help me in terms of within the mental health field. And because of that, I'm very, very grateful. And I guess gratitude for them made me realize

Starting point is 00:03:28 that I wanna help others to be able to find the care that they need as well. So that very much inspired me to go down that route. So since then I've written my book, which is Winning the War with Bipolar, which is sort of a mixture of lived experience mixed with research on how you can manage this disorder, essentially. I'm now completing my PhD in bipolar disorder, specifically about cognition and functioning, which we can, I suppose, discuss

Starting point is 00:04:02 later in the podcast. And also i run a small educational organization called scologists which uh helps in terms of hopefully inspiring the next generation of uh psychology students which is of course a great overlap with uh what you what you're very passionate in as well so yes an honor to be able to be alive for starters because I didn't always question I would be that but also hopefully to be a voice in this field and try to help it progress. Yeah thank you so much for for kind of doing such a good job on that and it sounds like a case of if you want something done ask a busy person like you sound really really busy um when it comes to bipolar diagnosis it's really common in my clinical experience that it happens much later than 18 um and I appreciate that you'd had some

Starting point is 00:04:55 kind of perpetual struggles before 18 but actually for me as a health professional you know I'm pleased that you you got that diagnosis relatively early, but I appreciate it didn't perhaps feel that way to you. Yeah, I mean, it certainly is relatively early and relatively being the important word there, because, you know, when we think of that term, we think of in comparison to others. And I think, you know, I work considerably with Bipolar UK, they're sort of the main charity that I'm associated with and sort of support in terms of their work. And Bipolar UK found through the Bipolar Commission, which is a massive research project led by people from Cambridge and KCL and lots of top institutions, that it takes on average nine and a half years to get a diagnosis for bipolar. So, you know, for me, it was only a few since I was first diagnosed.

Starting point is 00:05:47 So I was lucky. But the sad thing is that I know for myself, had it taken nine and a half years, I'd be dead right now, because, you know, already that needs to be better. So in terms of the general field, but as to why I got an early diagnosis, that was, like I said earlier, because I was very fortunate to meet people that took me under their wing. So I was a research participant in research projects purely in the first instance because I wanted a bit of money. You know, I was not able to work because of my mental health. So I literally went to King's College to, OK, let's participate in this as an easy way to get a few pounds, essentially. And then and then it ended up meeting people who who helped me to get a diagnosis and then get the care that I needed. That's incredible. So you were initially trying to help yourself, but ended up helping yourself more than you could ever know.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And it's led to really useful stuff for other people to be helped as well. That's really, really powerful. For anybody that's listening to this as a total beginner they might have heard of bipolar before they might not even have heard of it before they might have previously heard of it under its previous name which used to be called manic depression but it was renamed um as bipolar disorder could you give us a very kind of whizzy quick whip through with what what is bipolar disorder sam yeah i'm i think i think you make a good point there that obviously before it used to be called manic depression and now that i think about it it's not really something i think about regularly but i think

Starting point is 00:07:39 almost it's actually a better name for the disorder sort of because bipolar is a word people use it in so many contexts they say for example that the weather it's a bit bipolar today or all of this type of thing or if someone has you know ups and downs in the mood in you know or in their emotions in a particular day they say oh you're acting very bipolar so there's a lot of myths and misconceptions around what people believe that this disorder is but in essence what bipolar disorder is is is having periods of low mood or depression and then periods of high mood or mania or hypomania so all it is is fluctuations of mood between extreme highs and extreme lows.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Human beings will experience highs and lows over different periods of time. It's just the human experience. We're not robots. But with individuals with bipolar, those extremes are more extreme than the average person. So you could view bipolar disorder essentially as a spectrum of mood. And essentially all human beings, I suppose, somewhere on that spectrum, it's just most people are not at the disorder level. So within bipolar disorder, you've got several different diagnoses. And you know, the classic case of the, I guess, the most severe in terms of the range of mood symptoms is bipolar type one disorder, where that is where you experience extreme highs in mood with what we call mania. And what mania is, is it's high mood so much so that it's causing significant impairment in terms of your functioning. So what I mean by that is often you're going to need to go into the hospital.

