The Upside of Bipolar: Conversations on the Road to Wellness

EP 74: Faith And Bipolar Recovery

• Michelle Baughman Reittinger

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I share how faith and action led from despair and repeated hospital stays to a practical path for recovery. The story moves from early experiences of God’s love to a step-by-step survival guide, therapy, micronutrients, and an open invitation to choose agency today.

• the role of faith as a source of hope and direction
• the moment a clear thought interrupted suicidal despair
• why healing came through steps, not an instant cure
• building a mood cycle survival guide
• response team, early warnings, power priorities, system reboot
• boundaries that respect helpers and protect family
• micronutrients from a nonprofit and why they mattered
• therapy reboot with EMDR and proactive tools
• addressing religious trauma and doubts about spiritual impressions
• shifting from diagnosis identity to personal agency
• practical invitations to act and record moments of peace

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SPEAKER_00:

Faith can give us hope. Faith in God and faith in his love for us and his desire for us to heal and to have happy lives is gives us hope and it keeps us from giving up. 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. I am your host, Michelle Reitinger, and I have an interesting topic for you today. This is one that I have never discussed that I can recall on my podcast, but it's one that I feel very compelled to talk about today, and that is faith and its role in healing. When I first started my blog back in 2021, I wasn't talking about the role that faith had played in my healing, and I haven't talked about it mostly, you know, for the most part in the last four years as I've, you know, developed my podcast. Um I did talk about it a little bit in my book, but I haven't really talked about it very openly. And there are a couple of reasons for that. Number one, when I first started my blog, I was just trying to share the tools and resources that I had found that I believed were helping me manage what I still thought was a lifelong condition. When I first started this blog back in 2021, I still believed that bipolar was a lifelong condition. And I had just found tools and resources that were helping me to manage it more effectively. It wasn't until I started doing more research and learning more about what I was actually struggling with that I started understanding healing was possible, that I started understanding that I was healing and changed the way that I talked about bipolar and bipolar symptoms. But I didn't talk about faith largely because I was trying to reach as large an audience as possible because I felt like people needed to know what I had learned. And I didn't want to dissuade anybody from listening to me because I know that a lot of people who are struggling with mental health challenges have experienced spiritual wounding of some sort. Maybe there's a betrayal from somebody or trauma or things like that that are related to people who express faith, who say that they have faith. And so there's, you know, oftentimes it can turn people off if they hear somebody talking about faith related to healing with regards to mental illness. And so I just didn't talk about it. When I wrote my book, it was impossible for me to write my book without talking about God at all, because he has been an integral part of the healing process for me. He is the reason that I was able to find the tools and resources that help me to recover. And I'll talk about that today in this episode because I realized that I was doing not only myself a huge disservice by not openly sharing, you know, the important, essential role that faith has played in my recovery. But I am not being fully honest about my experiences and fully honest about the hope, what gave me hope for healing and what gave me hope to keep moving forward. So I want to talk about that today. And I hope that you will, even if you are not a person of faith, I hope that you will at least listen to this episode with an open mind, because I hope that what I'm sharing will give you some ideas about things that could help you in your own paths to recovery and healing. So, first of all, I want to talk about, you know, what the role that faith has played from my earliest childhood. When I was a child, I remember feeling God's love. I remember feeling close to him. I remember believing in him. From the earliest, I just I just knew that he was there. From the earliest, my earliest memories, I have very early memories of just knowing that he was there and just knowing that I had a heavenly father and that he loved me and I wanted to be near him. My experience, the very first experience that I share in my book, actually relates to faith because when I was in junior high and I became suicidal for the first time, I had an experience where I could hear my daughter's voice in my mind. And it wasn't, I know I've had people suggest that it might have been some kind of psychotic episode. It was, that's not what it was. I wasn't hearing a voice, you know, like a like a schizophrenic episode. I was feeling a voice in my mind that was pleading with me to not give up hope, that was pleading with me to not consider ending my life as I was in that moment. And I felt peace and I felt love. I didn't feel frantic, I didn't feel, you know, any any distressing emotions. I felt peace. I felt an incredible sense of love come over me. And I know, I knew then and I know now that that was a gift from my heavenly father, showing me that there was hope for the future, that I shouldn't give up hope in that moment. And and so that was an experience that I know was a gift from my father in heaven, and that kept me moving forward and kept me. And it actually, that that experience was such a profound experience