EP 86: From Hospitalizations to Healing: Why I Became a Bipolar Recovery Coach

I unpack what a bipolar recovery coach is and why a diagnosis can describe symptoms without explaining what causes them. I share my path from trusting the chemical imbalance story, through worsening outcomes and hospitalizations, to learning how to identify and treat the real sources behind my mood symptoms. 

• My early mood swings, the search for answers, and why the diagnosis felt like relief 
• How symptom-focused care and long-term medication left me feeling worse and more hopeless 
• The mindset shift that changed everything: nobody is coming to save me 
• Becoming a detective in my own life, including earlier recognition and healthier support plans 
• Why diagnoses can function like labels, not true explanations, using fire alarm, smoke, and fever analogies 
• The research and books that challenged the chemical imbalance theory and reshaped my approach 
• Why I built my book and The Upsiders' Tribe to offer a shorter route with guidance and support 
• Common sources to investigate: trauma, unhealthy thoughts and behaviors, medication effects and withdrawal, micronutrient insufficiency, substance use 
• What I do as a coach: help you find sources, choose tools, and get steady support without judgment 

 If you’re ready to move beyond symptom management and begin pursuing real healing and recovery, I would love to talk with you. Schedule a Discovery Session to see if The Upsiders’ Tribe is the right fit for your journey. 

To book your complimentary Success Session email me: michelle@theupsideofbipolar.com

FREE Mood Cycle Survival Guide: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/free/

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Transcript

Symptoms Are Alarms Not Answers

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It leads people to believe they've been get given an explanation for why they're experiencing these symptoms, when in fact, all it has done is tell you that you have them. Some of the analogies that have been really helpful for me in explaining this to people are if somebody had a fire alarm going off in their home and you went to somebody who is supposed to be an expert on fire alarms, and they came over and said, Oh, you have fire alarm disorder. And they gave you something to muffle the alarm. That is what we're doing with this. We are not identifying the source.

Why I Started This Show

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to the Upside of Bipolar, where we uncover the true sources of bipolar symptoms and share proven tools for recovery. I'm your host, Michelle Reitinger, number one international best-selling author of the Upside of Bipolar Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder. In this podcast, I bring you solo insights from my journey and guest interviews with leading researchers and experts. Join us to transform chaos into hope and reclaim your life. Let's heal together.

My Diagnosis And The Old Story

SPEAKER_00 1:17

And that is what is a bipolar recovery coach? It's a question that I'm being asked with increasing frequency. So I thought I would take an episode and explain what it is that I do and how I help people recover from their bipolar disorder. In order to start this discussion, it's really important to go back to the beginning for me, which was leading up to my diagnosis. In college, the three years leading up to my diagnosis, I had been experiencing increasingly erratic mood swings. I would go for periods of time where I would have really elevated mood, my mind would race, I would have lots of big thoughts and big ideas, and then I would crash and I would get depressed and start to struggle wanting to even go out. I would watch television for excessive periods of time. And these shifts in mood, these were becoming more and more pronounced and more and more distressing to the people that loved me and to myself. I was losing confidence in myself. I'd spent a lot of time during those years reading self-help books and trying to establish schedules for myself and trying to exercise more self-discipline, thinking that I could just fix it because I thought it was a moral failing on my part if I just tried harder. And as my family observed me, especially my aunt and uncle who lived near me, and my parents who lived in another state, but were observing this through my communication with them, through phone calls or the lack of phone calls, they were observing these increasingly erratic mood swings with deep concern. These symptoms were very distressing for me and for the people who loved me. And so when I was finally convinced to go see a psychiatrist, I went to the psychiatrist looking for an explanation. I wanted to understand why I was experiencing these symptoms and what could be done about it. When I went to the doctor, the focus there was on the symptoms. The symptoms were, I was given pages and pages of questions related directly to what types of symptoms I was having, the severity of the symptoms, and the frequency or duration and duration. All of the focus was on the symptoms. And I was given what I believed was an explanation for why I was having these symptoms. I was initially diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. And then later the diagnosis was changed to bipolar disorder. And I was told that the definition of these the definition or what these symptoms or what these diagnoses actually meant was that I had a chemical imbalance, that my brain was chemically imbalanced. And that was why I was experiencing these symptoms, and that the treatment was to use psychotropic medications, chemicals, to balance out the chemicals of my brain. And it was a story that made sense to me. Like I had very limited understanding of what was going on inside my head. And so going to an expert who had been trained medically helped me to feel like there was a reason that I was experiencing that was beyond my control. And it felt good. I had mixed feelings when I went to the to this appointment and had this diagnosis given to me because on the one hand, I felt like I was being told that I was broken, that my there was something wrong with my brain that needed to be fixed by the doctor. But on the other hand, it made me feel hope that maybe there was something that could be done about it. When I was told that bipolar was like having diabetes and the medication was like insulin, that made me feel more hopeful because I had lots of friends who were diabetics. I had friends who were high-level athletes that were diabetics. And I thought, well, they can function really well. Their physical issues are treated and successfully using insulin. And so it gave me hope that I would be able to treat my bipolar disorder using these medications that were supposed to balance the chemicals in my brain. And then I would be able to live a productive life, live the life that I had hoped I'd be able to live. And so I trusted what I was told. I trusted the explanation that was given to me for about why I had these symptoms and the treatment approach that was given to me was going to help. I believed