Starting point is 00:09:32 You need to be hospitalized or, you know, at the very least, you're going to have significant problems in terms of your relationships and in terms of work. So it's going to cause basically a huge issue in terms of work. So it's gonna cause basically a huge issue in terms of your life. So what do those symptoms look like? So typically you're gonna not be able to sleep. So you might be able to get one to a few hours of sleep every single night, but you wake up with bounds of energy, a hundred times more energy than everyone else around you.

Starting point is 00:10:04 But that energy can be quite painful because you know when we think of a high energy state you know it's it's not just happy it's you know it can be very irritable or aggressive or you know very difficult to be able to manage it's too much energy in the same way with flights of uh, your thoughts are running so fast that it's too fast. Your thinking is overly positive that it becomes grandiose and you can believe things that aren't real and so on. And it can even cause sort of hallucinations and delusions. So the high mood of mania, I almost describe it as an incredibly high energy state and the reason why I say that is because when we have when we describe high mood we think

Starting point is 00:10:50 of it as wow that's a really positive thing you know you've got high mood that's great it's fantastic but you know it can get to that stage that is essentially it's more of an energy-based problem uh so you have this extreme highs of mood and then you crash into a depression so depression is the complete lack of energy or you know the incredibly low reason you know you might want to sleep a lot you might actually have problems with sleeping but you feel low energy uh you lack pleasure in your day-to-day activities and you struggle to find any satisfaction in your life so you know this huge high to this huge low you know is is essentially the characteristic of bipolar type one uh bipolar type two in terms of

Starting point is 00:11:42 the severity of the extremities of going so high is less so because what you experience is something called hypermania which is where the form of mania is is not so severe that it's causing a significant impairment in your functioning you know you're able you're almost somewhat enjoying the process of the high and and it might not have a dramatic negative impact on your surroundings it might somewhat so for example you might spend recklessly and lose a lot of money you know you might go gambling and lose like all of your funds and everyone's very upset with you but um it's not going to lead to hospitalization or very, very severe negative consequences in your life. But the lows in bipolar type 2 tend to be longer.

Starting point is 00:12:34 And, you know, for that reason, it's not one of those things that you would view, you know, bipolar type 1 is a worse disorder than bipolar type 2. Instead, they're just different in terms of how the mood varies so you have you know in both you've got these highs and these lows and then you've got also other diagnoses that are you know lesser so in terms of the variance in mood but in general I suppose the main myth that is important to be busted is that, oh, your fluctuations in your emotions are like this every day. That means that you are bipolar. And typically in bipolar, it's long durations. So, for example, the highs have to be at least four days to a week, depending on the diagnostic criteria.

Starting point is 00:13:23 And then the lows need to be at least a week or a couple of weeks. So you can have faster fluctuations, but you need to at least experience that to be able to get a diagnosis. So it's quite long periods of highs, long periods of lows. And then the goal essentially of treatment is to reduce the severity of that. So it goes from this to more like this.

Starting point is 00:13:48 Thank you so much for that kind of run through of what it is. And also you're giving some really good examples of how it might present. the more manic behaviors that lead to somebody becoming you know known to mental health services sometimes known to to justice services um sometimes taken to place of safety um because like you said sometimes they can be quite wild they can be um really quite impulsive you can feel like you're a millionaire you might you know giving all your money away or, you know, it's different for different people, but it always can look quite extravagant. well, lots of my clients have told me it feels pretty good to be in a manic phase when you're in it. But the fallout from it and the trauma and the impact on your professional life on your intimate family, friends life can be really, really catastrophic. Yeah. And that's the main thing like, you know, I think if you experience full-blown mania you realize that or you know similar states you realize that the negative consequences of that are almost higher than of depression

