Bob Krulish: A Story of Devastation & Triumph Living with Bipolar

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

How would you feel if, as a parent, you were only allowed to see your kids for supervised visitation for 72 hours total out of an entire year?

That’s exactly what happened to my guest, Bob Krulish, and as a result of his bipolar diagnosis. However, he had always been a father with undiagnosed bipolar. And, the court system failed him.

Today’s story is about so much loss. In fact, Bob says that “Bipolar is the illness of loss.” And, after hearing his story, you will be able to see that it most definitely is.

I received so much education about bipolar through Bob’s story. If you know of someone who has bipolar, suspect they have bipolar, or if you yourself have bipolar, I highly recommend you listen to Bob’s story.

There is one fact he shares about depression and anti-depressants as they relate to bipolar that you will want to hear. And, it’s one change that can be made that could potentially eliminate so much suffering for those with bipolar.

Bob gives practical advice for those who have loved one’s living with bipolar, as well as common signs to look for in someone you suspect may have it. Bob is a ripple-creator and bringer of hope for those living with and supporting those with bipolar.

Listen up, take notes, and reach out to Bob! He’s an amazing human who’s found his way out of the dark hole of bipolar after living with it undiagnosed for 35 years.

References:

Connect with Bob:

Victoria Volk  00:00
Welcome friends to another episode of grieving voices. I am really excited about today’s guest. It is a topic that I think is kind of lurks in the shadows, especially, you know, with mental illness, things like that. It’s a difficult topic. And today’s guest is talking specifically about bipolar disorder and his personal experience. Today we have Bob Krulish from Seattle, Washington and he is going to be sharing his experience with all sorts of losses as it related to his bipolar disorder experience. So, Bob, take it away.

Bob Krulish  00:40
Well, hi, and great to be here. I have I have an experience with bipolar disorder that is not unlike others, but also very unlike others. And that is that I went from being symptomatic when I was about 16 years old. My dad left and just left picked up and never heard from him again. And that triggered my biological predisposition to have bipolar disorder because it ends up my dad had it. And then I go from being symptomatic from 16 years old, until I get diagnosed when I’m 51. So I went 35 years of being undiagnosed. And yet having symptoms of bipolar disorder in we can talk more about why that is so hard to diagnose, and why that takes so long and how I got mis diagnosed. But what ended up happening was I had my soul have four children, I just Saturday, on Saturday, we had my fifth grandchild was born. So we’re excited about that. Thank you. That’s very exciting. And before grandchildren, when I just had children at home, I got into a really bad manic episode that was really sustained by being on the wrong medication for about three years, and to be manic for lat long, or stress everything out. So I lost my job, and I lost my marriage. And then I lost the kids. And then I lost all my possessions. And I lost all my money. and ended up on the floor of an abandoned cabin that a friend of a friend of a friend had in the woods with just a mattress on the floor, and a blanket, and a pillow. And a couple of things to wear. Well, I’ve I have lost everything that I loved. And that I held dear. And I could not believe the circumstances that I found myself in.

Victoria Volk  02:58
I am overwhelmed. I can picture it. I can picture. How old were you at that time?

Bob Krulish  03:04
So, I was 51 when I got the diagnosis and and about nine months before I got diagnosed, I was kind of kicked out of my house, kicked out of my marriage, pretty much kicked out of the family all in about January of that year. And then it wasn’t until August or September that I got diagnosed. But I was living in the cabin. About nine months after I had gotten kicked out, I had gone through a little bit of money that I got in my divorce and was so out of my mind thinking that some of the entrepreneurial things that I was working on, we’re gonna really materialize and that I was going to have plenty of money to keep the apartment that I had. But it ended up that none of that materialized, like is so common in people with bipolar when they’re manic, and I ended up being evicted from the apartment, which is another awful thing to go through when you show up at your apartment door and it’s bolted and there’s a big sign. And it says you have to have all your stuff out by tomorrow. And that was another rude awakening to what bipolar can do to a person I always call it the illness of loss in that word is very common among all of us with bipolar is that we have had loss, it almost could be the number one symptom. You know, sometimes people say I think I’m bipolar. And I’ll say well, what have you lost? Did you lose your job? Did you lose your partner to lose your family to lose your money and if they say they haven’t lost anything, then I’m pretty sure they don’t have bipolar disorder.