for me that it influenced a lot of the experiences I had later on. You know, things that, you know, it helped me to have the courage to leave my first marriage when I was being abused because I realized that I didn't want that man to be the father of my little girl that I had heard when I was a teenager. And there were so many times when I was struggling, especially before I was diagnosed, but even afterwards, that I would be struggling with severe depression or, you know, hopelessness. And I would go to places where I could feel God's love. I would go, you know, to church or, you know, to our temple, or, you know, go to places where I could be near him. And sometimes I couldn't even really feel him, but because I was in those places, I was around people that were kind and compassionate and would show me kindness and compassion. And so it was, which I believe is an extension of God's love. And so I kept, even though there were so many times when I just couldn't feel anything because of the severe depression I was experiencing and because of the effect of the medications I was on, I couldn't feel anything. I was very numb for long periods of time. I kept trying to come back because I had these kind of, I call them echoes of memories. You know, they were, I remembered at one point that I felt hope. I remembered at one point that I felt love. I remembered at one point that I that I felt peace. And so those kind of echoes of those memories kept me going. They kept me trying. And I had a really profound experience that I've never shared before on the podcast, you know, or in my book, that I felt like I needed to needed to share. So I did get to a point with my mental illness, with my bipolar symptoms, that I became very hopeless. I went through a long time of severe, severe, severe depression. And I had a breakdown and I ended up hospitalized multiple times. They did electric convulsive therapy on me. I experienced my first psychotic episode. Like I was, it was just getting worse and worse and worse. I was doing everything the doctors told me. I was actively seeking psychiatric help. I was actively going to my appointments. I was taking every medication I was given. And nothing was getting better. I was just getting worse. And I started to become very hopeless, especially because I had finally had my daughter and I had a sweet little boy, and I felt like I was ruining their lives. I felt like the instability, the, the bipolar rage that I would experience, and you know, all of these symptoms were damaging these children that I loved so much. And I didn't know what else to do. I was doing everything I was told, and nothing was getting better. It was just getting worse. And I ended up in the hospital multiple times and became convinced the dark thoughts in my mind convinced me that everyone would be better off if I was gone. I didn't feel like my life had any value anymore. I didn't feel like there was any hope. And so I did end up making some attempts on my life. And I will be forever grateful that I wasn't successful because I had the experience that I relate in my book of watching my children play. It was after the third hospitalization. I was watching them play one day. And my daughter was four, and my son was not quite two years old yet. I think I say he's two in the book, but I realized like he wasn't quite two. He was almost two. And I had this really clear thought come into my mind. If I ever successfully ended my life, that it would ruin my daughter's life, she would believe it was her fault and it would ruin her life. And again, I feel like that was like, you know, the God speaking to me and letting me know, like, you've got to stop giving up hope. You need to have hope that there's something better for you. And don't, don't follow through because you'll ruin your daughter's life. And I knew that what I was hearing in my mind at that moment was true. It was, it was not like the other thoughts that came into my mind that were dark and you know, and destructive. This one was very clear and I felt a tremendous amount of clarity and peace when I heard when I had that thought. And I I became determined to live for my daughter and to live for my son. But from that point forward, I was still just kind of hanging on for dear life. I was just holding on by my fingernails, is the way that I I've described it to people. And I wasn't doing well, I was really suffering. And I kept trying to hold on for them because I believed the thought that I had that that I would ruin their lives if I ever ended mine. And so um, so the next year or so was just kind of hanging on for dear life. And I ended up in the hospital again. And when I was home after that that fourth hospitalization, there's an experience that I haven't shared that was one day I was reading uh the Bible and I read about the story of the woman with the issue of blood that's in in Luke chapter eight. And it's for anybody who doesn't know this story, there was a woman who had spent everything that she had going to doctors trying to get help for this debilitating medical condition. They don't say what it was, they say it was an issue of blood, but she had spent everything she she uh had trying to get help, and nothing had ever helped. She just continued to suffer. And she had heard about Jesus and heard that he was coming to where she was, and so she pushed into the crowd that he that was around him and uh believed that if she could touch his just touch his clothes, just touch his hem, that she would be healed. And she reached out to him and touched him, and instantly she was healed. And it talks about how Christ felt, you know, it says that he could feel virtue leave him. He felt the the experience that happened and turned to her and told her that it was her faith that had made her whole. And as I studied this story, all of a sudden I thought, I wonder if that could happen for me. I