Starting point is 00:15:12 the reason why is because depression you're an incredibly low state you know maybe you're suicidal you know it's terrible but the highs it's it's the impact it has on everyone around you. So, you know, it's the relationships that are lost. It's the money that's lost. It's the potentially whole life that's lost. You know, either you could die or maybe sadly end up in prison. Anything's really possible because it's just an obliviousness to the consequences of action so unless this is where the delusions the grandiose delusions come into it you know there's this thing so for example someone with mania they might believe okay i can jump off

Starting point is 00:15:59 of this roof and i'll fly you know because you genuinely believe that or just get themselves into these sort of very dangerous situations i mean it's and you can you can die and so it's you know i thought but you know it's it's terrible i mean it's it's it's it's almost um impossible to manage to be honest in terms of that state you know is because you're in a state of mind that you're not able to manage you know your behavior because it's just everything's going too fast. Thank you for sharing that with us and it's clearly powerful and it really connected to you that idea that the kind of lack of insight can really lead you and other people with bipolar to be so incredibly vulnerable. And in one of my earlier podcast

Starting point is 00:16:51 episodes of talking about the concept of indirect self-harm, which is where someone isn't necessarily meaning to hurt themselves. And on a low level, it might be something like nibbling the skin on our fingers, you know, but actually an extreme level, it can lead to not intentional suicide, you know, which is kind of death by misadventure or whatever. But it's not someone's intent to end their life, but it does sometimes happen. And that's people are so vulnerable, aren't they yeah they are and you know family members as well deserve a lot of support uh you know and and and help through the process because essentially everyone's vulnerable during that time which is the reason why it's it's very important to avoid those episodes and this is why early diagnosis is incredibly important so you know typically in terms of bipolar disorder i mean you know you'd you'd observe it in your clinical practice i'm sure you know there's there's inclinations prior to having a severe mood episode of mania uh that someone might be susceptible to be able to having

Starting point is 00:17:58 that and there's several things that might be involved first firstly it might be bipolar in their family that might be one thing because obviously part of it is very much genetic but um you know also in terms of previous mood episodes you know previous periods of somewhat highs and lows you know but just not to that severe enough level and because of that you know technically it should be possible to be able to diagnose early and you can prevent such severe things happening and that's why the issue of diagnosis is almost the most important one to solve because you know then you can get on the right medications or the right treatments in general so that you're able to better manage yourself which also obviously involves therapy as well so yeah i'd say the best way to prevent the negative aspects of

Starting point is 00:18:45 mania is to prevent it in the first place yeah and are there any kind of known precursors other than um other than family history of bipolar that might make it more likely that somebody would would develop that yeah i mean definitely i mean you know, we've talked before about the concept of trauma and different types of trauma within the beginnings of bipolar disorder. And I think that the word trauma obviously can mean several different forms of trauma. I mean, for example, head injury can increase the chances of bipolar disorder in itself. So for me, I've got this big scar on my head here, and this scar came from the injury in school in which it was horrible,

Starting point is 00:19:35 it was sort of a playground incident. A kid pushed me and then I went into the wall, smashed it, you could see my skull. So that was a very severe incident. And I'm not really sure whether that was linked to starting with my bipolar disorder that was previous to it. But, you know, it's very possible that that did. And there's two sides to that. Firstly, is the trauma, the

Starting point is 00:19:59 physical trauma, because it was a very severe injury. But there's also the side of the uh sort of the emotional aspects of it as well because you know that was bullying associated and and and and a lot of i guess anxiety that resulted from that incident which which led to me uh sort of having difficulties there. So, you know, I think that those things definitely can sort of lead to susceptibility. I think there's a lot of genetic environmental interaction. But also, I do believe that, personally, I do believe that black and white thinking very much comes into play as well. So I think when we're having black and white thinking, we're sort of thinking, OK, very this is very positive. This is very negative. We very much judgments on things.