A Decade Of Getting Worse

SPEAKER_00 5:40

it. So for the next decade, I proactively sought psychiatric treatment. I went to every every doctor's appointment. Anytime I moved, I would immediately establish myself with a new psychiatrist so that I made sure I had continuity of care and that I continued to have treatment. I took every medication I was prescribed, and it didn't get better, it got worse. Especially after I had my children. I started struggling with more symptoms. Symptoms continued to get worse, and I ended up having additional symptoms that I was starting to struggle with. And after the birth of my second child, my son, in 2006, I spiraled downward. I just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And the explanation was was I still believed it, but it was making me hopeless at this point because I was also told that the prognosis of this diagnosis was very bleak, that it was lifelong and incurable, and I would I would need medication for the rest of my life to treat it, but the medications were not fixing the problem. And then I ended up in the hospital several times. I ended up hospitalized three times in two states where they did electroconvulsive therapy on me. I felt very, very hopeless. And I could see the damage that I was doing to my husband, my children, to the people I loved the most. And I didn't have any hope for things getting better at that point. Because the experts that I'd gone to that gave me the explanation for what I believed was the explanation for why I was experiencing these symptoms that were causing so much distress and damage, the explanation was leading me to feel hopeless because I didn't believe that there was any other way to treat this, these symptoms and this disorder.

Nobody Is Coming To Save Me

SPEAKER_00 7:48

But the experience that I shared in my book, and I've shared over and over again, watching my children play after my third hospitalization and realizing that if I ever successfully ended my life, because I'd made attempts on my life at that point, that I would ruin my daughter's life, made me look at things differently. And later on, after a fourth hospitalization, I really started to look at things differently because I thought, nobody's coming to save me. I've got to find a way to save myself. And that shift in my brain, that determination to find another way, changed the way that I approached these symptoms. It changed the way that I approached what I was experiencing. It wasn't a, I didn't realize what a significant difference it was going to make initially. I just was desperately trying to find a way to be a better mom for my children. I didn't think my life had much value, but I definitely knew theirs did. And I wanted them to have the best, healthiest mom that they could, and I wanted to find a better way to manage what I believed was a lifelong and curable condition.

