"A recent study carried out at Stanford University by Santosa and colleagues found that people with bipolar disorder and creative discipline controls scored significantly more highly than healthy controls on a measure of creativity called the Barron-Welsh Art Scale... During periods of mild depression people with bipolar disorder and creative people may be able to retreat inside themselves, introspect, put thoughts and feelings into perspective, eliminate irrelevant ideas, and focus on the bare essentials. Then during periods of mild elation they may be able to gather the vision, confidence, and stamina for creative expression and realization."
- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201203/bipolar-disorder-and-creativity
Basically - People with bipolar disorder tend to be exceptionally creative.
Here's a few creative, bipolar sorts you might know-
Beethoven, Russell Brand,
Winston Churchill, Kurt Cobain,
Charles Dickens, Carrie Fischer,
Stephen Fry, Ernest Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe,
Isaac Newton, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Edgar Allan Poe, Van Gogh
Just to name a few. There's quite a lot of lists online that give names of those that have bipolar, or are suspected of having bipolar from documented behavioral patterns (such as Beethoven, Hemingway, Poe and Van Gogh.)
Myself? I'm terrible with painting or sculpting or coming up with new laws of physics (ha) or composing music - but I am good at creative writing.
It may not seem like a big thing- I mean creative writing is, to most people, some small, unavoidable part of high school.
But to me, and I speak very literally here:
Creative writing saved my life. It is the reason I am alive and typing this today.
When I was at my lowest, all I could think was how terrible I was at everything, how I was a piece of useless shit, good for nothing, worthless, a waste of the world's resources.
When you literally believe you contribute nothing to the world but misery, it's very easy to kill yourself, or attempt it.
I had to try very, very hard to think of one tiny thing I was good at, one insignificant little thing I could say I was better at than other people, in order to stop from throwing myself off a balcony, or draining the blood from my wrists, or hanging, or overdosing, etc.
There was only ever one thing I could think of, and that was my creative writing. Because I was damn good at that, no matter how much of a failure I was with everything else in my life.
And that kept me alive.
And when I needed to vent, I would write as a stress-release. I would write about fictional characters in their fictional worlds, doing extraordinary things worth writing about. I could escape into this world I could control, a world where there were never any me's running around fucking things up.
And that writing turned out to be really good, soooo it was a win-win.
My previous post about whether I would give up bipolar or not ties in really heavily with this creativity post, because the question is essentially asking whether I'd give up this creative part of me, the part I treasure most, in order to be 'normal'.
If I had had a 'normal' high school experience, I would have gone to every class, got B's and C's, never done anything particularly good or bad, graduated and gotten into accounting or something.
Instead, I skipped a vast majority of classes and assignments, using various medical certificates as excuses. I pretended I had 'cramps' at the nurses office to sleep for an hour instead of attending class, or hung out under the bleachers and smoked a joint with friends.
I got below 50% in every class, but beat 99.9% of students nationwide in the creative writing sections of their English exams.
I was essentially the worst student in the school in every subject except writing, and the best in the school at that. Fun outliers (hahaha).
It's the only thing in my life I can actually feel proud of, and it's kept me going long enough to get better. I may have been the worst at everything else, but I was the best when it came to my creative outlet.
If I was 'normal' would I have needed that outlet in the first place?
I would be average at everything, as opposed to being terrible at everything except one thing that I was exceptionally great at.
Are you seeing a pattern here? Bipolar moods shift from 1-10 with little in between moods. 'Normal' moods always hover around 5.
My schoolwork was either appalling (1) or brilliant (10), instead of average (5) overall.
I think the correllation is interesting anyway.
- M
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