Starting point is 00:20:56 And I do think that in general, having black and white thinking or being taught it very early in life can can lead to the concept of of of uh differentiation of states because uh sort of in bipolar disorder obviously it's mood disorders of of extremities um at either side and essentially everything's all energy or everything's not so it's it's just a personal view that i think that black and white thinking can be involved uh and for example i was uh i was brought up um very religious uh as well as a jehovah's witness i've left the faith now but i do believe that being brought up in a religion that does sort of promote extremities somewhat in perception of the world. And yeah, I think it can sort of potentially increase the chances of that. Yeah, and it's interesting that you talk about kind of organized religion. Is it fair to say

Starting point is 00:22:06 that that's what Jehovah's Witnesses is? It's religion that's kind of quite extreme and has the experience of othering and being othered. And it's very much kind of separating you and the people in the faith from people outside of it. And I know from my experience of working with clients, but also being in school myself, that actually that's quite tricky, the way that you have to kind of separate yourself in school, outside of school, around Christmas, around birthdays, you know, especially if you're kind of in a Western world where people like to buy you a present on your birthday or might invite you to their birthday or their Christmas gathering it's it's very difficult to be different when it's not necessarily your choice to be different and I hadn't really appreciated until you said and similarly with with traumatic

Starting point is 00:22:58 brain injury you know I've qualified in 2011 we're speaking in 2024 I've had many years of working even with people with traumatic brain injuries before I got qualified and during training I didn't know about that making it more likely that you would develop or could develop bipolar so I think this is the real power of this podcast and of conversations like this that it it teaches people who are relatively long in the tooth to know this stuff but also how incredible to be perhaps in a much earlier career stage and already know this and be aware of that and have that on your radar well well I mean thank you I think I think from from this perspective I suppose that you know there's a huge amount that I do not know but the reason the

Starting point is 00:23:42 reason why I guess I do know the things that I do know is because of a mixture of lived experience and then trying to understand that and unpick that by talking to my superiors who who are very helpful in terms of building understandings but yeah I think in terms of you know traumatic head injury that you know there is sort of a relation between that and having bipolar disorder however you know uh you know it's not obviously sort of the primary reason as to why people people tend to have it but um yes what you mentioned as well regarding regarding religion i do think you know also this aspect of of feeling different to others i think that you know you know us and them type thinking is is can also lead to the generation of of of any type of mental health difficulty because if you feel very different to those around you

Starting point is 00:24:36 uh you know it causes a gap and and and you know it makes things very difficult so I do definitely think um it causes challenges yeah and it's kind of making me think in terms of trauma of Bessel van der Kolk's stuff of the body holding the score you know that you might be able to get through things physically in the moment that might be very challenging but that the body will will kind of will recognize and will store some of that and it it might come out at later times yes I mean I was this fantastic book um but yes I'd say and you and you feel it I think I think that it's something that people experience right you know especially when you go through a difficult uh stage in your life and i you know or a difficult thing and even you remember it you literally feel in your body you

Starting point is 00:25:30 might feel sick there are certain stages that i you know i feel the need to nearly throw up because of anxiety and things like that related to things i think that the body really does take it in and i think this sort of relates very strongly with bipolar disorder as well because it's an energy state i this is really why i like to bring it back to energy as opposed to mood because you know essentially high energy it's like you're shaking like your legs moving constantly psychomotor agitation all of these things relate to energy in the body you know when you're depressed you almost don't move at all you know you find it very difficult to move your brain is working very slowly so it's I like to think of it in that form and I do think that relates to sort of uh you know the body very much and very strongly yeah absolutely um I just feel