Victoria Volk  04:56
That is an amazing distinction. Thank you for bringing that up. You had experienced loss that triggered it.

Bob Krulish  05:02
I have experienced a big loss with my dad, that what ends up being the case when people with bipolar is we have a genetic predisposition to it. But not everybody’s that has a genetic predisposition has that gene turned on, like my brother and my sister have a genetic predisposition to have had bipolar, but their gene never got turned on. And what turns it on is some emotional crisis that ends up being taken place in not that my brother, my sister had it easy. When my dad left, they didn’t either. But for some reason, the way they manifested their grief and loss didn’t trigger their bipolar, but it triggered mine.

Victoria Volk  05:49
That’s fascinating. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Bob Krulish  05:53
I’m just saying that’s very common in everybody with bipolar, they can go back to a time before they were symptomatic. And then they can usually identify a pretty big event that took place, usually between about 16 and 20 years old, is when it’s very typical for people have habit triggered. And it’s usually some kind of a life event that triggered that.

Victoria Volk  06:18
And what we’re learning about grief, just I think, in general, and you know, things that I’ve learned and reading about how trauma kind of still stays in our body, and it changes us like loss and trauma changes us at a cellular level, physiologically. So, what changed for you laying on that mattress in that cabin, what was how did you get out of that state of mind?

Bob Krulish  06:44
That was very hard to do, I was fortunate in a way that I got to go in March of that year. So I was pretty much kicked out of my, my life in January. This is in 2009. And in March of that year, I had the wherewithal to go to a Tony Robbins seminar. And he’s a great motivational speaker. And it was his unleash the power within where you walk on hot coals and, and really is very inspiring. And it helped me quite a bit when I went there, I was really ready, I actually told the people I sit next to, I’m either going to sit through the seminar, or I’m walking back to the hotel and jumping off the building. That’s how depressed I was at the time about my grief. But in that seminar, he taught the concept of building a map, and mmap a massive action plan, and gave me the tools to do that. And it wasn’t until I was in the cabin for a couple of months that I pulled out my notebook to that seminar and started to build a massive action plan. And that plan was a few things that I’ve learned that you need to do if you’re going to manage bipolar disorder, and one is you need to understand it, you really need to understand the symptoms, the medications, the coping strategies in two, you need to be able to communicate with your doctor, your psychiatrist, you really need to be able to communicate your symptoms to him or her you have to be you have to be very revealing because the medication is so hard to to get actually you. It’s not hard to do. You get it from a doctor. But there are I’ve been on 16 different psychotropic drugs. And I’ve been through about 64 med changes over the past 11 years. So, we’re tweaking my meds about every other month. And the only way to really keep on that is to be very good at add, add revealing your symptoms and your side effects and everything that the doctor needs in order to put you on the right dose of the right man. So, once I got that plan in place, and I started to learn more and more about my illness, I was able to communicate better with my doctor. And we were able to get me on the right meds for at least a period of time. Until we made another bad change. Being on the right meds was really what what you have to do in order to manage the film.

Victoria Volk  09:33
Now the question that I have, and it might be a personal one, so if you don’t want to answer that’s quite all right. I understand. But it might be a question that listeners might be having as well. I’m assuming that you didn’t have a lot of resources if you’re living in a cabin on a mattress, right? Right. How did you get to that Tony Robbins event? How did you find the I guess what, what helped you get from that? Actress to the Tony Robbins event to the doctor, to, you know, how did you accumulate those resources that helped you turn, turn the page?