Becoming A Detective With Tools

SPEAKER_00 8:53

And that started with me becoming a detective in my own life. I started looking first for what I understood about what I was dealing with. I'd been living with these symptoms for over a decade at that point. And I started looking at them, thinking, what do I know about what I'm dealing with and what can I do differently? And that led to the development of the first tool that I share, which is the mood cycle survival guide. I started thinking about, you know, some of the damage that this was doing. It was doing a tremendous damage to relationships, first of all, because I wouldn't ask for help. I was so embarrassed by what I was dealing with that I wouldn't ask for help until I was in crisis. And that always damaged relationships. So I started thinking, well, okay, now I know that I definitely know that I need help. I can't do this on my own. I need help. So how do I ask for help in a way that doesn't ruin my relationships, that doesn't make me feel humiliated every time I have to ask for help? I started thinking about what kind of help I needed, who I could ask for the help, and how I could respect the people I was asking for help from by creating healthy boundaries around that assistance. I started thinking about how I can recognize these symptoms earlier? Is there a way for me to anticipate them so that I can be more proactive in managing them? Is there a way for me to manage my emotional resources better so that I don't use everything up doing things that don't matter and then making myself and the people that are closest to me suffer because there's nothing left for them? And how do I get back to a healthy, balanced mental state? How do I, how do I be proactive and seeking to get balanced again rather than just sitting around feeling like a victim and waiting for things to get better? That was the beginning of a total mind shift for me. I shifted the way that I looked at myself, I shifted the way that I looked at my treatment, and I changed my approach. And that itself was a total game changer for me because up to that point, I had been looking to the doctors to fix me. I'd been feeling like they told me what was wrong with me. They're the experts, they know what to do, they know what's best. And so I just kept doing what they were telling me. And I was a good patient. I did everything they told me to do, but it was not working. It was not helping. I was still suffering. And I was told that it was normal that I was suffering and that everybody else just needed to suffer along with me, basically. But that wasn't good enough for me anymore because it was hurting my children and I didn't want to hurt my kids. Along the way, I started discovering additional tools and resources. I started looking for other things that could help me. And I was really blessed because a friend of mine introduced me to True Hope, which is the micronutrient company that helped me to safely titrate off my medications and get on the nutrients necessary for my brain to start to heal. I started finding other tools and resources that were going to start helping resolve the underlying sources of the symptoms, even though I didn't really understand that at the time. I thought I was just learning how to manage them better. And then things really shifted for me when I started to share what I was learning. In 2020, we had a terrible family tragedy that helped me to recognize how far I'd come mentally and emotionally, because even though I went through a natural grieving process in this tragedy, I was still able to stay balanced. I was still able to function and take care of myself and take care of my family. In the past, I hadn't been able to handle minor problems. And here was a major life-changing, life-altering tragedy that I was able to navigate in a healthy way. And when I started recognizing that, I wanted to share what I'd learned. I thought, I need to share what I've learning. I had been learning for about a decade at that point, working on tools and resources that had helped me to go longer and longer periods of time without symptoms. The symptoms had become much more manageable and mild comparatively. And I wanted to share what I'd learned. I thought I found the way to manage bipolar because I still at the time believed what I had been told about bipolar being lifelong and incurable. I still believed the explanation. I just thought maybe I'd found alternative treatments that were more effective in helping to manage these, this quote-unquote disorder. So I started my blog in 2021. And then shortly after that, I started my podcast. And as I did that, I wanted to get better information for people. Now, up to that point, for that first 10 years, I had been learning these things for myself and applying them on my own. But now I wanted to teach other people and I wanted to make sure I was giving them more information. I didn't want them just to take my word for it. I wanted them to know the source of these tools and habits that I had developed that had helped me. So I started doing more research.

