The story of a snowflake changed my perspective on how to help myself

It was many years ago and I was at University listening to the philosophy lecturer speak about the snowflake. I was in a psychology course at the time and this philosophy subject was all about the analogy of a snowflake's history and how this is relevant to the life of human beings.

The snowflake is a tiny particle of ice, dirt and many other substances that floats in the air. It is taken by currents and, depending from it historical journey, through the currents, it changes shape. Some of the shapes of these snowflakes are very beautiful and can be seen through the microscope. Little icy crystals form the most beautiful shapes. But how the snowflake will be shaped depends on the currents and the journey of its lifetime.

People's psyche are similar to the snowflake in this sense. Our psyche and Spirit are shaped by historical events. Years and years of environmental forces shape who we are.

All of this made me realise that what has happened to me, including my Bipolar, cannot just be biological. It is hard for me to think that my Bipolar is due to biochemical imbalances of a purely biological nature. What about my history? My traumatic history? Surely this history had something to do with it?

This was a new perspective that i realy liked. The story of the snowflake had triggered a curiosity in my mind to find out what was, and had been, happening to me.

I started to read frantically till I found what made a lot of sense to me; it explained to me my bipolar disorder. I accepted this explanation, and I still do today, and this is why my perspective is much different from that of many sufferers, though, admittedly, there are a few that think like me.

What I found was the writings of R.D.Laing who stated that:

Conventional psychiatry [and the way we understand mental disorders] is [plagued by a confusionthat lies at the very center of the conceptual problem of all modern, scientific medicine [It still does today]. Instead of asking why a mental illness occurs, medical researchers try to understand the biological mechanisms through which the illness operates. These mechanisms,rather than true origins, are seen as the cause of the illness. Accordingly, most current psychiatric treatments are limited to suppressing symptoms with psychoactive drugs. Although they have been very successful in doing so, this approach had not helped psychiatry to understand mental illness any better, nor has it allowed their patients to solve the underlying problems. (in Capra, 1988, Uncommon Wisdom, Flamingo)

I totally agree with this and it makes sense to me and it also explains my condition, Bipolar Disorder.

From this perspective, I have been able to help myself, to get to the bottom of my problems. Mind you that some of the problems were so well hidden that my mind had burried them very deeply into the subconscious, and I had to do extraordinary work to find and retrieve this information. Being oblivious to this information had not stopped it from causing havoc in my psyche. Now that I have resolved many issues, thanks to the advice of Laing, who is no longer alive, I can go on and continue my healing journey on the road to RECOVERY.