Bipolar Pendulum

Leading up to February 27, 2020, the day I resigned from my six-figure new home consultant job ending a ten-year career, I was hypomanic. The commission only sales job in a very busy new home community that often felt like a theme park with its gloriously decorated models calling to be seen by the masses was starting to negatively impact my mental and physical health. The manic pace of the work environment was causing blood pressure measurements well above my normal 110/72 readings. Anxiety attacks on the short drive to work after two seemingly too short days off were becoming more common and were resistant to focused breath work. At a psychiatrist appointment, I requested a prescription for anxiety medication. Something was wrong on the one hand but on the other, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be and everything was happening for a reason.

I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1, or manic-depressive illness, in my mid 30s. It was either 2002 or 2003. The diagnosis followed stressful personal and professional situations, and 911. A Bipolar 1 diagnosis, by definition, applies to someone who has experienced severe mood episodes from mania to depression. The 2020 pandemic, resigning from a ten-year career a month before the pandemic hit, the dysfunctional state of human relationships nationally, and reaching menopause brought on a prolonged low-grade depression. It persisted bubbling just below the surface like a volcano waiting to erupt. It was time to face my shadows: the thoughts and beliefs about everyone and everything that were holding me back including others expectations, self-doubt that left me feeling that I wasn’t good enough, and my unconscious desire to cling to victimhood. I have experienced three severe manic episodes. Fortunately, I have been able to lead a normal and productive life once the mania was brought under control with medication and self-care. The depression was different in that it slowed me down and brought more needed and sometimes unwanted introspection. Therapy might have been quicker but my experiences with therapists left me believing that they had their own issues to deal with.

I first grasped the concept of a pendulum in regards to mental and spiritual health upon reading the book Balancing Heaven and Earth by Robert A. Johnson. Balancing Heaven and Earth is about balancing the inner and the outer worlds, the masculine and the feminine, and the eternal and the everyday. It is about learning to control the ups and downs so that the pendulum doesn’t swing wildly from extreme highs to extreme lows but gently like the ebbs and flows of the ocean tides. The tides are never the same or boring but bring consistent joy and inner peace. Gravity will always correct the swing. If one’s mood swings very high, one will inevitably swing past equilibrium in the opposite direction to a profound low. The wider the swing, the longer the recovery.

Everyone experiences mental highs and lows meaning everyone has mood swings to some extent or another. Life’s boat doesn’t always sail in calm, shallow waters. It has been said by a psychiatrist of mine that everyone is bipolar to some extent or another. There are many variations and intensities of bipolar since no two people are alike. In my experience, manic and depressive episodes occur when someone or something environmental, situational or experiential causes loss of mental, emotional or spiritual equilibrium or balance setting one’s pendulum in motion. Sometimes that someone can be oneself.

“A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position. When released, the restoring force acting on the pendulum’s mass causes it to oscillate about the equilibrium position, swinging back and forth. The time for one complete cycle, a left and a right swing, is called the period. The period depends on the length of the pendulum and also to a slight degree on the amplitude, the width of the pendulum’s swing.” (Source: Wikipedia)

The pendulum affect can be seen on a macro level in bull and bear markets. A bull market is a market that is on the rise and where the economy is purportedly sound and stocks are increasing in value; while a bear market exists in an economy that is receding, where most stocks are declining in value. Bull markets represent manic economic levels whereas bear markets represent depressive economic levels. Comparisons like boom and bust, expansion and contraction, and recovery and recession can be used to describe the economic pendulum swings from highs to lows and mania to depression. Individuals make up every business, government, industry and society and as individuals’ pendulums swing so will those of the entities they belong to. Sometimes our collective pendulums swing in unison creating peace and harmony but when the pendulums swing out of unison or erratically, conflict and chaos result. We are currently experiencing loss of equilibrium, or balance brought on in part by a worldwide pandemic. Contentious and divisive politics, overall poor interpersonal relations with lack of respect towards the sacredness of all humans, and a general sense of unrest and dissatisfaction with the status quo among other things were already in play adding to the collective stress level.
The Middle Way, also known as the Noble Eightfold Path, is a path to balancing pendulum swings and achieving peace and prosperity. It’s the ‘radical’ central way of living. The Middle Way is comprised of: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right mindfulness and right union. The Middle Way goes to the root of what we think, say and do and is about right intentions. Right is defined as morally good, justified, or acceptable and also true or correct as a fact.

“We are one family living under the same roof called sky, dwelling on the same planet named Earth, and sleeping under the same blanket called night.” - Diana