Mania and Me: Examination of the Diagnostic Criteria

Upon examination of the diagnostic critera for mania, I find I don't fit the criteria.

First, here's the criteria:

• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• Decreased need for sleep (e.g., one feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep)
• More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking
• Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing
• Attention is easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant items
• Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school; or sexually) or psychomotor agitation
• Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments)

Taken from psychcentral.com

We are talking about my first episode.

First off, did I have inflated self-esteem? No, I wouldn't say so. Grandiosity is a narcissistic view of superiority and I definitely did not have that. So not, I didn't have this symptom.

Decreased need for sleep? Yes, so yes on this one.

More talkative? I talked less, as I was putting together a puzzle in my mind. So no.

Flight of ideas/racing thoughts? Well I had a heavy flow of thought, not a fast one. My thoughts weren't actually quicker.

This is a problem I deal with constantly when dealing with people about this. No, I have never experienced racing thoughts. I don't know what that feels like. I keep telling them this, they keep telling me over and over again that my thoughts race.

This one is probably a yes, due to the fact that there was a heavy flow of thoughts.

Easily distracted? No, I'm just not listening to the person I am talking to ever. So no.

Increase in goal activity? No, I didn't do anything goal-oriented at all.

Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities? Nope.

This last one is where some people on the diagnosis team say yes! She overdrew her bank account!

Anyway.

Freak of Nature: The FDA Approval Process

So, first of all, let's talk about the FDA drug approval process. According to fda.gov, Phase 1 of the clinical research process is the only stage of the FDA drug approval process that tests a new drug on healthy patients. All other phases are tested on patients with the condition a drug is intended to treat.

In Phase 1 of clinical research, their are only 20-100 subjects the drug is tested on. That's not very many!

Well, of course, safety is studied more in depth later on, on subjects with the condition. So, obviously, if you are being forced to take this drug, you indeed have the condition. There's no such thing as being misdiagnosed.

So if bipolar patient's brains differ in structure from other people's, it doesn't matter because we know for a 100% proven fact you do indeed have bipolar disorder.

Anyway, these are also subjects who are participating voluntarily. So if there is an intelligence gap between people who voluntarily agree to take unsafe medication and people who refuse, and thus a difference in brain structure, we wouldn't know about it.

So anyway, Rachel is being forced to take a new medication and is experiencing rapidly cycling mood up and down and up and down. When she is up, she sits by the bath tub and laughs her head off. When she is down, she contemplates suicide.

All this started the day her morning dose of Geodon was discontinued due to excessive morning sleepiness. Previously, we were giving her one after one (a basic grade of behavior, ones are bad, two's passing, three's excelling) due to falling asleep in group. As soon as the morning dose was discontinued, around about 3 pm she starts cycling rapidly up and down with her moods. Due to the fact that she is diagnosed bipolar, and mood swings are not a known side effect of Geodon, we can conclude that her condition worsened the same day we discontinued the morning dose of Geodon.

And we will continue to ignore Rachel's desperate pleas for us to take her off this medication.

How Scientology Meshes into my Spiritual Belief System

To me, what I have learned about Scientology from Erik is not part of any spiritual belief system. It offers some insight into something about human psychology I wasn't previously aware of.

Engrams. These aren't the "little things that run around," like my mom said. Engrams are a bug in human psychology.

An engram starts when you are in an altered state, whether it be induced by drugs, anger, fear, etc. When you are in an altered state and something that is a big deal happens, like someone is rude to you, an engram is made.

The engram gets activated again when there are a number of similar elements to the time the engram is made, present in your mind at once. They can make you act irrationally, or like you did when the engram was first being made. Whatever you experience at this point, becomes part of the engram. You keep adding to the engram.

In order to do what I do and go through altered state, knowledge of the concept of engrams is a requirement. I have examples of engrams I have dealt with in my life, but none of the examples are examples I would like to share here. That's because they deal with subjects that I am not sharing on my blog at this time, or because I don't want trigger words used against me. Seriously.

So what I am trying to say is, this is just a belief about an aspect of human psychology. It's not really a spiritual belief. I am not a Scientologist, have no desire to convert.

It's basically a belief about patterns of irrational behavior, or irrational reactions to situations, based on how you have reacted to them in the past, or it brings up emotions of your past experience in these situations.

I don't understand why this is seen as crazy. This is a completely reasonable belief. And as I say, who's to say what beliefs are crazy?

It's also part of human psychology, if you are hypnotized, to be very suggestible. If someone tells you, your right arm disappeared, and you are hypnotized, you will start flipping out because you feel you are an amputee.

