I just received the following comment from Janette. I often then of the difference between mania and religious/spiritual feelings. It can be so hard to tell the difference. This is also true with the Tarot, psychic readings and anything else that connects to the spiritual world.
No matter what you believe or don’t believe, the facts are that people with mania can have what feels like a magnificent religious experience when manic and then be very devastated when they realize it was mania. Prevention is he key here. If you know your mania starts with religious/spiritual/psychic fervor, you need to know the signs and get help before they go too far. This is one situation my books talk about very, very clearly. You have to know the signs of mania a lot earlier than the signs of depression and psychosis. Mania has such a small treatment window – and you may be in a hospital thinking you’re Jesus before you know it! Here is Janetta’s letter.
Dear Julie:
I converted to Islam about 23 years ago after running around various religions and even studying them at University.
The dilemma between what is a mystical state and what is mania is truly a fascinating question. I think I’ve had both…and i would now say that a good way to discern the difference is by the effect they have on your own life and that of others.
God is always loving, just, beautiful etc etc whereas mania and craziness isn’t and can be very destructive. Depression feels like hell but if we can reach out to a higher power in that state then we can always have hope and that in itself lets a little chink of light into the darkness…
I could go on and on.
Anyways, thanks so much. I know that God is with you and the good work you do. Janetta
It’s easy to think you’re psychic when you’re actually just manic- or manic and psychotic!
Mania can make you feel you’re having a religious experience all of the time. As Janetta pointed out. The experiences that don’t cause extreme let down, harm or hospitalization are often the real thing. Mania and or psychotic induced experiences are usually episodic- in other words, the religious/spiritual intensity of feelings may simply go away when the mood swings ends- which is another way to tell the difference between what is real and what’s an illness. Julie
Thanks for the beautiful picture of the sea and sky….how calming!!!
THANK YOU for your writing on religiousity vs. mania. I have shied away from getting involved in religion since my last episode. I did not know what was mania or what was true experience. I think you’ve helped me see a little more than I did before.
I’m going slower this time.
thanks again
Hi Cliff,
Reading your comment made me feel really good- I’m so glad that the blog is helping people. It sure helps me to write it!
Thank you!
Julie
Dear Julie,
I was born on 25th dec 1965.
Until age 15 I was regular member of roman catholic church.
after that i became athiest.
In year 2003 I accepted jesus in my heart .
Till this time I had no history of any illeness.
In dec 2003 I got bipolar disorder and i started thinking myself jesus.
It took two years to cure my Bipolar disorder after taking lots of anto depression and lithium drugs.
In year 2005 I became again athiest beleiving no god.
In year 2005 I started meditation and I started getting messages such as my goak is master , master is everywhere, my master is greatest and master is jesus.
and again July 2005 I got Bipolar disorder but again I could control with lithium
from year 2005 to year 2009 I am perfectly ok but still I feel like going towards spirituality.
But I am worried if I start praying I get bipolar disorder.
Does this two element have relation or really I am getting message such as my father is greatest, my master is soul, evrything control by my master and my master is jesus.
Please advise
I’m gonna be 33 in a couple of months. Since age five (or so) I have cycled through a never ending series of mixed episodes. This has manifested itself primarily with long periods of dysphoria interupted by shorter periods of full blown mania and or the “p” word. Last summer I went through an almost 3 month manic phase which culminated in the belief that members of a NING social network thinking I’m the antichrist and they had a desire to use me as the catalyst for the apocolypse. I decided to prevent this with suicide. I consumed sufficiently fatal quantity of drugs, which “should” have killed me. The docs and paramedics were baffled by this and could not explain it. This forced me to reconsider spirituality, and gave me the feeling that there was a higher reason for my existance and I accepted god.