Bob Krulish  10:09
Well, I had gotten a small settlement from my ex-wife in January when I left, and I use some of that money. And it was only a few months of living expenses. But in my mania, I decided to just blow some of the money on a seminar. And this was before I was in the cabin, I will start renting an apartment. And, and I really shouldn’t have spent the money in. Well, in part, I say, I shouldn’t have spent the money because I eventually get evicted from my apartment. But the other thing was, is that if I hadn’t spent the money, I wouldn’t have learned how to do this massive action plan and have the energy to do it. So I spent some money that I had gotten in my settlement. And then I blew through all my money by October, and it was evicted from my apartment. So, I had a several million dollars of wealth when we got divorced, and I ended up signing it all the way to my ex-wife, in my mania, thinking that I can make all that money back in no time. That’s how you are when you’re manic, you have these grandiose ideas about what you can do, and you believe you’re all powerful, you believe you’re your God. Like you know, I always jokingly say the only difference between me and God at that time was that God never thought he was me. But I spent a lot of time thinking I was him. And so, I gave away all that money in a manic stupor and ended up qualifying nom in the cabin. Now I’m properly diagnosed, and I have a handful of prescriptions to fill, and I got on a state program. So, I really got on like a state welfare program. Whereas able to get my medication and get some help. But it went from millionaire to on government assisted medication programs, all in about a 10-month period of time.

Victoria Volk  12:39
Wow. And I can’t even imagine the grief, the additional grief and the shame probably too, right? Like, How have you navigated all of that?

Bob Krulish  12:51
So much shame, so much shame in that, especially when you’re still trying to live near the same community that you’ve been living as a successful person in, and now you’re living this way, I never had a friend, come see me at the cabin, I was so ashamed. have anybody ever seen me with one piece of furniture, a mattress that, you know, where were they going to sit there would be sitting on the mattress, if they came over. And it was and I did not have a car anymore. I didn’t even have a bike. I was taking the city bus. I was just living a whole different life than what I was living before. And it was, I was very ashamed of it. So, I had to shame I had to grieve the loss. And then I’m still dealing with the loss of my children. What ended up happening there was once my ex-wife found out that I had bipolar, which we found out in August of that year. And I let her know, she immediately went and got a different parenting plan submitted to the court. And in that parenting plan, she restricted my visit severely with the children because now I have bipolar disorder, her her whole argument was that I just got it in August 2009. When that didn’t really happen. And really all the bizarre behavior that I had before was explained by the bipolar, but she tended, she chose to ignore that. So, what I ended up with was a parenting plan where I only got to see my kids the second and fourth Sunday of the month from 430 to 730. So just three hours, all the time being supervised by people that were assigned to supervise me during those three-hour visits, and I wasn’t allowed to call the kid or text them or communicate with them any other way. all I got was six hours a month for 72 hours a year. You know, that’s, that’s a three-day weekend, 72 hours. And that’s the equivalent amount of time that I saw my kids. And the thing that was more painful than I ever imagined what’s gonna happen with this parenting plan was that it lasted for six years. So for the entire time that my youngest was from 12 years old, until he was 18. I only saw him for 72 hours a year. Wow. And we still have a strained relationship today. Because he just really can’t. He can’t have mature relationships when you’re when you’re being when you’re being watched, you know, you’re being supervised trying to have a meeting with your child. And it just, it just was never really great.

Victoria Volk  16:00
And you were shamed by the courts. Again, and unfortunately, your ex-wife did not understand the damage she was doing to her own son, your son. Yes. Yeah. In severing that parental relationship that you Yeah, could have had, you know, because then your son has grief about loss of hopes, dreams and expectations about his relationship to you.

Bob Krulish  16:29
Right.

Victoria Volk  16:30
She had a lot of power in that I’m so sorry that you have to go through that.

Bob Krulish  16:32
It had a lot of power. Mental Illness gives people a lot of power over you.

Victoria Volk  16:39
I don’t mean to villainize her. But I just want to highlight though, that we don’t understand how our actions sometimes create these ripples of greed to with those we care we truly care about, right?

Bob Krulish  16:55
Yeah, I don’t know how much she was aware of it going in. And I realized that she was trying to protect the kids. And she, all of a sudden, now, Bob, with bipolar disorder. And even though for the 25 years, we were together, I was bombed with bipolar disorder. Now I have a diagnosis. And now she’s got this method, you know, with the courts because of my diagnosis, to put these hard restrictions on me, and I went to court to try to overturn it after a couple of years. While after really after, like five years or more, almost six years, I went to court, we had plenty of evidence from all the supervisors that I did a great job, with the kids all the time, never missed the meeting of is never late, and never left early. For the first year of it. I lived in Dallas with a new job. And I stayed in a hotel and I flew back every other weekend, every second and fourth Sunday, or every second and fourth weekend to be with the kids and about lost in court to get that overturned after secure. The judge just just said that I was the judge deemed me as a threat to the children. And because I have bipolar disorder, even though I had given her raving reviews from my doctors, and my supervisors, and he had all these great reviews of all these people. She thought I just had to get more I was good at pretending to be good while I was being supervised but when I was going to be supervised, I wouldn’t be good at it.

