Acceptance

I wrote this about self-acceptance, but it/I wasn't accepted, so I started a new thread. Maybe it sounds all a bit delusional or nonsensical. It's just what I believe. Ignore if you don't like delusional thinking. That'll protect you and locks you in.

Sorry, haven't read it (yet). Just wanted to say that Buddhism, or other form of religious essentials, can set us free.

Grounded by flux, fastened. Intuition guiding us our singular way, the only we may follow without friction, anxiety. It teaches us to not fear just feeling and observing. It teaches us self-transcendence, dissolving the ego to recreate, reorganise it, without conflict, with greater consistency and breadth. To doubt without fear.

Basically, dissociation, derealisation while extremely manic, without panic, with focus. In the eternal moment.

I teaches us that we can be, and mostly are, right and they are wrong. We just need to accept that, despite people constantly saying, with great sophistication, that we aren't.

Knowledge and wisdom that has survived the ages is more true than anything like psychiatry.

Non-essentials of religion are often corrupted, like any delusion. A society with psychiatry or any similarly authoritarian church is corrupted, corrupting very essential truths to enslave us. It's enslaving co-option of the worst kind.

Acceptance is knowing we are essentially right, admitting we didn't accept that, and accepting that others don't accept that.

Associating, reintegrating, the dissociated tripartite of our soul: mania, depression and stability.

Do you have any idea why that is?

Maybe because you feel it's just not right, even though you "know" it is?

I agree that "cup of tea"-thing, no fear but reintegration, is one of the most important things. Acceptance of yourself by accepting every part of you, including depression (and mania).

I believe the emphasis on symptoms only and seeing it as an illness are serious roadblocks.

I generally fear illnesses, even if I know I have them.

I was brought up in a world where everything always had to be perfect and the only thing in life that mattered is how you were viewed by other people. I was never thin enough or pretty enough. I never dressed the way I was supposed to and didn't follow the path that was designated for me.

This has always made me have issues with self acceptance. It caused me to develop body dysmorphia at a young age too. Several years back after my divorce I quit my job in finance and I said screw it, I don't care anymore and I up and moved from NC to Sweden, got remarried and am perusing a career in fashion, which is what I have always wanted to do. My father quit speaking to me and basically disowned me for not 'doing what I was supposed to'. But for the first time I felt good about myself. Then after a year I fell into a depression, and now am in a super intense manic phase. Then I got diagnosed bipolar. I'd always been terrified of thst because I'd worried that I had it and that my family would reject me (as they did my bipolar aunt). So the diagnosis cause me to take a huge hit as far as how I view myself.

Where I come from it's not ok to lose your s***. It's not ok to wander from the given path or to be different.

I had more thoughts on this but my brain is bombarding me with a million things and I can't think straight. Much less type out anything else that's coherent. :/

You've expressed yourself very well (much better than I generally do).

I have luckily just one parent (and one sibling) who is very exacting about what I should've done and the way I could've (that I couldn't even is of course nonsense).

You sound wise. Trust your own wisdom.

I am schizomanic, so I am a bit more accepting than those with just BP, but not accepted very much. That's how things go. It isn't a coincidence obviously: we are wise (arguably many with schizomania or schizophrenia just more, but we are delusional, chronically ill).

Soothing idea for most in society: "schizo" means useless, so ignore.

But not for us: we know, feel, it's not true.

And Sweden must be so nice this time of year. All the sun! I am jealous.

I'm too tired to reject or accept. Your call.

i

I will be the first to admit I am way too hard on myself. But once you've been told enough times that you 'didn't live up to expectations' (and by that I mean I'm a pink haired, tattooed artist and not a suit wearing conservative lawyer) and that you 'could and should have followed a straighter path because you didn't live up to your potential' you start to believe it.

My life since I was a teenager has been one huge intense roller coaster. Now I know why I have such violent mood swings, deep depressions and manic episodes, but for the longest time I just felt (for lack of a better word) crazy. I suffered in silence for many years with only my (now ex) husband knowing how 'crazy' I was. I kept from my family as much as I could, showing up on holidays to appease them but otherwise tried to keep them at arms length to avoid further damage to my ego.

Several years ago I started thinking I might be bipolar but I avoided psychologists like the plague. I feared a diagnosis would make me even more of an outcast in my family. I had a great aunt who was bipolar, she was the 'eccentric aunt' who was always treated like a she was completely insane (though I never saw her that way) and generally kept away from events so as not to embarrass the family. The last 6 years of her life the family decided to put her in a mental facility and I never understood why. I didn't want to end up like her. But after my recent suicide attempt I knew there wasn't another choice but to seek treatment.

Sweden is amazing, I absolutely love it here. I get my citizenship in a couple of months and will probably never move back to the states. It's a beautiful country, the people are lovely and the lifestyle here is much, much less stressful for me.

I'm a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and this is not part of our philosophy. We are all buddha, there is not a right or wrong.

I didn't red all the other posts, so sorry if I missed anything else..

Ok, I, uhm, extrapolated. You're right. It wouldn't.

However, as psychiatry teaches us that we are wrong to accept (what leads to) mania, they'd be wrong.

If you believe something, something in direct conflict with that would be wrong.

But, whether there is a real conflict is at least debatable, but probably wrong.

At any rate, there is some, call it meta-wrong in there. But maybe only a meta-right. Indeed, maybe no such opposition as I described.

Call it polemics. Not very Buddhist, I'll admit.

Yes, expectations lead to conflict. Within ourselves and with others.

In my family, at a young age, I was championed as a poster child for success. Anything others didn't achieve, I could and would easily. Expectations were high. I believed in myself.

I think that's quite typical for the likes of us. The conflict with reality might be the bravura precipitando that started it all. It's, in my case, typically hebephrenic.

Too high expectations is something that distinguishes us from those with SZ, I believe. If we lower expectations we become more SZ-like.

Awful what happened to your aunt. Really awful. What misplaced pride!

As a general rule, the higher the expectations, the less the acceptance.

BP is somewhat a high-SES (socioeconomic status) thing. SZ a low-SES one.

The fall of grace is very destructive.