Research That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 14:05

And that was when things completely changed for me. Because in reading books like Anatomy of an Epidemic and Madden America, which are both by Robert Whittaker, reading the books by Professor Joanna Moncrieff on the chemical imbalance theory and how it was false, reading books like The Better Brain by Dr. Bonnie Kaplan and Julia Ruckledge, and The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Banderkolk. All of those changed the way that I viewed the symptoms that I was experiencing. As I said at the very beginning, this all started with symptoms. I was having very distressing symptoms I didn't understand. And I was looking for an explanation as to why I was experiencing these symptoms and what I could do about them. And what I had been told was that they were a medical condition, that it was outside of my control, that it was a chemical imbalance in my brain, and that I had to use medication to treat it. And as I read through these books and started understanding the sources of the symptoms, I started questioning everything I'd been told. I started to understand that these diagnoses were not identifying an underlying medical condition. They weren't identifying an etiology, they weren't identifying a source. They were simply giving a description to the symptoms. It was describing the symptoms, not identifying or explaining them. And over time, I've started to come up with analogies to help people understand this because we are so thoroughly indoctrinated, for lack of a better word, into this idea that these disorders are medical conditions, that it's really hard to change the way that we view this. I've had people come to me to join my program and say, well, I haven't received a bipolar diagnosis, so I don't know if you can help me. And I really have to work hard to help people understand a bipolar diagnosis is not an explanation. It doesn't help you. And actually, I think causes a lot of harm because it leads people to believe they've been given an explanation for why they're experiencing these symptoms, when in fact, all it has done is tell you that you have them.

Fire Alarm Smoke And Fever Analogies

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Some of the analogies that have been really helpful for me in explaining this to people are if somebody had a fire alarm going off in their home and they they didn't know what it was, if you had a really loud alarm going off and it was really annoying and really distressing and causing problems, and you went to somebody who was supposed to be an expert on fire alarms and asked them what was going on, and they came over and said, Oh, you have fire alarm disorder. And they gave you something to muffle the alarm. That is what we're doing with this diagnosis. We're not, we are not identifying the source. We know logically that a fire alarm goes off when a fire or smoke is detected. The fire alarm is there to detect something and to give you a warning that there is something that is unsafe. Smoke or a fire is occurring and you need to find the fire or the smoke. Don't shut the alarm off. Don't take the batteries out. The alarm is there to help you. The alarm will go off when the symptom or the source is resolved, right? Another analogy that was has been helpful is if you had a car that started emitting black smoke from your tailpipe and you went to a mechanic and they said, Oh, you've got smoke disorder in your car. Here, let's put something over the tailpipe to stop the smoke from coming out. That's not going to help the car, and it's actually going to cause a tremendous amount of harm because you're not identifying the source of the smoke. You're not identifying why the car is smoking. You're just trying to stop the smoke. And you're you're calling it smoke disorder, which doesn't tell you why there's smoke coming out of the car, it just tells you that there's smoke coming out of the car. And the final explanation that I've used that is most relatable because it talks about something that we actually experience ourselves as human beings, which is fever disorder. If you started running persistent fevers and they were getting worse and worse and worse, and you went to the doctor and they told you you had fever disorder, and then they just started giving you ibuprofen and said you're just going to need to take this for the rest of your life, that is not telling you why you're having a fever. It is identifying that you're having a fever, which you already know, and then giving you something that is going to do more damage to your body and not actually resolve the source of the symptoms. It might be resolving the symptom mechanism, but it's not actually resolving the source because you don't know what's causing your fever. You haven't identified the source of the fever. You've just identified that you have a fever and you're trying to stop the fever. The fever is the body's alarm mechanism. There's something wrong. We need to figure out what it is. And that's what's going on when you have a bipolar disorder, a bipolar disorder diagnosis, or an anxiety disorder diagnosis, or a major depressive disorder diagnosis. You have an alarm going off, or multiple alarms going off, and you need to learn how to become a detective in your life and look for the sources of the symptoms. As I was developing these resources for people to try and guide them, help them learn what I had learned and sharing the research that I had learned, I started recognizing that I was very blessed that I was able to find these, all of these tools, learn how to apply them. Took a long time. It took me probably 15 years, really, to go through the whole process of recovery, partly because I didn't know that I was recovering and I didn't really understand what I was doing. I was just desperately trying, I was a mom who was desperately trying to live better for my kids so that they could have a healthy mom and hopefully have a chance at a healthy life. But I wanted to provide a shorter route for people. I didn't want them to have to stumble around finding these things for themselves. I was actually quite frustrated at one point, several points probably, that I'd had to find these things for myself. All the research is there. I was frustrated that when I went looking for help, that I was given a false explanation and false understanding of what was going on. When there's all this research out there that's actually helping us identify the actual sources of people's symptoms and how to treat them effectively.

