In the mood
Mood management tools for life
Paul Cava has experienced great joy. And great sorrow. He has known the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows, providing him with a tremendous depth and breadth of feelings. As scintillating as it may sound, his moods, swinging frequently and often without warning from one end of the spectrum to the other, were, in his words, ravaging his life.
Cava has bipolar disorder, characterized by extreme shifts in mood. Also called manic-depressive illness, the disorder is marked by periods of mania — greatly elated moods or excited states — interspersed with periods of deep depression.
“I am a recovering alcoholic,” says Cava. “So I have what they call a dual diagnosis. I didn’t know I had these things in combination until I was well into my 40s. By then it was vital to my existence and survival to get help with my mood management. And meds could help with that only so much.”
Cava met with Community Hospital’s Maurine Moody, licensed marriage and family therapist, and signed up for her Mood Management course, a six-month program designed by Marsha Linehan, Ph.D. Seven years ago, the program was adapted by Katherine Sheen for Recovery Center patients with a dual diagnosis. Moody adapted it to the general public for those dealing with conditions such as attention defi cit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.
“During our weekly classes,” says Moody, “we are reminded that distress and pain are a part of life, so it’s a matter of learning to handle such situations without making them worse. The idea is that people have learned certain skills to help them cope with life, skills that may have worked as a child but are not really healthy or effective once we grow up.
“Once students learn more about themselves — who they are, what they like and don’t like, how to step back and observe what’s going on inside and around them, and how to describe it in a nonjudgmental way — they can begin to learn how to get what they want while maintaining good relationships and self respect.”
The coursework enabled Cava to take a new look at how he views the things he does and how he reacts to them. Starting out very basically by observing his reactions and paying attention to the causes, he was able to see that certain reactions are based on misperceptions of reality. Mood management skills helped him tap into his own “wise mind” before making decisions and taking action.
“The way I look at it,” says Cava, “the wise mind allows us to use the emotions we feel, and the logic we’re capable of, in a way that serves us best. It also allows us to fi t into our world and our culture and to deal effectively with other people.
“I have found it extremely useful. A lot of people fi nd that, in order to cope, they need to stuff their feelings and ignore them. What I learned in this class is that it’s not the best way to go if you want to actually live your life in something other than fear. Rather than running away from feelings, it’s important to feel what they are and then let them go. Feelings are there for a reason. Fear is there to protect us, so it’s important to listen to it, find out what it’s about, then let it go so it doesn’t disable us.”
Jane Press didn’t want to take the course. But prescribed as part of her aftercare program in going through the Recovery Center, avoiding it was not an option. So she relented, planning to attend just a few classes to see what it was all about.
“As soon as I caught on,” says Press, “it was phenomenal. I use the tools from this class every day. I learned about emotional response, and when I look back I can see that most of my problems in life have been caused or contributed to by my own emotional responses to life, to situations, to other people. It was worth the price of admission to learn what is mine and what is not mine to respond to, to learn that my emotions don’t run me.”
Throughout the six-month course, students meet once a week to focus on a couple of skills and are then released to go out into their lives to practice these new skills before returning a week later to discuss the results. For those who are not patients of the Recovery Center but are interested in the course, it is now being condensed into two six-week courses offered through Behavioral Health Services.
“Somebody who doesn’t have a problem with drinking or using drugs,” says Press, “could use the tools from this course without having to clear out of their stupor first. It applies to everyone. The human emotional response is what we’re talking about.”
For more information about Mood Management classes at Community Hospital, please call 625-4600.
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