#25 - Music is my life, and my refuge. What is your refuge?

<p>To help keep the podcast ad-free, please consider supporting the podcast for just $1 per month via Patreon: <a href='https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving'>https://www.patreon.com/bipolarandsurviving</a>.</p> <p>Any mental health blog will tell you that having a creative outlet is good for the mind.  Whether they are trying to sell you a gratitude journal in their store, or want you to fit their model of how someone should live their life, there is still truth in their words: having a creative outlet is great for mental health.  But, having a creative outlet isn’t the focus of today’s episode.</p> <p> </p> <p>Today’s episode focuses on refuge.  In my case, my creative outlet happens to be my refuge.  But you can find fulfillment and joy in anything that captures your attention.  For some people it is hiking.  For others, it is fixing cars.  For others, it is programming computer games.</p> <p> </p> <p>Why is it important to have a refuge?  It is important to have a safe haven for your mind to allow yourself a place to regroup in times of trouble.  In this case, since this blog focuses on real stories of hope and survival, I will use music as an example of the lifeline that kept me hanging on when the delusions of my mania overcame me as an adolescent.</p> <p> </p> <p>As a child, I was heavily involved in music.  I suppose you could call it musical training, but really music was, and still is, just another part of me, like another arm that can pull me in different directions and grasp things that are intangible.  I didn’t really train in becoming a musician; rather, music reached out to me and raised me as its own.</p> <p> </p> <p>I’m not saying I’m super talented; I just have an instinct in music that makes me realize that music and I are one.  And so, when my mania started attacking me and deluding my mind in high school, and when my depression made me suicidal in college, the one consistent thing in my life outside of my family was music.  And that was the only refuge I had that I could retrea