Don't Own Your Manic Episodes

This was an idea I first heard from Ajahn Brahm in a YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXd09oGHD0I&t=2578s

Basically, people with bipolar feel an extreme level of regret for the things they've done. The one key to overcoming that regret, and basically feeling no regret anymore, is to realize that it wasn't you doing those things. Anyone around you can see it clearly already. When you're manic, you're not being yourself.

I often want to hold on to all of my experiences even if they're painful. I want to feel like, "I may have been manic, but at least I existed." Well no, I didn't exist. Nothing exists forever. My real personality comes and goes. It will eventually die when I'm 84 (That seems like long enough). So why own the parts of me where I was clearly not myself? I felt like myself at the time, but I wasn't.

Don't own it. That is the idea of no-self for Buddhism. It's not just don't own that, but also DO own the parts of yourself that are really you. It's not hypocritical to say, "This was me" and "that wasn't me." It's not hypocritical because it's just a fact. The time you showed up manic to work and confused and scared people was NOT you. You are the good person right now who would never dream of doing those sorts of things.

It's very important. One of my goals as a teenager was to live a life of no regret. I can't say I accomplished that, except that I wasn't me when I did regretful things. In that sense, I have lived a life free of regret. I don't regret anything I've ever done while sane. And while insane, I wasn't me.