thought, I have faith, I know that I have faith in God. Could that could I be healed by him? And and I could totally relate to her experience. I could relate to how hard she was trying. She was doing everything she could and no one could help her. No one was, you know, nothing that the physicians were doing were was helping her. She was continuing to suffer. And I started praying for relief. I started praying for a miracle. And I didn't get an instant healing. What I did get were guidance from God over the following years that helped me to discover the tools and the resources and the research that led to my healing. And the thing that's incredible about the this way that that, and I believe it's just as miraculous. I believe that the experience that I've had healing is just as miraculous as the woman who had the issue of blood, even though it didn't happen in an instant. I believe it's just as miraculous. But I'm grateful for the way that it happened for me because he showed me in a way that helped me be able to share it with others. And so the healing wasn't just for me. It didn't, it didn't just affect me. I've been able to now take what I've learned and share it with others in my book and in my podcast and in my coaching group, the upsiders tribe. And that path to healing began shortly after that experience when I was watching my children play after that whole fourth hospitalization one day. And I had this thought nobody's coming to save you. You have to find a way to save yourself. And that was the beginning of creating the mood cycle survival guide. And this relates back to another principle that I had studied about in the scriptures, which is found in in James chapter two, where he talks about how faith without works is dead. It's not just enough to believe in God. We have to follow him. We have to follow our Savior and do what he asks us to do. He showed us the way to live. He showed us, you know, what our way back to our Father in heaven, and we we get to choose whether or not we're going to follow him. Just like the woman chose to reach out to the Savior to receive healing. We need to choose to do stuff. We need to choose to act, you know, to help ourselves. And so this first experience, which was the first step on this path to healing, was watching my children play and having this realization, like I've got to do something to help myself. Nothing that there's that doctors are showing me is helping me. I've got to find a way to help myself. And developing this mid-cycle survival guide was really kind of a precursor for everything else because it helped me start to look at myself in a way that I was, I was an agent to act, not to be acted upon. And what I mean by that is for the first 12 years after my diagnosis, I felt like I didn't have any control over what was going on with me. I believed that I had a disease, you know, I had this disorder that I had no control over. And so every time I would experience symptoms, I felt like a victim. I felt like a victim to the symptoms. It felt like, and I've described this before, it felt like getting yanked onto a roller coaster and I would just hold on for dear life until the until the ride was over, and then I would survey the damage that I had done in my life. And I felt terrible about myself because I could see that I was hurting my family. I could see that I was hurting people I cared about. And I felt like I didn't have any control over it. It makes you feel very helpless and it makes you feel like a victim. And it makes you feel like you don't have the agency to act, to choose for yourself. And so this day that I started this process, and it wasn't done in a day, it was just a beginning of the process of developing this mood cycle survival guide. But this day that I worked on this, I began first with thinking about the fact that I did need help. I could not do this by myself. But the but the difficult thing about asking for help is that I felt like I was running relationships because I was reaching out for help when I was in crisis. And and I could I got to the point where I was afraid to ask for help a lot of times because I I was feeling like people were tired of having me ask for help. I actually, the way that this part of this guide started to develop was through the compassion of people from church. I had a couple of women from church that were kind to me and would come to visit me and started to see that I needed help and offer. They made offers of, like, I had a a good friend who would offer to come, you know, when she could see I was really depressed, she would offer to take my kids for a couple hours and take them to her house to play or take them to the park so that I could get some rest for a little bit. And I had a really kind woman that was my assistant coach when I was coaching the swim team who really wanted me to be able to continue coaching, even though she could see I was really struggling with my mental health. And so she and I came up with a plan for the days that I couldn't function, I couldn't show up for practice. And as I started, through the kindness of these women, started to recognize how I could ask for help in a way that respected the people I was asking the help from. It was, you know, learning. I didn't understand at the time, but I was learning about boundaries. I was learning about how to help healthy boundaries and relationships. And so it was recognizing the need for help, but also recognizing that I needed to respect the people that were helping me. And that's how the response team developed. It was, you know, identifying what I needed, who would be willing to help me with that, and how do I respect them in the way that I ask for help and set healthy boundaries around that assistance. You know, the next thing was the early warning system. That was me learning how to take responsibility for myself. Like I said, I didn't think that it