Musing about bipolar disorders and how learning to “zoom out” and “zoom in” may help....

Just musing....

I have a number of folks with bipolar and often have wondered about the underlying mechanism for the disorder from a psychotherapy point of view.

It seems a bit mysterious.

It’s almost like in times of stress or turmoil, they excessively “zoomed out” of one mindset, and then excessively “zoomed into” another. These can be neutral, happy, depressed, manic, or somewhere in between. To me, it has “flavors” of depersonalization and derealization at times.

So from a psychotherapy point, we can try to help them to manage stress and triggers.

We help them with better emotional literacy to zoom in and out better, and not “too zoomed out” to the point of depersonalization or derealization, or too “zoomed in” and be locked into any one mindset.

With less excessive detachment, and better zoom in and zoom out skills, can we help them to integregrate the many parts of their “mindsets” for better adaptation and function?

Maybe.....