We can sit back and wonder, why are there so many crazy people in the world? Why are so many people Scientologists? And then we can wonder, why do so many people take part in auditing, in a practice that is obviously, because we read some article on the internet, complete hublub? Obviously these people are deluded and full of shit!

Or we can give people the benefit of the doubt, and say, there are reasons people like this psychological practice, this practice known as Scientology. It benefits a lot of people!

Parents with Issues: Can you overcome their bad choices?

The myth I wanted to dispel today was the notion that if you had a bad childhood with bad parents, when you get to a certain age you need to stop blaming them for the way your life turned out.

However, it's true, obviously. If you want to have a good life, you have to let go of the anger you have toward your parents for giving you issues.

But when your partner gets on your case... a bad childhood is a valid excuse.

The truth is, acknowledging that your parents are the cause of your issues is important. In some cases, the alternative is blaming yourself. If you blame yourself for your issues, that wears away at your self-esteem and perpetuates the idea that you are destined for failure. You have to look at your own issues and say, no wonder I have problems with my body image. My mom made jabs at the way my clothes fit my body all the time growing up! First acknowledge that anyone in your situation would have grown up the same way. Acknowledge that it's okay to have issues.

Then, everytime you feel bad about your body, ask yourself, "Who is talking here? Is it me or my mom?"

You have to realize the power of firmly held beliefs. If early on in life you never did well in school, you were told you were a poor student, over and over again, you may get a firmly held belief planted in your mind that you will always do poorly in school.

We could say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Try anyway! But you can't do that! Firmly held beliefs are powerful!

When the mistreatment of your parents led to a whole bunch of firmly held beliefs that you will always fail, the harder you try the harder you fail, change is bad, etc... You are fucked. Plain and simple.

You are destined for an unhappy life. And it's your parents fault.

You get a character like Eminem. It's a situation where his music is his own artistic space. One of the issues that keeps coming up in his mind is, man, my mom fucked me up. So yeah, he has every right to write songs about her.

I do not consider it to be immature.

Marijuana Culture

With the push to legalize marijuana... Comes an even stronger need to clean up our culture, and stop promoting the idea that marijuana is cool.

Marijuana is legal here in Oregon, and I am known to use it on occasion. I am fortunate in that I never really experimented with the drug until I was 26 years old, and my brain was fully developed (there were a couple isolated incidents of me trying marijuana at younger age).

First off, is marijuana cool? Not really, but it is a relatively harmless drug that you can use when you are old enough, to alter your mental state. I don't think it is cool, but it is prevalent in our culture.

Rap music, in particular. Urging you to "smoke weed everyday." How do we get through to the children? You will be much more intelligent as an adult, if you lay off the drugs in high school!

We need to reach out to the rap artists, and try to instill in them a sense of responsiblity to the children.

Good luck!

Serving God Through A Healthy Work Ethic

We, at the Zuhl household, are working.

I do not have a job. Do not make any money. I get government assistance.

However, that does not mean me and the spirit guides are not busy!

First comes a healthy happy workspace. I have our company symbol, the icosahedron, in prominent view.

What is the reward? Healthy happy new ego construct building, infusing power into the idea that Rachel Zuhl is a beautiful spirit and a beautiful human being. Feeling the life source, the power of God, constantly infusing Rachel with happiness and drive to keep working!

What product are we working on? Right now, the goal we are working toward is enlightenment! Wow, what a wonderful finished product!

How do we make that happen? First, we need to rid the ego of pretentious ego specks. Things that are not really Rachel Zuhl at her finest, but rather, other people and their opinions of Rachel Zuhl.

Rachel Zuhl needs to feel beautiful as a human being and spirit without other people telling her that!

I Find Truth in Dreams

I had a dream last night that had something that gave me a weird feeling. It was a piece of ancient wisdom.

The ancient wisdom was, "This is a familiar to you because it's been in your mind before."

This was the piece of wisdom.

When I was confronted with this piece of truth, I felt weird. It came like an echo. The truth echoed, oscillated and then made me feel weird when it hit a focus point and there was no running and hiding from this piece of truth. That's the best way I can think of to describe it.

It was an encounter with the life force, the truth, and there was some reference to the Akashic records. At least, the Akashic records were prevelant in my mind when I awoke. The weird feeling was an encounter with the divine. I got closer and closer to experiencing the divine, and when it hit a focal point, there was no running or hiding and it made me feel scared or freaked out though there was nothing in particular I was afraid of. Just freaked out to experience something so raw.

The life force runs through everyone, so everyone has experienced this bit of truth or wisdom in their mind at one point. It runs through everyone's mind like water.