was possible to take responsibility for myself, but learning how to identify the symptoms I was experiencing as early as possible and understand what they meant, understand, you know, starting to become an expert on myself, looking for clues in the symptoms, um, that helped me become more self-reliant because I started recognizing when I was, you know, was starting to experience symptoms of depression or symptoms of hypomania. And then I could be more responsible because I could make choices about what to do about the symptoms I was experiencing rather than allowing myself to be a victim to them. And it's interesting because that part of the plan, the early warning system, actually developed into resources for all the other, most of the other healing tools. So they it became a tremendous resource for therapy when I started using therapy proactively and to heal, for me to start recognizing like, oh, these are triggers and what's causing the trigger. And so that early warning system, that step two of the mood cycle survival guide, was helping me to take more responsibility and take back my agency. Um, the same was true for the power priority. Step three was me recognizing that I had responsibilities in my life and I needed to prioritize those responsibilities. One of the things that's really hard when you're struggling with mental health symptoms, bipolar symptoms, is it's very embarrassing. It's really embarrassing to have other people see you struggle. So when I was struggling, especially with severe depression, but even with mania, I would try to mask it or hide it by making sure that I was taking care of all the outward, all the visible responsibilities. So things like church responsibilities or even like swim team, things like that. I would, those would get my what energy I had. And then there was nothing left for my family. And there was nothing left for me a lot of times because I was expending all of my energy trying to take care of these, these visible responsibilities. And and I realized that that was not pleasing to God. It was not pleasing to God that my family was suffering while other people were getting the limited resources that I had. And that was when I started recognizing how important it was for me to put my priorities in the right order and make sure that the power priorities were things that I was going to answer, have to answer to him first of all for how I took care of myself. Now we're talking to, you know, we were taught that our body is a temple and we need to take care of ourselves. And so I had to be responsible for myself. And I had a stewardship with my marriage and with my children. And they needed to take priority. And if those were the only things that I could do, that was okay. And so learning how to prioritize. The limited emotional resources that I had as I was going through the healing process really helped me to feel better about myself and feel better about my relationship with my father in heaven because I was being responsible. I was taking care of my stewardships. I was taking care of the things that I was responsible for. And then the last, you know, step piece in that, in that mood cycle survival guide was, you know, the system reboot, rebooting my system, which means getting myself back into a healthy, balanced mental space. And I worked really diligently to learn how to go from being symptomatic to getting back to a healthy space for my mind and my body. And that was moving forward, discovering the rest of the tools and resources that were necessary to heal. And it's interesting because I've, as I've looked back over the way that I uncovered the other tools and resources that helped me to resolve the sources of symptoms and heal, regularly, they were things that were brought to me by people, other people of faith. When I found the micronutrients, it was through a friend of mine from church. A really good friend of mine from church was the one who introduced me to the micronutrients. And I want to make sure everybody, when people hear that, a lot of times they think I'm talking about an MLM. This is not, that's not what this is. True Hope is a nonprofit. Um, they were actually started by a man of faith. And he was doing the same thing. He was praying to God for guidance about how to save his family. And he, through some pretty miraculous experiences, learned about micronutrition and how it can help the brain heal and function in a healthy way. And I had, when I when I started to rediscover therapy as a, as a tool that could actually help me heal the underlying sources of some of my symptoms through trauma processing and that, that was reintroduced to me through a church leader who encouraged me to try therapy one more time. I had completely given up on therapy at that point. I didn't believe therapy had any value. I had tried it lots of times and it just seemed to make things worse. So I just gave up. And it was this really wise church leader that could see I was really struggling at one point and encouraged me just to give it one more try. And I'm so thankful that I listened to him, that he that he made that recommendation and that I listened because that that therapist that I had was really changed things for me. She was super proactive. She she was the one who introduced me to EMDR. She she helped me to start taking more responsibility for my mind and myself. And I'll be forever grateful for her because that was a huge game changer for me. Starting to learn the value of therapy was was a huge shift for me and helped me tremendously on my path to healing and recovery. So as I continued to work at the resources and tools that he that God was showing me, he would show me more. And I really think that one of the reasons why I felt so strongly that I needed to share this today is that I think that we need to have some kind of faith in something. And I'm not here trying to convert