Starting point is 00:26:18 like I'm I'm learning a lot despite being a clinician that regularly works with people with bipolar. So yeah, thank you from me as well. Is the answer always medication? Is it always lifetime medication? What are the options there? So we're currently producing a paper, and it was soon to be published, regarding the natural history of bipolar. So what we mean by natural history is sort of what does bipolar look like in terms of the disorder itself if you take away medication and the way that we do that is by essentially looking at studies that are of people that aren't medicated slash studies which are older than the medications themselves so it's sort an analysis of individuals with bipolar. And so what the literature finds in a systematic review of essentially all of the studies on this

Starting point is 00:27:12 is that 30% of people with bipolar disorder will only experience one episode essentially. And generally that tends to be a manic episode. So the other 80 percent tend to have a relatively recurrent illness so they have great risk of episodes coming back and you know there's great variance in in the number of episodes and how frequent they'll be so there's great heterogeneity or great variance essentially in how how people experience this disorder and what the episodes are like. There's also great variance in what is the best way of treatment for individuals with bipolar. So, for example, if you go online, for example, on Twitter, there'll be a lot of people heavily advocating for food changes, for example, because the food changes that help them as an individual to improve in terms of their bipolar disorder and they strongly advocate towards that uh whereas other people have

Starting point is 00:28:12 felt medication has been the thing for me you're wrong um you know it's it's uh it's it's medication that you need uh and then other people say only therapy you don't need medication you don't need to change food you just need therapy and it's worked for them so i think the important thing of understanding within bipolar disorder is that although we can categorize people in terms of these categories based on how they're experiencing their mood there's great variance in the best treatments for them why they have it so many different things and there's great variance in the best treatments for them, why they have it, so many different things. And there's more variance between individuals within the disorder than there are elsewhere. So everything's very different.

Starting point is 00:28:53 So what I personally believe is that medication is probably important in the first instance, most likely, at least as a way to try to try to solve the issue essentially at least for the short term um the reason why is because it's the quickest thing you can do you know and it's the quickest thing you can try so you know in terms of that you know you take some medication uh you know it's going to decrease your likelihood of going into further episodes and so on. But people have done well with changing their food and changing their, and going to therapy alone, and that works for them. So in terms of medication though, having it for the lifetime, I think for a lot of individuals with bipolar disorder, probably the majority, but I can't be sure on that. None of us can be sure of that.

Starting point is 00:29:49 But a large proportion, at least, likely will need it for life. But regarding therapy, that's also a massive aspect of it. And it's something I discuss very strongly in my book as well. In terms of, you know, therapy, but also CBT therapy. One of the goals of the therapy generally is to create a sort of therapy blueprint by the end of the process. And that blueprint, you're building this process to be able to understand, okay, this is the blueprint. This is how I maintain my good health. And by following that, you can prevent future episodes. How does that involve in terms of therapy? What is the importance of therapy in this? What it is, is that you recognize,

Starting point is 00:30:31 okay, what do I do to prevent the likelihood of getting bipolar disorder, right? Of getting a bipolar disorder episode? What are the things that I need to practice? So for example, that might be, okay, I go to sleep at the same time every night. I take my medication at that time. Obviously, disorder episode what are the things that i need to practice so for example that might be okay i go to sleep at the same time every night i take my medication at that time obviously i have a life so i've got to try to somewhat vary that but for the vast majority of the time we try to be you know solid with that even if i can't sleep potentially stay in bed because sleep is a massive one in terms of this you know in terms of food trying to be relatively stable in terms of you know drugs or alcohol trying the best to stay away where possible different strategies for different

Starting point is 00:31:12 people but you know basically you come up with a blueprint as to how to do that then you come up with a blueprint okay early symptoms how do we identify those when are they coming to me you know what what are these symptoms and and and recognizing those early symptoms before it becomes a full episode because then what you can do is for example you know message the psychiatrist maybe there needs to be a slight medication change it might be that you need to change sort of something in your lifestyle you know there could be several different things you could do. And then you stop it at that stage. And then finally, if you're in an episode, then having another action plan as to how you deal with that, but essentially having such a process through the form of therapy, that you're able to do all of these things significantly reduces the likelihood of having