Victoria Volk  18:50
So that is how the court system is where you basically represent yourself like there is no panel where you can bring in people to represent you who have worked with you and can vouch for your progress and how you’re living your life, like that’s not part of the process?

Bob Krulish  19:10
No, you can you get affidavits, written statements from all these people and you submit it to the court. You have I had a lawyer represent me You go to court, you’re not allowed to talk and you’re not allowed to bring any of these other witnesses. The only people who are allowed to talk are the two lawyers in, so you just sit there and and you’ve been filing affidavit after affidavit I spent more than $25,000 on attorney fees you know petitioning the court for this with you know getting an affidavit from just about everybody. I I felt like I needed one and the judge just kind of threw out all all the good comments about me. She said that I was just really good at talking people into stuff and And because my ex wife said that I was, and you know what you really got when you’re manic, you’re very charismatic, you’re very, you know, people want to hang out with you. You’re the life of the party, you’re going places. And so you aren’t very convincing. But throughout this whole time, I’m now medicated, so I’m not really manic anymore. I’m not in this state that I was in before when I was incorrectly medicated. And so I lost that court case, but then I appealed it. And I’m so glad I appealed that I went to a higher court, an appeals court. And in that court, the judge was so upset, what happened to me this complete opposite of the other judge and apologize on behalf of the court, and said, this should have never happened. And yet, unfortunately, you know, it was too little too late. You know, it was great to be finally validated by a court that everything I had done was great. And I deserve to be with the kids. But it wasn’t until six years had gone by.

Victoria Volk  21:18
The thought that came to my mind as I was listening to you is that we all are raised with beliefs that we grow up with. And whether we are as kids, we become a rocket scientist, or a judge, or a police officer, or a doctor, or the store clerk. We have these beliefs. And it just reminds me or makes me think of judges have beliefs too. Yeah. And you know, what was that judge’s belief about mental illness, about bipolar disorder where she couldn’t be objective, right? And just look at the situation for what it was, instead of what she what she believed. And I think that’s where that’s, I just wanted to highlight that, that thought, because that’s where change needs to happen in the justice system and the court system.

Bob Krulish  22:13
So desperately, we need to have changed there.

Victoria Volk  22:17
Because you were victimized again and again and again, for something that was out of your control.

Bob Krulish  22:22
Yeah, it was, I was being victimized for years and years and years and years.

Victoria Volk  22:29
How did you get how do you get out of that? How, how did you flip that script? I mean, I know you said the Tony Robbins thing, but like, how have you kept that momentum going? Is it just the medication that has really helped you? Stay level and?