people. I am sharing what I believe is true because it changed my life and it saved my life. And I realized that by not talking about it, that I was doing a huge disservice to the people that are that are struggling, because faith can give us hope. Faith in God and faith and his love for us and his desire for us to heal and to have happy lives is gives us hope and it keeps us from giving up. A lot of times when we're struggling with these symptoms, and we've been, especially if you've been struggling with them for a long time, like I was, you can start to feel hopeless. And I'm here to tell you that there is hope for healing and there is hope for recovery. One of the big challenges when I talk about faith, I have talked about faith in private with people. And one of the challenges that I encounter when I talk about this is that there are people who have been severely wounded by others who profess to believe in God. You know, there's people who've experienced religious trauma, who have experienced abuse and betrayal from people who profess faith. And so I totally understand and have compassion for people who have been through that. And it's one of the reasons, like I said, why I hesitated to share my faith and share my story because I don't want to open wounds up for people when I talk about these things. But if you have experienced that kind of trauma, I would encourage you to not focus on the person because there are bad actors in every every walk of life, there are bad actors, even in even in religion. And people can use and twist religion and God for their own motivations and for their own purposes. And but I would encourage you to be open to the idea that perhaps it's not God Himself or even necessarily religion, but people who are acting in bad faith. And that it is possible to heal those sources, those wounds, and be able to return back to that feeling of peace and love that can come from God when we turn to him and when we when we seek him out. I also know that there are, especially with bipolar, that there are people who in states of mania have heard voices, believe that they're talking to God. And that can also be a huge deterrent for people because I know that when I was experiencing severe mood swings, um, I got to a point where I didn't know if I could trust what I was feeling. You know, I thought, how do I know this is coming from God or if this is my unwell mind? And I got to a point where there was a period of time where I didn't want to pray because I didn't know if I could trust my feelings or my thoughts. The other side of that was to, you know, the blocking of God that came from depression. You know, when I would experience, like I said, I went through long periods of time where either my depression or the medications that numbed me made it impossible for me to feel God's love. It made it impossible for me to feel him and to feel the peace that came from his influence. And I know that that is really painful for people. I know it makes it hard to keep wanting to like go to church or read your scriptures or anything if you can't feel anything. Like those, that's why we do those things. We we do those things to seek out his love, to seek out the peace and comfort that comes from him. And when you can't feel those things, it makes it, it can, you know, for me for a while, I got to a point where I just didn't want to read the scriptures anymore. I didn't want to pray because it was almost, it almost made the silence deafening. You know, the inability to feel him or or to connect with him was very painful for me. And it made me not want to go to church or not want to read my scriptures or pray. But I will tell you this that when I was really sick with my symptoms and when I was really struggling, I have very specific times that I can recall where I where I ran to him in my distress and in my emptiness. And every single time that I would go to a place where he was, go to church or or for me go to my, you know, to the temple, he gave me some kind of indication that he was there. And I will forever be grateful for that because it kept me coming back to him. Even when I would go long periods without without talking to him or without being able to feel him, I would keep coming back because of, like I mentioned, those echoes of memories, those echoes of experiences that when I was in the darkness and despair, I would keep, I would, I would long for him and I would go back to him. And I encourage you to seek some kind of peace, you know, some kind of place that you you can reach out to him, do something, act in some way that will help you reach out to him so that he can show you that he's still there and that he loves you and that you there is hope for your life. I think that the reason why I feel so strongly that I need to share this today is number one, it's it is inauthentic of me to not share this part of my recovery process because truly, without God, I could not have recovered. I absolutely believe that. He showed me the way to recover. He gave me each of the tools. He showed me step by step how to go through the recovery process. And like I said earlier, it is no less miraculous than the experience of the woman who had the issue of blood. Even though it didn't happen in a moment, it is a miracle that God showed me how to heal. It truly is a miracle. My life today, I believe, is a miracle. And I am forever grateful that he showed it to me in a way that I could share it with others. If he had just healed me in an instant, I would not have been able to do the same for other people. But because he showed me in a way that invited me to act, invited me to do for myself, it made it possible for me then to then turn around and help other people. And I promise you that it is possible to recover from this. I know it with every in every part of my being, I know it truly, that there is healing and recovery for everyone who is