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Does anyone out there have experience using NLP with bipolar disorder patients? I would appreciate the chance to talk on the telephone in the near future if so.
Look forward to hearing

hi, i have found... the rule of 7&3... to be the key... to this condition...


peace&love...vern

I was diagnosed with it and I use NLP as part of my management strategy, but I've not treated anyone else with it...

I don't really see it as much of a problem, personally, I'm more concerned about "making-the-world-black-and-white-unimaginative-psychiatrist disorder..."

pm me if you want that phone chat okay?

:cool:

Hi Carl, Bi polar is often two or sometimes more widely fluctuating personalities. You may want to teach the client state control. And you may want to do a visual squash of the two personalities physically using their hands. private message me if you want more information.

Stae control you could teach about ten things. Physiology, focus, breath, questions, inner dialgoue, exercise etc

Also the DSM-IV has 3 specific entries for Bi polar from memory, Bi Polar I, Bi polar II, and Cyclothymia. Do you know which one they've been diagnosed with?

There may also be a depression component you may have to deal with as well.

Sam
you said:

"Bi polar is often two or sometimes more widely fluctuating personalities"

Where on earth did you get that idea?

Re-reading, are you making a loose description, a comparison, or are you saying it can actually be a form of multiple personality? In any case, I think that statement needs to be a lot clearer, especially if anyone is making real-world interactions on the basis of this discussion!!

Bi-polar disorder is generally considered a 'mood disorder'.
Whilst the behaviour at the opposing 'poles' of the condition may be radically contrasting, that is not the same as a multiple personality!

In bi-polar, the person is definitely the same person, with complete recall of all behaviour (usually) whether 'high' or 'low', just experiencing very differing perceptions of reality and radically different moods.
This was previously known as 'manic-depression' or 'mood-swings'.
I have never heard of or come across a bi-polar diagnosed person with actually seperate personalities - and I worked in mental health for many years - although I could understand how somebody with not much experience might mistake the two aspects as seperate personalities.

A visual squash would be pretty well a waste of time in this instance I am guessing, but feel free to try it and find out - I'd love to be wrong!

BAD (bi-polar affective disorder) is also described as a psychotic condition, where the person seperates radically from accepted perceptions of reality. The multiple personalites I have encountered did not actually seem particularly psychotic compared to BAD or scizophrenia, (but I am not aware of the 'official' line on this). The MPD folk still perceived the world as being the same as everybody else, but that they were a different person/identity - awareness between personalities varied from none to complete insight, chaotic/random to highly organised.

As for DSM-IV (and its various international equivalents) - this is probably most useful for propping up wonky furniture or as kindling to start a small fire in my opinion...
It is mainly an industry catalogue for picking out what Andy Austin brilliantly refers to as MADICATION...

Anyway, I would really like to wish anyone luck who wants to try teaching a person who is manic 'state-control'!

...you might have better luck at the depressive or stable areas of the spectrum tho, I'm guessing.

Personally, given a BAD person...
(I love that irony btw - I also had the diagnosis of Mixed Affective Disorder - MAD - and was described as 'dangerous' too lol)...
...I would work on self-awareness, other-awareness and creating a framework the person can express themselves within without attracting the attention of much more psychotic people like psychiatric professionals...

From my own experience I doubt 'standard' NLP interventions (whatever the hell that might mean) would help much during a manic episode, it would probably add to the grandiose aspect of the person's thinking (I wanted to build flying pigs to fly over the psychiatric unit I was in and open a theme park for mentally ill people in the disused wing of the hospital where they would be allowed to drive tanks through walls and the like as an alternative therapy - and that made perfect sense to me at the time...)
In 'Frogs into Princes' B & G say that if you work with their material you would inevitably find places it won't work, in which case, they advise you do something else...
I hallucinate that BAD will likely be one of those places, obviously depending on the severity of the case, but please don't let me stop you from trying!
Hope that is helpful

:cool:

What Nigel said, basically. My experience echoes his.

The treatment would depend on what the patient wants as an outcome...

Nigel,

Thank you for taking the time to share with us your experiences. There is nothing like the first person perspective!

Cheers,

Phil

By the way, Nigel, I think your idea of flying pigs and a wall crashing into amusement ride as a form of therapy is not just totally sane, but brilliant. This is the kind of creative problem solving that we really need if we are to survive as a human race...

Extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions. :-)

-Turil

Yep, Nigel, I agree with Turil. It's just amazing what you can come up with sometimes if people will just put their heads together. Sometimes the most "outlandish" idea turns out to have the greatest merit. Besides, you never know until you try!

Take care,

Venus

Oh, it would definitely have worked! I had it all carefully worked out, in my mind, unfortunately, at the time I couldn't slow down enough to articulate it to anyone else!
In my notes, it mentions that I wanted to build "a version of Disneyland in Redwood Ward"...

The fools! It would have been entirely Warner Brother's inspired, of course...

It was whilst attempting to gain the tools for building my flying pig that I fell foul of section 2 of our mental health act... but that's another story, fellow rodents!#

:cool:

Gives a whole new meaning to the expression, "when pigs fly!!!"

John Grinder says you need to be a multiple personality to survive in todays world. The only difference between you and someone who is locked up, is there multiple pesonalities are being tirggered from an EXTERNAL source.

Which various international equivalents of the DSM-IV were you referring to?

I don't understand that or agree with any of my guesses as to what it means - sounds like a sensationalist statement to me.