Bob Krulish  22:45
It’s a lot of other stuff too, Victoria, like, in the past 11 years, I’ve had about 700 hours of therapy. So, I have therapy, sometimes two or three times a week, wow, for an hour at a time. And then sometimes I’m just once a week. And so, I’ve had a tremendous amount of therapy, which has given me a lot of insight to my condition and in myself. And it’s really helped me to reframe a lot of the pain through a lot of different therapeutic techniques. And then I built a lot of different coping strategies to compensate for the loss. You know, I have, I’d like to play golf. It’s a hobby of mine. But golf is also how I do my mindfulness. So, when I’m practicing hitting golf balls, my mind is that it’s only paying attention to the golf ball. It’s no longer in this mess of reminiscing about all kinds of bad stuff, bad thoughts. Normally, if I let my mind just be on its own, it will go to the dark side. So, I found different things, not just golf, but other things to do that kept my mind preoccupied. I started coaching families that have a son or daughter or loved one with bipolar disorder. And as I started coaching them, and getting them the help that they needed, that was very therapeutic for me, and I’ve coached I can’t even count how many families now that I’ve coached where we’ve had some really good experiences you know where the individual got better Yeah, that’s been in just reading the letters I get and hearing the comments on Facebook or wherever. It’s just so sweet. It’s it’s really been very, very therapeutic for me and very it just in a went to show me that really what one of the big keys to eliminating the pain and suffering that comes from bipolar disorder is education. And like you alluded to, like have the judges were better educated about bipolar disorder, they would have seen that I didn’t get it in August 2009. But that I had in my whole life, and they would have seen that I was a good dad with it. And they wouldn’t have put those restrictions on me, but they misunderstand it. And, you know, it’s kind of interesting how you could have not that diabetes is the picnic. And I don’t mean to say that it is. But I know people that are diabetic, and when they got when they got diagnosed, they spent like a week in the hospital, going to classes on diabetes, learning everything about how to manage their diabetes, which is fantastic. And you know, how much education I got, I got nothing, not a thing. I got four prescriptions handed to me by my doctor. And he said, the first doctor to diagnose me said, let’s give these a try. Let’s see if they might work. And I was like, What do you mean might work? He goes, it’s really, it’s random. What might work for you might not work for somebody else. And that was my entire education was just realizing that I’m, I’m about to just take a random shot with psychotropic drugs to see if this will fix me or not. So what I learned through some researchers was that they did some research on what happens when the family is well educated about the bipolar. And any individual, what happens to them, does that make a difference? And there’s researchers, one here in the United States, and one in Barcelona, Spain did a 21 week course, about bipolar. And they found that the people that went to the course, and the families, that those people tripled the rate, though, they got into well being or healthy, and stayed healthy, three times as much as the people who didn’t get the education. So, it was three times more likely that a person would be on the managers illness successfully, if they went to a psycho education course. And so when I heard that and read all this research, then I saw that it had been, it had been replicated many times around the world. I was like, why aren’t we doing this? Why this? This seems like, along with the medication, the therapy, and then the education, everybody could live well with this, why is this being done, and it’s one of those places where research hasn’t really gotten into the practice. So part of what I do is take that research and put it into practice by coaching families, and it’s just so amazing what a big change it makes, once they understand how to deal with bipolar disorder.

Victoria Volk  28:12
We don’t know what we don’t know. Right?

Bob Krulish  28:15
We don’t know,  what we don’t know, and, and what we don’t know, it’s hurting us.

Victoria Volk  28:20
Absolutely. That’s great. That’s salt with so much in life. When we make decisions, then out of fear, and what we don’t know then where we’re coming from a decision and processing out of fear, and we push away, and we deflect, and we ignore, and, and it’s out of fear, and what we don’t know

Bob Krulish  28:43
You’re out of fear, or we don’t know you’re right. And what we do we tend to do is we tend to listen to the most outrageous behaviors about about a particular thing like about bipolar, you know, and then we we remember those remember hearing about the person who went bipolar. And so, we’ve all heard stories of people who were bipolar, who did something awful, or at least that’s what you’ll hear on the news. The school shooting is a person of the year is bipolar or schizophrenic. You know, we hear that on the news, or they assume that he has or she has a mental illness. And so, we get locked in there with all these really awful situations. And so the first thing that people are going to think about when they hear that I have bipolar, they’re gonna go Oh, you mean like the guy that shot up all the people at the theater, you know, and that’s in the back of their mind. And it doesn’t give them any room in the front of their mind, to really see it differently. with compassion, with compassion. Right? Right. And where Just statistic, I think we are much more likely to be a victim of a crime than actually a perpetrator of a crime with people with mental illness. But that’s not understood. Because we hear these stories, you know, in the news, so in education about the illness, starts with the family, any individual, but it’s my hope that the work that I do, will make its way into the legal system, where a video course and I’m building on those lessons that were done by researchers, I’m hoping that I can get this video course into the judicial system somehow, to where that can be something that they could learn about bipolar disorder from, and more clinicians to learn more about bipolar disorder and more non, you know, like general practitioners, they get very little education about this in their med school. So, I just have this strong feeling that we can really eliminate most of the suffering caused by this illness, with just the right amount of education. And then that’s something that that’s all it would take, it doesn’t really need a new drug to be discovered. It doesn’t need to be a new therapy does it need to be more drugs, or less drugs, that one thing psychoeducation tripled, the possibility of getting into recovery. And I just blew my mind, when that was all they did was educate people.