Starting point is 00:31:57 an episode. So whether that works in conjunction with medication or not. I think slightly depends like on the individual, there's going to be variation regarding that. But in my opinion, I think that for the most part, a mixture of medication and therapy is the best solution. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. That was so useful. And often when I'm talking with clients, I'll be like, actually, one of the things we need to do is

Starting point is 00:32:25 to make life a little bit more consistent a little bit more predictable it might feel quite boring but actually it's the boring predictability that gives us all balance and actually certainly where there's been cases of kind of complex trauma you know growing up in kind of like chaos um things feeling unsafe there may never have been any structure or you know this is actually we have our dinner at this time we get up at this time you know we take our vitamins at this time of day like this literally you can be starting brand new afresh with that kind of basic what I would consider as a parent basic care that's what I do with my children I've got two of the beasts um you know but but for some people that's the first time ever that they've had that level of attunement and actually it can feel a little bit boring to begin with. But actually, when we know that actually we

Starting point is 00:33:25 exercise three times a week, or even if we just do it every day, and, you know, we have our dinner about six o'clock, and then we try not to drink much at night. So we're not having to wake up to have a wee, like, literally really, really boring things. And quite often with my clients with bipolar, we are literally going through the basics of how are you sleeping at the moment? Are you eating? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you getting out for those walks that we spoke about? And just keeping a track so that if there are, like you said at the beginning, natural fluctuations in mood, because we will have them due to grief, due to breakups, due to job changes, due to studying, you know, just due to the weather to due to breakups due to job changes due to studying you know just due

Starting point is 00:34:07 to the weather like there are natural fluctuations but it helps us to decide whether this is a fluctuation or whether this is actually a change in in kind of their bipolar state their presentation yeah and the consistency is just the most important thing. I mean, it's just, but there's something before consistency, I think, actually, now that I think about it. The thing before consistency is realizing that you don they want to chase the highs. Especially people, this is the reason why as well, I think that a lot of the time bipolar type two can actually be more of a trouble for people is because there's a lot of reason as to why to want the highs, because the highs don't have the same massive negative connotations as it could do with someone with bipolar one and you know there's a lot of reason to want that high you know you you have bounds of energy you've got all of

Starting point is 00:35:13 these great ideas you feel fantastic you're going around you're running around doing all of these things there might be some negative consequences but not massive ones so i think there's a lot and you know that's why people take drugs. Why do people take cocaine or methamphetamine is to get that same thing that people with bipolar disorder experiencing naturally. It's funny because a much older member of my family likely had bipolar disorder. But she often said, you know, people pay a lot of money to feel the way that i think that that i feel um so i think very much having this connotation that people pay money so you know to have such you know dopamine related drugs and you know yeah so so i think that's a big one and i

Starting point is 00:36:00 think you've got to really realize okay this, this is not something that I want. This is not something that I want to continue in any way whatsoever. And from there, then decide, okay, I will do whatever I can to be able to have the life I want. do that is to realize that the best life is one that you can enjoy regularly you know and isn't so terrible the majority of the time like you know you want to have something you're not chasing short highs you have got a consistently good life and you can create a life for yourself. Like, you know, I was in a stage where a few years into, you know, my adulthood, I didn't really have a life and I didn't realize that, you know, there was some significant changes I needed to make to my mentality. Through making them, I've created a great life for myself.

