Because It's Untrue Doesn't Make It A Lie

A common theme when speaking of our thoughts is to remind ourselves that thoughts are not the same as facts, as truths. However, just because something is untrue doesn't mean that it's a lie. Allow me to explain my thinking on this.

When I'm hypomanic a number of changes are present. I feel lighter on my feet. My body posture is more erect and my shoulders are uplifted and straight. My gait is something of a strut. My pace is quicker, more assured. My thinking accelerates as ideas come quickly and fully composed. They come effortlessly and bouy my mood. I can concentrate, focus. However, over time everything quickens, the thoughts come too quickly to hold onto, and focus becomes muddled. Mistakes creep in and I begin to lose myself.

Alongside this is a general sense of improved well-being, of improved confidence. It can, and has, shifted to growing feelings of grandiosity, of an invulnerability, a sense I can do no wrong.

Conversely, when I'm depressed different changes occur. I feel heavy, weighed down. My body posture is more closed with my shoulders dropped and protective. I curl into myself. My pace is slower, heavier, plodding lacking assurance. My thinking is slow, deliberate, my thoughts incomplete and tentative. Concentration is lost, fleeting and cognitive impairment grows. Over time, this weight, this heaviness, is amplified slowing everything down even more. The world becomes bleak, dark, black.

In this state, my sense of well-being is non-existent. I feel incredibly unworthy - of kindness, of friendship, of life. There is no grandiosity. I feel vulnerable, unprotected, and in deep pain. I can do no right.

Often we are told that the thoughts in each of these moods are lies. Don't listen to the lies, we are told.

There's no doubt that the thoughts are untrue but I think it isn't quite correct to call them lies.

For me they are accurate reflections of my state of mind and of my appearance. They clearly, and definitively, are indicators, symptoms, the existence of which prompt me to act to help myself or, if the occasion requires, seek help from a friend, my doctor, or my psychiatrist. The thoughts may be untrue, but the symptoms they generate and the feelings they cause are very, very real.

Remember, my posture changes in ways that are quite visible to others. Is that a lie?

Is "real" the same as "true"?

I believe that when it comes to my illness, real is not the same as true. Even though I may have grandiose thoughts about my worth, or bleak thoughts about that same worth, and feel very different because of these thoughts, it does not mean that I am that inflated person nor that deflated person. Simply because the changes in my appearance are real does not mean that the thoughts and feelings giving rise to these changes are true.

What I feel, what I think, and how I appear can all be untrue. But in no way are they truly lies. They are real and accurate indicators, messages, telling me about my mood and as such are listened to by me.