Wounded Healer - The Bipolar Therapist

My article below as originally published for BP Magazine and they were kind enough to let me share it here on my blog.

Wounded Healer

I am a therapist. And I have been there.

I have seen the images of grandiose creations and experienced ever-evolving thoughts. I have believed myself to be the recipient of special knowledge deeded to me by God and have woken up morning after morning vigilant to the possibility of attack by inner voices of terror. These mornings, times of resignation to the voice in my head that would have me believe I was holy, has left me gravely disappointed. I was not holy. After exhaustion from hours of dancing to the tune of mania, I have been engulfed in despair, the likes of which I’d never experienced, much less believed possible. Exaltation followed by crassness, then the belief that suicide was the avenue that would bring me home

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder more than 35 years ago and on medication without an episode for 24, I have a perspective of what works and what doesn’t. Still, sometimes it is hard for me to know who is the client and who is the therapist.

Nowadays, I deal with symptoms as they appear. Residual and brief, periods of melancholy generally don’t last long, but anxiety has become a regular visitor. After 35 years, I admit its existence and do my best to ignore it. When that doesn’t work, I meditate.

Getting better takes work. Persistence is the name of the game. When I hear clients voice their frustrations about an issue they are working through, and the anger and discouragement it engenders, I am reminded of my own past. I sometimes visit that “me” through clients’ present experiences. Recovery from major mental illness isn’t for sissies. It takes determination and the refusal to take no for an answer. What irony that the ones most likely to be sidelined for life are the ones who often need the greatest strength. It’s a lifetime pursuit, a path to the heroic.

I sit at my desk and review my case notes for the day. It’s a quiet time, a time to reflect. I am tired after a full day of sessions, yet, alert to a sense of satisfaction. My clients compose a chapter of my day, my life an image of connections made with others who share a common bond. It’s something I carry with me at any given time. Thinking back on my day, each client is a memory of an earlier memory – mine. Having bipolar disorder myself, I have lived much of what they are going through, and mercifully, have survived. The recovery of others helps me with a recovery of my own.

A draftee during the Vietnam War, I worked as a social worker/psychotherapist. It is only by chance and genetics that this psychotherapist later became ill. I did not come to this field in sickness, but in health.

When working with my clients, one of my strongest tools is self-disclosure. They’re more likely to feel heard by a therapist who is aware of how it feels from the inside. I am a “wounded healer.”

Fragile, I know I could regress at any moment in time. My empathy is tempered by my judgment and experience. Continuing to strive for understanding keeps me motivated to learn more. Thanks to the sheer volume of clients I have treated along the way who have taught me so much and helped me correct my mistakes; I have become a better therapist.

Recovery can follow only after hopelessness has brought acceptance. The decision to recover - and that’s what it is - a decision, must be made by the individual. When the final struggle to accept is made, only then does treatment begin and with it, hope and help from others. We need to confirm our worst fears: “We have a problem, and it isn’t going to go away.”

I love the normalcy I live. It sustains me. Bipolar disorder once made a shambles of my life. I now strive to accept the miracles found in the mundane: a flower’s scent, the touch of a loving wife, a clear thought, a client’s smile. I don’t have to be manic to experience the thrill of life. I have merely to be present in its moments

Donald Kern is a licensed psychotherapist practicing in Woodland Hills, California. He has recently written Mind Gone Awry (Kern/Isaac Nathan Publishing, 2007) a bipolar memoir available on his website: Kerntherapy.com or at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at info@kerntherapy.com