The Program And The Faster Route

SPEAKER_00 20:43

And so that's why I started my program, The Upsiders Tribe. And that's why I wrote my book. The more I was learning, the more information I had, the harder it was to teach people what I had learned. Because it was a bit like trying to drink through a fire hose. Whenever I would have somebody ask me to tell them how I had recovered, I would try to share everything I had learned in the previous decade, all the research that I'd done, all the tools that I developed, all of the meaning behind it. That taught it tells my story so that you understand my story and how I ended up with this diagnosis and how the treatment affected me, the psychiatric treatment affected me. And then how I discovered the actual sources of my symptoms and how to treat them effectively so that you could resolve the sources of the symptoms. This is identifying where the fire is in your house and putting the fire out. It's identifying what's causing the smoke to occur in your car and fixing the source of the problem. It's identifying what's causing the fever to rage in your body and treating the source of the fever. You don't need to treat the symptoms long term. You might initially, because, you know, for somebody who's running a fever of 105, that's dangerous. It can cause brain damage. And so you might need something initially to bring yourself back into a safe place, but then you don't stop there. You don't spend the rest of your life taking ibuprofen for fevers. If you took ibuprofen every day for the rest of your life for fevers, you'll destroy your stomach. You'll do tremendous damage to your body because that drug is not safe long term in your body. And it's not resolving the source. If you can identify the source of the fever and treat the source, then you can resolve the symptom. The symptoms are a secondary issue and they are the alarm system. We don't want to shut off the alarm system. We want to figure out why the alarm's going off in the first place. So when I wrote the upside of bipolar, I wrote it as a self-help book. I wanted people to be able to take the book and apply what they were learning in the book and resolve their sources of symptoms. And I included all of the research that I'd done up to that point. I've done more since then, but I up to that point, I incorporated all of the research that I'd done, provided all the sources so that they could do that research for themselves if they wanted to. I didn't want people just to feel like they could take, they just had to take my word for it. I wanted them to be able to see the research for themselves. But one of the things that I have learned is that this is a really hard road to walk on your own. And it can be really scary. And so when I went through all the different challenges that are part of cross-titration and, you know, the over-medication and the med releases and the withdrawals, I just kept hanging on because it wasn't any worse than what I had already been experiencing. But what I learned through that experience is that there is a better way to navigate that. And that if you have somebody who's been through it before who can guide you through the process, who can help you know how to do it effectively, that it can help it be much more smooth. It's been really fantastic to watch the people in my program who go through cross-titration because I they benefit from what I've learned. They benefit from all of my mistakes. I teach them how to go through this process in the smoothest way possible. And True Hope is a phenomenal resource for this. I teach them how to use True Hope's customer support effectively, how to go to them when you need their help, and how to navigate this process in a safe and effective way. And so it's so thrilling when people finally get off of their medications, their brains are feeling better and they're starting to really heal and really feel the effects of healing. And then they're actually able to start working on the other sources of their symptoms. What should have been done in the first place?