struggling with these symptoms. If you will be willing to act for yourself, if you will be willing to do something to take, you know, to move forward, to try, to use your agency to choose not to be a victim anymore, to choose to begin, you know, with your mood cycle survival guide. Start taking responsibility by taking ownership of what you're going to do when you experience these symptoms. If you're, you know, when you're experiencing these kinds of symptoms, you need help. And instead of only going to people in crisis and burning all your bridges and honestly not having any respect for other people, when we when we do that, we're not showing respect or love for the people who are closest to us or the people we're reaching out to. We're putting ourselves first. And so I'm not saying that you shouldn't reach out, but let's reach out in respect. Let's start taking ownership for the things that we're struggling with. Learning how to identify your symptoms and learning how to identify them earlier starts to help you become more proactive in recognizing and acknowledging the symptoms you're experiencing and then creating a plan for how to manage those symptoms more proactively. Make sure that you are putting your life in the right order, prioritizing the things that matter most so that when you do have limited emotional resources while you're going through their healing and recovery process, that the things that matter most get taken care of. And then take responsibility for learning how to get yourself back into a healthy, balanced mental state. We have been made into victims by the system that tells us that we have a disorder and that it's incurable. That is not true. You don't have to live like this for the rest of your life. These symptoms are an indication of a brain in distress, a mind in distress. I know that it is possible to identify the underlying sources of your symptoms and then to utilize the tools and resources that God has revealed. I believe that all truth comes from God. I truly believe that. And that all of all of the innovations and insights and research that we have come from him, that he has revealed them to people who have been seeking truth. And so all of the tools and resources that we have come from him, and he wants us to utilize them. One of the things that I see frequently online, when I get kind of a people come attacking me from both sides of the spectrum. On one side, people will get angry with me when I say that it's possible to heal bipolar, because as I've mentioned in a you know previous episode, it threatens the identity that they have. They have they have become to identify with the disorder, with this label. And so when I say that it's possible to heal it, it threatens the identity that they have taken on. On the other side, I've had people comment that all we need to do is ask Jesus for healing and that he'll heal us. And I believe that he wants to help us heal, but I also believe that he wants to help us heal in a way that helps us more than just receiving relief from the symptoms. He wants us to exercise our agency. He wants us to choose to act for ourselves because not only does that help us to find relief from the symptoms, but it helps us to feel better about ourselves. It helps us to see our value and our worth when we're choosing to act for ourselves, when we're taking responsibility for ourselves. And he has revealed all of these tools and resources for us. I don't believe if I broke my leg that it would be pleasing to God for me just to lay there in pain and pray to him for him to heal my leg. He has revealed the understanding that we have to help mend wounded legs. And I believe he's revealed the resources and tools that help us to heal. And he wants us to use those things. He's given us the resources and tools that we need in order to recover. And he wants us to use them. He wants us to use our agency to access those tools. Just like the woman with the issue of blood reached out to the savior. He wants us to reach out for healing and he wants us to use our agency to act for ourselves. And as we do that, the recovery process is really empowering. It helps us to feel so much, it helps us to feel better about ourselves. It helps us to feel our value and our worth, and it helps us to have hope. I promise you that healing is and recovery are possible if you will choose to act for yourself, if you'll choose to be an agent to act for yourself and choose not to be a victim anymore to this. I hope that what I'm sharing with you today resonates on some level. And if it does, I want you to recognize that as an invitation. When we feel peace, when we feel hope, those are invitations. They're invitations for us to act, to use our agency to act. So I want to invite you, as we close this, as I close this episode, to consider how you feel right now. And if you're feeling distress, if you're one of those people who has experienced religious trauma or or you know uncomfortable things related to religion, I want to invite you to think what could you do right now that would help you to have some hope. Send me a message if you're if you're feeling distress, and I'd be happy to work through that with you. Send me an email or a message on social media. If you've been feeling some kind of peace or hope, think about what's causing you to feel that and write it down. And then think, what can I do right now? What can I do right now that will help me to accept this invitation of peace and hope? What can I do? What choice can I make right now? I invite you to act. I invite you to make a choice that will move you forward towards healing and recovery. There is hope, there is healing. And I hope that you will reach out if you have any questions. And I invite you to act. Make a choice today. Do something that will move you towards healing and recovery. All right. 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.