Starting point is 00:37:02 You know, I've, you know, I'm married, I'm having a baby now, I've got not too much worries financially, I've managed to have created something quite cool. I'm finishing up my PhD. Obviously it's been hard work but it wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't realized that there's more to life than chasing a few moments of highs um so yeah I'd say that's the first one and then you know you've got to do that and then once you've done that then you're able to be consistent which is the best prevention essentially yeah so powerful and it's that idea of the highs may not be quite as high but the lows won't be as low and generally will have more

Starting point is 00:37:47 middle ground, more predictability, more consistency. And it actually reminded me of thinking about before I became a parent, actually, I probably had more highs that lasted for longer periods of time. But I would say there were also probably more lows that lasted for longer periods of time but I would say there were also probably more lows that lasted for longer periods of time you know if you became single or upset or you know oh I can't do this but generally speaking since becoming a parent even within any give you will you will learn soon even within any given day you might be having the worst day in the world with the child that's just not well that day or just really cranky and just screaming in your ear a lot but there will also in that same day be an incredible moment that just

Starting point is 00:38:32 like makes it all better but I think generally speaking having children has kind of given me more of that middle bound I haven't got a bipolar diagnosis but becoming a parent has given me more of that middle bound. I haven't got a bipolar diagnosis, but becoming a parent has given me more structure and given me more of the middle ground. Does that make sense? Definitely. And I think that this is where functioning becomes incredibly important, because this is a massive problem with treatments for psychiatric illnesses in general is that there's so much focus overall on symptom reduction and there's not enough on life boosting what i mean by life boosting is just you know increases in quality of life and how do we increase that is it's often by increasing your functioning so what i mean by that is how well are you functioning socially and occupationally and

Starting point is 00:39:22 in whatever way whatsoever you know there's multiple different domains of functioning but you know if you're able to improve in those things then your life can improve and you can be happy right uh so that's i think one advocate against um medication or being medication being the primary solution because medication can just up and up and up and up if that's the only way that you're treating it and you can end up you know getting out of bed you feel like a zombie type of thing so ideally you want to be on a medication that once you've stabilized on it you're able to actually live your life you're actually able to do things and you're actually able to to you know do the things that you want to do so that's why i think that treatments you know that's where therapy can come in as well i'm trained in a form of

Starting point is 00:40:03 therapy called cognitive remediation which actually revolves around helping people to improve in their cognitive functioning and relating that to their occupational functioning. It's quite a simple form of therapy, it's not simple, it's simple from the therapeutic perspective because it's guided by sort of technologies online so you've got a digital world essentially. It's a digital world and you have real world related tasks that you as a therapist go through with the patient. And basically you go through it and try to help them

Starting point is 00:40:40 better problem solve through issues that they might relate in their personal life. And through that that they might relate in their personal life and through that they can build in their sort of strategy use which can then help them in terms of functioning in real life so I experienced that myself so I was sort of made yourself indispensable and I can see why you're obviously very good at what you do and thank you for speaking you know so openly and honestly to help our audience to learn more about this if people want to learn more about you and your book where should they go um so my book's on amazon you can look up winning the war with bipolar uh so for you know and then

Starting point is 00:41:19 through that you can find other things that i'm doing online. But yeah, my book, I'd say, is been mostly enjoyed by clinicians, funny enough, and sort of people who are sort of researchers. But it's very useful for people as well with lived experience, because it sort of goes through, I guess, four steps very much related to funny enough, what we've been talking about the first one being understanding what is bipolar disorder in terms of you know understanding that in depth then about how can you make the most of therapy and psychiatric relationships following that is sort of self-care strategies and then finally consistency so that's sort of the four sections

Starting point is 00:42:00 of the book so it's quite a good if I say so myself way of sort of going through the the sort of stages of bipolar brilliant well how how on brand was I today as a host for for guiding people through just why your book is such a brilliant read thank you for your time I know that we are connected on LinkedIn is that a good place for people people to come and follow you and kind of learn more about your work as well? Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn as well. That's where I mostly am. Okay, could you spell your surname or spell your full name for us in case people are listening as an MP3 rather than watching on YouTube? Yeah, so it's Samuel, so S-A-M-U-E-L, and my surname S-W-I-D k i perfect samuel swidzinski thank you so much and um yeah just thank you again i know that this will help so many people and just before we finish if somebody's listening to us and thinking that they're concerned about their own mental health

