When you awaken, it’s not about seeing different things life. It’s about seeing the things in your life differently. (Rhonda Hendricks)
Mood Alteration's in Addiction
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. Symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. They are different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through from time to time. Bipolar disorder symptoms can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide.
Because addiction comes somewhere in between altering of moods, so people unconsciously use it as a tool to avoid facing the strong emotions in reality. Deep down, below the level of consciousness, the child inside us knows that he used to be a lot more joyous and happy and that something just isn’t right. This is because trapped hurt and unprocessed negative emotions have the tendency to re-emerge into conscious attention, so that the child can resolve the past abuse/trauma and the emotional wound can recover fully. The child, unequipped with any means, methods or guidance on how to complete past hurt, plus afraid that he will be shamed and punished for sharing his authentic experience, will have the tendency to repress the painful emotions when they re-emerge. He does not want to recall the past abuse/trauma, as he expects it will just mean more pain. So he remains stuck with it and will continually re-enact the pain, the ‘acting out’ I referred to earlier in this part. The child will seek out behaviors that will help him to sooth his pain, Bradshaw (1988) calls these mood alterations.
An addictive mood altering behavior raises how good a person feels in the short-term, while leaving the individual emotionally depleted in the long-term. But bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives. People with bipolar disorder try to control their bipolar symptoms and instead of working with a doctor to do so, they choose alcohol and other types of drugs. This often happens before a diagnosis, when people don’t know they have a mental illness and they are just managing in the best way they can.
An addictive mood altering behavior raises how good a person feels in the short-term, while leaving the individual emotionally depleted in the long-term. But bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives. People with bipolar disorder try to control their bipolar symptoms and instead of working with a doctor to do so, they choose alcohol and other types of drugs. This often happens before a diagnosis, when people don’t know they have a mental illness and they are just managing in the best way they can.
It’s understandable that if you don’t understand you have a disease, you don’t know how to treat it and it’s certainly understandable that someone would try to quell the extreme symptoms of bipolar disorder. Even after the disease is known, though, many people with bipolar disorder choose drugs over, or in addition to, medical help. So it can be said that people try to control their extreme mood through taking drugs.
All that being said, however, it’s critical to remember that people with substance abuse and dependency issues have less successful courses of treatment and, in fact, may not experience treatment success at all until their substance issues have been dealt with. And, of course, dealing with addictions is no picnic and many people with bipolar disorder never get to the point where they are successfully free of them. Scientists are studying the possible causes of bipolar disorder. Most scientists agree that there is no single cause. Rather, many factors likely act together to produce the illness or increase risk.
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