Victoria Volk  31:45
You’re more likely to be a victim to yourself as well. Right?

Bob Krulish  31:49
Right.

Victoria Volk  31:50
With bipolar disorder?

Bob Krulish  31:52
Most definitely.

Victoria Volk  31:53
Without that education piece?

Bob Krulish  31:55
Without that education piece, the medications are very difficult to understand, and to in to live with, because they have a lot of side effects. But when you understand them, you’re more committed to them, you know, and what ends up happening is, a lot of times, we don’t like the medication, because we don’t understand it. And we self medicate with either alcohol or drug. And then we have that addiction, along with our bipolar, that’s very, very common is self medicating. And again, it just goes back to learning more about the illness, and that there are 20 different medications you could try. So if you’re having a bad side effect with one of them, most people will just give up with the meds and quit seen a doctor, but would be if they understood that there are other alternatives, but they just don’t know. So it’s a it’s a very disabling illness. It’s one of the biggest causes of disability among people in the world. And and it just blows my mind how if we just could educate the masses about it. It can really, the whole problem can go away. That just blows me away. Every time I talk about it, I’m like, yeah, and that’s, that’s actually all it would take.

Victoria Volk  33:27
And that’s why I wanted you on my podcast. Because I think mental illness has touched my life personally, in my family. And it is something that it, it ripples, and the education piece is huge with grief as well. I mean, I tie everything to grief, because, yeah, your experience is a grieving experience. And it’s just what we don’t know and what we can know what is available to us. adding on to our knowledge base changes our perspective. And when we change our perspective, we can look at things with compassion, look at things differently.

Bob Krulish  34:07
Yes, like I say, we go from contempt, to compassion about that individual, you know.

Victoria Volk  34:14
I love that.

Bob Krulish  34:15
That’s, that’s the goal is to go from contempt. Like the court treated me with contempt to treating me with compassion. And that’s why I wrote wrote a book about my life experience to to give people have at least a little bit of a guide on on how they can be well with a cell Miss, that that book kind of crona Chronicles my whole history with the illness being undiagnosed, and then at least at the very end of the book, we find that I get diagnosed and then I can be much better trying to do everything I can to really spread awareness that this doesn’t have to be as disabling as it can be. For mains and millions of people around the world, in that people shouldn’t have to suffer loss like this. But it is so common that they have so many loss and bipolar, so much grieving going on.

Victoria Volk  35:19
What are some ways we can help others who live with a mental illness? So, I know you say you’re developing this program, and you said education is a huge piece. In navigating when, especially when there are limited resources, when there are when there isn’t as much proactive things happening within a community or it’s still something that is shamed, and there’s access to limited resources, what would you tell those family members and those with bipolar, how they can help themselves?

Bob Krulish  35:56
While there’s a lot of things they can do. That the big one of the biggest things is how we communicate with each other. And other found that if, like, part of my video course that I’m working on is about communicating. And it would be for example, Mom and Dad are frustrated that their son isn’t taking their medication, so they harass them, by asking him, did you take your meds yet? Do you take your meds today? Because he because the kid just said something that they didn’t like? And so they’re like, you must be manic? Are you taking your meds? And that always turns into an argument? But wouldn’t it be cool if they could know that, whether or not he’s either taking the meds or if they’re working or not, without having to ask him, and there is a way if they understood all the symptoms that a person can have. And then they saw those symptoms, the ones that are in the doctor’s manual about bipolar disorder, and that they started seeing those symptoms, they would know for sure that the meds aren’t working enough, you know, and and I always say, let’s assume the meds aren’t working, let’s not assume it’s not taking them. But let’s assume they’re just not working right. And you can have a conversation with your son about you know what, I noticed that you are really talking very fast, and you keep interrupting, and you don’t let anybody else talk. And we learned from that course that that’s a major symptom of mania in and we’re wondering, maybe your meds aren’t working, right. And now now the blame is on the meds that on the kid. And now there’s, there’s a reason to look for a solution.