Sources Of Symptoms And How We Work

SPEAKER_00 25:46

In this program that I created, the Upsiders Tribe, I coach people through recovery. I help people learn how to apply what is in my book, The Upside of Bipolar, Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder. I teach them how to take these tools. And number one, look with curiosity for the sources of your symptoms. So this all started with symptoms. And this the reason people go and get diagnosed, diagnosed is because of their symptoms. They are, like I was, looking for an explanation. And we were, they're looking to somebody who they believe is an expert who's going to tell them why they're experiencing these symptoms and how to fix it. And unfortunately, that's not the case when you go in for a psychiatric diagnosis. They're not telling you why you're experiencing these symptoms. They're just telling you that you have the symptoms. It is an observation, not an explanation. So, what we do in bipolar recovery is number one, we teach you how to become a detective in your own life, how to look for the sources of your symptoms. And then I teach you how to identify, once you've identified the sources of your symptoms, what the tools are and the resources that are going to help you treat the source. We're not looking for the alarm. We've already found the alarm. The alarm's going off. We're looking for the fire. Maybe there are multiple fires going. A lot of people have more than one source of symptoms. And so we use the research that's helped us to learn what the most common sources of symptoms are. And then we look for those sources. Do you have these sources in your life? Is there unhealed trauma in your life? Do you have a history of trauma? Unhealthy thought and behavior patterns? Do you have a history of psychiatric diagnosis? A lot of people's symptoms are caused by psychiatric meds, which sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. If you've started off with a diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or depression, and that evolved into a bipolar diagnosis, it didn't reveal it, it caused it. The source of the symptom is the medication. Micronutrient insufficiency is a very, very, very common, probably the most common source of symptoms for people. Our food sources are so depleted in nutrition. Our brains are not getting what they need to function in a healthy way. And when your brain is not getting what it needs, it starts to get sick and manifest with symptoms. So the fire is literally in your brain. Your brain and your body aren't getting what they need to function in a healthy way, and they're getting sick. And so instead of trying to shut up the symptom, we need to treat the source. We need to give the brain what it needs to function in a healthy way. Some people end up with these symptoms as a result of using drugs. Marijuana, cocaine, even drinking can lead to these types of symptoms. And sometimes those are that kind of use is actually sparked by trying to numb out because of unhealed trauma. There's lots of sources of symptoms, and we need to identify what are your sources. And then I help you understand how to develop these tools, habits, and resources that are going to help you treat the underlying sources of your symptoms. And one of the things that I love about the way that this program has evolved is that it is designed to give you three things. Number one, the guidance and direction that you need to develop these habits and tools for yourself, one-on-one assistance from me and helping you to know what where you are in your journey and what you need to be focusing on right now. And number three is support. And this is probably the biggest is we've got an incredibly supportive group of people going through the recovery process that support each other, that give each other encouragement and guidance because they've, you know, some of them are have worked through parts of the program already and have learned things. And so they're able to share what they've learned and give encouragement and reassurance that it is going to get better, that you are going to be able to continue down this path to healing and recovery. And there's zero judgment. There's lots of these, a lot of the problem that we have with these symptoms is that it feels embarrassing and humiliating. These symptoms make us feel like we're broken or there's something wrong with us. And I love the group that I coach because they're so supportive of each other. Nobody judges the things that people are struggling with because we understand that much of this, if not all of it, is a result of trying to cope with something we didn't understand. So people encourage each other and support each other and cheer for each other and continue to help people keep moving with hope towards recovery and healing.

Support Options And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 30:55

That's what a bipolar recovery coach is somebody who will help you identify what's actually causing your symptoms, learn how to treat the source so that you can resolve the symptoms and actually heal. That's what I do. And if that's something that you think would be helpful to you, I would love to help you on your journey to recovery. This is what I wish somebody could have done for me. It shouldn't have taken me 15 years to recover from my bipolar. It shouldn't have taken me 25 years to recover from my bipolar because what should have happened in the first place is somebody should have helped me look with curiosity for the sources of my symptoms and then apply the tools and the research that were available even at that time to help me treat the sources so that I could have healed. That's what I want to do for you. I want to help you recover so that you can lead a happy, productive, healthy life and fulfill your life and your life mission and your purpose on this earth. If that would be helpful to you, please reach out. There is a link to my email address is in the show notes. And I would love to hear from you. Let's set up a discovery session and see if maybe the Upsiders tribe would be helpful for you in helping you move down your path to recovery. Until next time, Upsiders. Thanks for joining me on the Upside of Bipolar. Your journey to recovery matters, and I'm grateful you're here. For more resources, visit www.theupsideofbipolar.com. If you're ready to dive deeper, grab my book, The Upside of Bipolar: Seven Steps to Heal Your Disorder. If you're ready to heal your symptoms, join my monthly membership, The Upsiders Tribe, to transform chaos into hope. Until next time, Upsiders.