Healing Bipolar

After the birth of her baby triggers a manic maelstrom, Dyane Harwood struggles to survive the bewildering highs and crippling lows of her brain's turmoil. Birth of a New Brain vividly depicts her postpartum bipolar disorder, an unusual type of bipolar disorder and postpartum mood and anxiety disorder. During her childhood, Harwood grew up close to her father, a brilliant violinist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic who had bipolar disorder. She learned how bipolar disorder could ravage a family, but she never suspected that she'd become mentally ill - until her baby was born.

I was a desperate love addict searching for love in all the wrong places. I was only attracted to unavailable men. I was miserable and switching from one addiction to the next. It finally came to a head when, as a marriage and family therapist trainee, I became romantically involved with a client. He told on me, and as a result, I was expelled from my master’s program. I hit rock bottom. I turned to God and worked the 12 steps of recovery.

The Other Side of Bipolar offers hope and a new perspective of mental illness that can help millions of people. A unique combination of memoir and self-help book, it invites us to reexamine our definitions of mental illness as a debilitating disease and asks us to consider another possibility. It encourages us to go beyond any diagnosis or label to start exploring the uniqueness and beauty of individuality. Embedded throughout this poetic story are examples of tools and techniques you can apply immediately to begin to create a sense of peace and possibility in your life.