How to Recognize the Distorted Lens of Bipolar and Reclaim Reality

By Carin Meyer







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When bipolar moods take hold, it is important to recognize when your thoughts may not be in line with reality and how to see the truth.

We see everything through a lens, and when you have an illness like bipolar disorder, everything you see can be distorted by that lens. For me, that lens is usually clear, but there are many times when it is not.

About 15 years ago, as my boyfriend drove us north to hunt caribou on Alaska’s North Slope, I watched through the passenger window as the spruce trees dwindled and disappeared as we drove farther and farther north.

After hours of riding in the truck through the Arctic, I became overwhelmed by the striking beauty of the landscape around me. As I peered through the truck’s window, it seemed like I could touch the mountaintops on my right, and that I could feel the blueberries and the crowberries that surrounded us. While I could see the bushes as we passed them, everything seemed much closer than it really was. My senses were intensified and, as I struggled under the sensory overload, my mind began to race. As that evening continued under a sun that never set, I became manic. At one point, I entered a mixed state that culminated in trying to disappear by following a set of wolf-tracks along a riverbed into the mountains.

When I am hypomanic, manic, or about to be triggered into one of those states, my lens magnifies everything around me. My senses go into overdrive. I seem to pick up on the slightest stimulation, and my brain reacts accordingly. I once thought that my manic lens made everything crystal clear, but that is not accurate at all. My manic lens distorts everything so that a mountain dozens of miles away looks like it is right next to me and that I could climb it in just a couple of hours, when really it would be a massive undertaking. Because of this distortion, and also because I would convince myself that my lens was actually clear, I made many poor decisions when I thought that something I saw was easily attainable, and also when I could not see the consequences lurking on the other side.

By contrast, my depressed lens blurs and darkens all until I can only see the ugly underside of everything around me. When I was looking through my manic lens and I only saw the beauty of the wild plants in the Arctic, I now would only be able to see the dirt underneath the fallen leaves. When I am in my home and I am looking at the world through my depressed lens, I only see my own failures in the form of messy piles of clothes, dirty dishes, and all the things that I did not do. When my lens is distorted in this way, my brain actually seems to feed off of the negative aspects of everything: when I look at a vase, I do not see the beautiful blue color along its sides, but only the dust on the rim—and then comes the instant reminder that I never do enough.

When I am looking through my depressed lens, my husband says I cannot see anything that is positive. I become fixated on something I see through that lens and then I draw a massive conclusion based on that limited perspective. If I make a small mistake at work, I think that I will be fired. My husband can use logic to explain, over and over, how everything will be just fine, but I will be unable to understand because all of my feelings and thoughts have been colored by the lens I am looking through.

In the past, when my manic or depressed mood went too far and I had a psychotic break, the window I looked at the world through was a shattered piece of glass. Some objects would be seemingly clear, and others distorted. I simply could not perceive reality. Things in my vision became wobbly and distorted, and, sometimes, I would see and feel things that were not really there.

I have heard the saying that you see what you want to see. In many ways, this is very true for individuals with bipolar disorder. If my mood is elevated, then I see beauty. If my mood is depressed, then I see the ugliness in everything. While it is often impossible to convince me that my perception is wrong—because, after all, my perception is my reality—it is possible to acknowledge the lens itself, to recognize it, and try to see it for what it is.

There have been times when my husband calls me on my distorted perception and I am able to take a deep breath, and then look at the actual glass I am looking through. I can ask myself: Is the lens clear, or is it dark? Is it magnifying everything I see, or is it broken? I may not be able to stop my thoughts and feelings, but maybe I can stop and realize that there is a lens there that is distorting my perception of reality.