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Click on individual
symbols in the rainbow.
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Earth
"I keep rotating, day and night. While I revolve,
it's winter on top and summer on the bottom, then it switches,
back and forth. There's my north and south poles.
And don't even get me started on the ice age/global warming business.
Anyone know where I can get a nice asteroid belt with high concentrations
of lithium?"
Inspiration from Sister Leslie's Bipolar Planet webpage.
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Fire & Ice
Fire and ice show many opposite characteristics, like mania and
depression. Though not as vivid a metaphor, steam and ice
might be more scientifically accurate, since they are the same
substance in different states. They can always return to
water.
Inspiration from the Australian FyrenIyce website created by Suzie aka
Fractal.
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Drama
Comedy or tragedy, drama shows us a wide range of emotions. An
actor counts as an asset the ability to hide one's true emotions,
to put on a mask and pretend to be someone else. Bipolars frequently
put on a mask, pretending not to be depressed or irritated. |
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Mercury
The term mercurial aptly describes the temperament of
a person with mood swings and a tendency to energetically bounce
from one project to the next, common during hypomania.
In classical mythology, Mercury (Hermes) was the Roman (Greek)
god of commerce and travel. He was also the messenger of
the gods. He was well known for his fickle temperament,
hence one meaning of the word mercurial is "fickle; volatile;
changeable" or "rapid and unpredictable changeableness
of mood."
I have seen this phrase applied to bipolar disorder in various
sources, such as in Dr. Kay Jamison's book Touched with Fire, the (apparently replaced)
Mercurial
Madness website, and A Mercurial Mind website.
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Pendulum
Swinging back and forth, the pendulum makes an appropriate symbol
for mood swings. Galileo discovered, as a young child,
that the period of a pendulum was very predictable. He
reportedly timed the swinging chandeliers in church using his
pulse. Mood swings are unfortunately far more complicated.
Inspiration from Pendulum
Resources website.
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Phoenix
The mythological bird called the Phoenix would periodically be
consumed in flames. From the ashes of its nest, a new firebird
would arise. A tumultuous, often destructive, mania often
precedes a deep depression. Yet, when the depression lifts,
a feeling of rebirth resembles the rising of the Phoenix.
I can't recall where I originally saw the Phoenix used to
represent bipolar disorder, but Sister Leslie's Bipolar Planet webpage includes a nice
description of the phoenix.
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Bi-polar
Bears
Maybe these bears got tired of traveling vast distances on paw
to find grub every day. They don't hibernate, like other
bears, so the analogy to depression won't work. So, what's
wrong with a silly play on words? |
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Sine Wave
A sine wave is the most fundamental repeating function.
Cut a circle in half, horizontally, with a line. Then move
a point around the circle. A sine wave describes the distance
from the point to the line. Mood swings are not as predictable,
but they do go on forever. With treatment, they can be
dampened. |
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Yin-Yang
From ancient Chinese philosophy comes the notion of two opposite
forces which, when taken to the extreme, contain essential elements
of one another. Under this philosophy, Yin and Yang describe
opposing attributes, from dark and light to male and female,
present in every part of the universe. The symbol illustrates
this with the white and black portions containing a small dot
of the other color. The moods of a manic depressive extend beyond
the normal range, to the extremes. These extremes exhibit common
characteristics and have thus been recognized as two sides of
the same illness for many centuries.
See Encyclopaedia Britannica article.
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