Victoria Volk  37:49
And that child doesn’t feel shamed.

Bob Krulish  37:53
Exactly, exactly, then feel shamed, then feel judged, and feel criticize isn’t defensive, is looking for now. If the internet especially if the individual has been well trained too, he or she’s going to say, Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize I was talking so fast and interrupting people that is a sign of mania. Let’s make an appointment to go see my doctor.

Victoria Volk  38:19
If I suspect my loved one might have bipolar disorder, what are the signs that I should look for?

Bob Krulish  38:25
My bipolar they’re pretty, pretty obvious. Typically, well, first of all, they have to had some experience with mania. And but but keep in mind, too, that with bipolar, we spend more episodes multiple times many episodes in depression than we do in mania. But it’s the mania that really would be the telltale, that you have bipolar, because if you just saw the depression alone, it could be just major depression disorder. And I don’t mean just just major depressive disorder, because that’s awful. But but it may just be that but if you see the mania, those would be things like they wouldn’t want to sleep. They would. When when I’m manic. I hate sleep. I complain about sleep. I think it’s the biggest waste of time. I tell my my girlfriend, I think this is a big waste of time. I don’t know why people do it. I’m going to stay up tonight, you know, because I have too many things to do. The other thing is they have too many things going on in their mind that they want to do. They have a lot of projects, so they need to stay up all night work on their projects. And we’re very good at starting dozens of things without really finishing anything. So if all of a sudden your loved one started to complain about having to sleep, wasn’t sleeping, could stay awake for 234 nights in a row without being I’m tired, that would be a huge sign that they’re having a manic episode. If they’re very impulsive, and they start just spending money like crazy, they have all these plans of making money through all these different projects they’re going through. That’s another big tell, they’re manic. And they’ll do very grandiose thinking, they won’t have a goal like, like back in my day, when I was a kid, jack Nicklaus was a great golfer, like Tiger Woods is today or is known as today. But back then it was jack Nicklaus. And I would tell all my friends that I was going to be jack Nicklaus, I was going to not only beat him, but I was going to beat all his records, it wasn’t enough that I might just be able to play golf and make a living. My grandiose was, I was also going to be a senator, United States Senator, and I was going to be a jet fighter pilot. And it wasn’t enough just to be a pilot of a plane. But it had to be the fastest super jets that man made. And so those kind of grandiose thinking. And the last thing is you kind of have an ego, as if you’re your divine, you really feel like you’re very, very capable of doing things. So if somebody started just talking really fast, talking about all these ideas, had an idea to build a business where they had no experience and had the grandiose idea of making millions and millions of dollars or doing something really ridiculously huge. Those would be very big signs that they’re in a manic episode.

Victoria Volk  41:42
So, it served you well, though? your mania because you became a wealthy businessman is that is that correct?

Bob Krulish  41:50
Well, between what my ex-wife did, and myself, we did very, very well. And to a degree, it served me pretty well, it helped me do work that that was hard for other people to do. It helped me you know, work 18-hour days when I needed to work 18 hour days, and and I don’t want people to get the wrong impression that, you know, maybe it’d be nice to be manic for a while and get some things done, what ends up happening is that he it’s like a train going down the tracks. And it’s going faster and faster. And it’s pretty cool, because it’s going faster and passing all the other trains on on the tracks. But before you can slow it down, it’ll crash. That’s how you slow it down, there’s no, it just keeps getting faster and faster and faster, and then it gets out of control, and then it crashes. And then you end up using a depressive episode. So, I don’t want don’t want to spend one day manic, because I just don’t know what that might lead to. But it does give you a lot of energy. And it gives you a lot of creative power. And and you see a lot of people that have geniuses or people that are very, very successful, have this illness and road, their manic wave from time to time. But they also if you look in their life, they have loss, they have a live loss.

Victoria Volk  43:21
But in that moment, I imagine it kind of affirms for you it’s an affirming thing, that I mean, you kind of develop a relationship with the mania as something that, you know, like doesn’t that feed back then like you’re having some success, and you’re having this feedback then that this is this is a good thing, like in your mind, like it’s a good thing. And then like I said, you don’t realize it though, until you hit a wall.