As the “p word” left me I was left with a VERY dark dysphoria which I am surviving because of my faith. I have been in med therapy for about 15 years and my illness overpowers the meds in most cases. I have never been a threat to anyone but myself because of strong moral grounding; and feel that this will never be an issue, that said I did for all intents and purposes commit suicide last fall (due to manic dysphoria not depression), and that really scares me (as well as the two or three people who care about me) a great deal. I’m just wondering if you could give me some signs that a spiritual awakening is out of control and becoming a danger to me, so that I might take more responsibility for my own survival. Thnx, and thanx for this site.
Julie, your book is helping me hold on. I use it as a reference. I think everyone with BP disorder should read it. When I had a severe manic episode, I thought I was Jesus, and I still look back on that experience as a time when I felt close to God. I still think God spoke to me at that time and answered any question I had. If it isn’t real why do so many people have similar experiences? I think mania can send you into a different dimension. Perhaps the brain is more a receptor than a creator. Could the temporal lobe function on a different level in the mentally ill? Could it be that our minds connect with God?
Interesting question. As to another post on which I commented a couple of weeks ago, I am still struggling with yet another episode. I have moved from the manic, to hypo-manic, to mixed state. Now I am still in the midst of the depression. My doctor asked me just this last week if I were suicidal. I could honestly answer that if it weren’t for my beliefs and religion, I would have done it a long time ago. Yes, it is keeping me alive. I still struggle, but I know that one of the great commandments is Thou Shalt not Kill. Killing ones self is included. I don’t want to go to hell. I would imagine it would be far worse than any agony I new experience.
Having recently experienced a psychotic episode, during which I believed, not necessarily that I was Jesus, but that I had accessed a spiritual state in the same stream of conciousness (which I also believed that anyone with the will to overcome the negative side of the ego could achieve I.e. loss of greed, guilt, shame etc) I’m not so sure that it’s possible to differentiate between a true spiritual experience and mania or psychosis as they appear to be intertwined.
It’s my personal opinion that the negative elements of the ‘craziness’ seen during a manic episode is caused by an out of control ego attempting to interpret the emotions and understandings of the spiritual experience, using its limited capacity and the constructs of the world in which it has been formed. Which is why we all think that we’re Jesus, or similar figures, mythical or otherwise.
I actually believe that psychosis brings up all of our subconscious fears and desires in the story that we create and allows us to deal with these while out of our usual fear and guilt ridden state. It can be incredibly damaging to a person experiencing psychosis or mania to have the grand realities we create invalidated in order to force us back to consensus.
To my mind it would be far more helpful to find the underlying reasons the new reality had been created. I for example, believed that I had a distinct purpose which I was supposed to serve in resolving some of the issues in the world today, which seems to be a common theme within manic and psychotic episodes. This most likely came from the fact that after reasonable promise and success, my life had come crashing down round my ears and was totally at odds with my ego beliefs around success and self worth.
To be told that I was delusional was akin to being told that I had no purpose, nothing special to offer, which damaged my self worth even further after the trauma I had experienced. Despite the delusional beliefs I experienced, the spiritual element and feelings related to this were real, as was my increased compassion and creativity. I was medicated for a month, which caused me severe depression and terrible nightmares.
When I stopped taking this, after I was released from the unit I was being held in, I slowly recovered, losing and understanding my delusions without anti psychotics and re-integrating the elements of the personality which I enjoyed, while attempting to heal and understand those which I did not.
I genuinely believe that a manic or psychotic episode can be a transformative and healing experience, if handled sensitively and with knowledge and experience of the emotions and thoughts being experienced by the individual. I personally experienced crippling anxiety and depression prior to the episode, which now, through my own research and attempts at self healing, has disappeared. Sadly, as the western system of medicine is not geared for this. To me it’s not as simple as saying and experience is either psychotic, or, spiritual – sometimes the two exist alongside one another, the psychosis being a wounded ego’s interpretation of the spiritual.
It scares me to think that if people such as Jesus, Van Gogh, Beethoven etc had been born in the modern world, they would have been potentially locked in psych wards, without sharing their wonderful compassion and creativity. How many of our modern day visionaries are incarcerated and/or medicated to the eyeballs? What will that do for the future of humanity?
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