Starting point is 00:43:01 and that actually bipolar makes a lot of sense for them or someone else that they care about what should they do so first off i mean bipolar uk is a fantastic organization so um bipolar uk who have worked with extensively have a e-learning package they've also got a new tracker app and they've also got uh sort the Could It Be Bipolar campaign. If you look up Bipolar UK and then Could It Be Bipolar, let's say that's got a good starting place, you can learn a little bit more so that you might get a better understanding. You'll see my face pop up a couple of times. But in terms of that sort of good grounding, then download the Guru Tracker app, try to figure out, just find out whether, you know, you think that your mood is high. And, you know, clinicians here in the UK have been told about Bipolar UK.

Starting point is 00:43:56 And if you bring in the Mood Tracker app, you know, there's something that you can discuss with the clinicians or your doctor in general. And that can sort of support a diagnosis, I suppose, earlier. I think as well, to be honest, the best thing that you can do, I realise not everyone watching is actually watching sort of a video of us. Essentially, what you can do is get a piece of paper and you can plot out your mood over time. So what that looks like is sort of, it's impossible to describe if someone's not watching, but you've sort of got a, you know, a typical, you know,

Starting point is 00:44:34 a graph and in the middle is sort of... Like an xy axis. Yeah and in the middle of it is sort of a stable mood and then you plot over time on the x-axis. So when has your mood been really high? When has it been low? And then that's a good starting point to discuss with the clinician. This is what my mood has looked like over time. And that can sort of help them to understand the picture and sort of guide them through why bipolar might be a particular diagnosis. And then they can use that as a guide as to how to say okay what was it like during this period can you explain how you were can you

Starting point is 00:45:10 explain how you're acting so you're you're almost guiding them through the process of of of your mood so that they can professionally be able to to actually unpick whether they think that you've got the disorder great thank you and obviously if anybody's concerned about the risk to themselves or someone else they should contact urgent care or emergency services to safeguard them or other people. Thank you so much Sam it's been a really really brilliant episode and thank you please let me know if you need anything in future. No worries at all it's been great to chat. Thank you. Oh gosh, how incredible it was to chat with Sam. And if you do want to connect with Sam or have a look at his book, please do check out the details in my show notes. Like I said to Sam, it was a real privilege to talk with

Starting point is 00:45:58 him and I learned so much. Has this been useful for you? If so, please do rate and review the podcast series, which you can do on Apple Podcasts. You can also rate it on Spotify. If you're watching on YouTube, please do take a moment to subscribe to the channel, like the content and fling some comments around to perhaps share your favorite episodes with your friends. Come and let me know in the aspiring psychologist community, which is the home of the exclusive Marianne's Motivation and Mindset videos. You will not get them anywhere else. Come and join the free Facebook group and I will look forward to seeing you there. New episodes of Marianne's Motivation and Mindset drop every Friday morning. And each of these podcast episodes is available to you on YouTube, you lucky things, from 10am on Saturdays with new audio podcasts wherever you get your podcasts available from

Starting point is 00:46:52 6am on Mondays. Do come and connect with me on my socials. I'm Dr. Marianne Trent everywhere. Consider having a read of the books, The Aspiring Psychologist Collective, The Clinical Psychologist Collective, and of course, Talking the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, the Clinical Psychologist Collective, and of course, Talking Heads and the Grief Collective too. And if it's your time and you're ready for the next step, you're ready to get, really get a grip on making your professional career in psychology sparkle in this upcoming application season,

Starting point is 00:47:21 please do consider joining the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can do for no minimum term from just £30 a month. I am so blessed to have you to be part of my world and I will look forward to catching up with you very soon. Take care. and let this be your guide. With this podcast, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent. My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist, it just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one. And this

Starting point is 00:48:34 kind of filled me with confidence that no, I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is Bipolar disorder? (Manic Depression renamed) Symptoms & Treatment

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