"Which various international equivalents of the DSM-IV were you referring to?"
Any and all of them as far as I can tell!!
In the UK they keep adding more and more categories of mental illness with very little apparent (scientifically based) research. The maddest of the mad people I've ever met - and I've met a lot - have all been psychiatrists. My understanding of US psychiatry is that it is running along similar lines to the UK.

There's some sense in what Grinder has to say there, but I'm not remotely convinced that each and every person locked up is there because of their response to external sources. A good few of them are there because their bodyminds produce potent chemical cocktails that disrupt healthy organic functioning without reference to external sources. In some cases, it seems likely that the cause is genetic, which is as internal as you can get. And even for those whose causes seem external on the surface, eg people with problems relating to drug/alcohol misuse, there's the issue of what makes their particular response to that stimulus as extreme as it is.

It was late last night, so I didn't answer as well as I could have.
:cool:

The World Health Organisation's diagnostic tool:
9789241544559
Royal College of Psychaitry publications:
RCPsych Publications Titles A-Z

Looking on the net it seems that DSM-IV and ICD-10 are now more or less the 'standard' for diagnosis, this was not the case when I worked in mental health about ten years ago.
At the time there was considerable disagreement between the UK and the USA on this - we still do not use terms like 'mental retardation' as far as I know - ie only American citizens can be described this way... lol
The 'much anticipated' (by whom I wonder) DSM-V will, I can almost guarantee, increase the number of psychiatric diagnoses available. Again.
The point where it is acknowledged that each person with mental health issues is actually unique, because everybody is unique, will be when the manual becomes a reflection of some kind of reality and simultaneously becomes irrelevent and obsolete.

I continue to disagree with John Grinder's statement on multiple personalities. Having different models and strategies, trance states, etc for dealing with different situations is in no way the same as having 'multiple personalities' - particularly when there is a high percentage of linkage between sexual abuse and the manifestation of multiple personalities as a coping strategy. Grinder's statement becomes insensitive in that light, some might say.

In all cases the fragmentation of the personality is internal, regardless of stimulus, so, consciously choosing to create something like that in response to the world, or unconsciously doing it, is probably a better way of describing the situation than reducing it to 'EXTERNAL'.

To me, the "only difference between you and someone who is locked up" is; "they are locked up and you aren't", might be a more accurate and useful statement.

I am very fond of B & G's work, it has certainly changed and enhanced my life in many ways, but I would be wary of taking everything they say as statements of fact, particularly when they begin talking 'mental health'.
Remember, their direct experience of working in psychiatry was in the 70's (see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as a fairly accurate depiction of a voluntary in-patient ward in the US of that period) and their stories reflect that culture.
I tend to default into the old saying: "There are no facts, only stories"
when dealing with NLP tales of psychiatry from B &/or G, myself...

But hey, what do I know? I'm not a doctor, after all...

....

...On the other hand, I have taken many of the drugs that are handed out by doctors and I have been detained against my will in a secure unit, put in the 'quiet room', been searched and drug-tested against my wishes, talked down to by staff, patronized by psychologists and psychiatrists, told I would be on medication 'for life', labelled with a mental illness that follows me everywhere I go, sacked from my job, refused references, described as dangerous, lied to, referred to day services, been bollocked for never showing up to any of those referral meetings, given a 'care package', given a social worker, lost close friends, been stigmatized, been described as a 'deviant' and 'resistant to therapy' by psychologists, to name a few of the joys of a journey through UK psychiatric services...

...a very different experience from somebody sitting behind a desk handing out sweeties from big pharma, or somebody in a lab, sponsored by same, reclassifying 'normality' and 'illness' and printing new 'bibles' of that prophesy every few years...

In the end I just walked away from it and got on with my life - the professionals who dealt with me presumably continue to believe in their delusional framework version of me, whilst I am healthy and happy and medication-free...

Still, it wouldn't do if we were "all the same", would it...?

:cool:

Good morning folks. I first posted this question in November last year. I am surprised by the sudden burst of posts with so much shared information and ideas. Sadly my sessions with the patient concerned came to a close in January of this year. I am reading all the replies with interest though. Thanks for all of your contributions - Carl

Perhaps they are different only on a superficial level, but at the root level - using widely different mental and physical approaches/strategies depending on the situation (internal and external) - they are the same. Perhaps that is what Grinder is talking about.

Peace, Love, and Bicycles,
Turil

...then again, perhaps it isn't...?

My experience says that they are not the same.
The multiple personalities I've encountered were fragments of an original person, mixed with ideals, steroetyped features, with an overall holographic kind of nature - they were more like masks or characters, that had strategies, maps of their own perhaps, but less depth than real people. They were apparently out of control of the 'original personality' in some cases and had wills and motives of their own - they acted as if they were seperate entities sharing a host body, although they were as far as I could tell created by the host originally.
Paradoxically 'multiple personality' is ONE strategy as far as I can tell...

A 'normal' (whatever the feck that means) person's varying strategies are all accessible to the central personality, at varying degrees of consciousness, are freely interchangeable, do not have completely seperate consciousness from anything else in the person's mind and are unable to dominate the personality of their own volition...

I think there are far more differences than similarities, so I would say the similarities are the 'superficial' aspect, personally...

Peace, love and outrageous gay lobsters

:cool:

Maybe someone can chime in with some of the studies on deliberately inducing multiple personalities in the military...

If I get time I'll chime in and add some.