Bob Krulish  43:51
You never realize until you hit a wall. And, and what ends up happening is like, nobody makes any sense to you anymore. You know, and you don’t make sense to anybody. And you start just to believe that everybody else is wrong. Everybody else is wrong. And, and I was doing really well in my career, I was helping invent a new way for this insurance company to do business. I was a mathematician, I did all these massive calculations in save the company from being being defunct. And so I’m going fast on the track. I am the guy. And the president of the company is touting my success in all these big meetings around the company, and then all of a sudden, I have an idea of how they should be managing the business that I just helped them create. That was bizarre, but because they didn’t have that idea, I kept challenging the president of the company in these large meetings, I would stand up and challenge him. And saying, you know, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, this is how we ought to do it. And that’s when train is going off the tracks. And then I was hired. So I went from being praised by everybody in the company for a long time to then being fired, because the train just kept going down the track. When you’re in it, though, you don’t want to lose it. You know, it’s, it’s the most powerful feeling in the world. And it’s the reason why this is so hard to diagnose. Remember, I mentioned earlier that it took forever for me to get diagnosed properly. And that is, in part because when we’re manic, we don’t go see a doctor, we would actually find that to be silly, because we we know more than a doctor knows where we’re the all knowing. And so the doctor doesn’t see us when we’re manic. And that’s the only time they could really diagnosis with bipolar, will show up when we’re depressed. And then if the doctor doesn’t do the right kind of questioning, they might just think we have depressive disorder, because they didn’t probe enough to find out if there was any mania in a person’s life. And so, we don’t go to the doctor. And the other thing that we do more and more manic is that we feel so good, that the last thing we want to do is take any drugs, any medication that might take away this feeling. So, it reads on itself.

Victoria Volk  46:30
If I were to have a family member who was in a state of that mania, what is the best way that? How can I support them? What is what is something I can do? Or anyone listening?

Bob Krulish  46:43
That is the hardest question, that is the tough one. And a lot of times, there isn’t very much he can do, you have to kind of let him ride the thing out, I always say that try to stay as magnetic as you can to the person by not being too judgmental buying by communicating better with them, you know, don’t like I had, I had somebody that I met. And the parents were complaining that their son says that he knows how to live to be 115. And I said, Well, just let me try to have lunch with them. So, we bribe them, and they pay them to have lunch with me. That’s how he’s manic. So, he doesn’t think he needs to talk to anybody. So the very first thing I do, and he had some paper and a pencil, I happen to have paper and pencil with him. And he says, You know what I’ve learned how to live to be 115. And I said, I heard that you know how to do that. And before I leave, you got to write down on paper, how to do it, because I want to live to be 115. So there’s no harm in going there. You know, if it means that he eats healthy, he exercises, great. Maybe he will lead to be 115. We didn’t know that everybody was gonna have an iPhone four years ago. So maybe there is a way. But it was just being I was being magnetic with him wasn’t being repulsive, where the family was fighting him all the time that he brought this up, because they were embarrassed by him, saying that he’s going to live to be 115. And so, when I teach, as I say, just try to stay magnetic during this episode, and write it out. But don’t get disconnected with them. Because that could end ugly. You know, that one time this kid had a restraining order against them. So the family put a restraining order on him on one time. There are several communication strategies that I have that that you can talk to somebody in mania, but it’s very difficult to really get them to pop out of it. It’s so addicting. It’s so it just breeds on itself. You just feel so powerful. It’s just so hard to let it go.

Victoria Volk  49:18
How long generally do those episodes last?

Bob Krulish  49:23
Yeah, that’s a great question. They could last it really varies. They could last couple of weeks or a couple of months. Or even longer. What ended up happening with me here is a little-known fact that ought to be known to everybody. It’s that if a doctor prescribes an anti depressant to a person who actually has bipolar but doesn’t prescribe a mood stabiliser with the anti depressant, that ended depressant will make them mad. Wow, like that, like within days of taking an antidepressant, you will go into mania and the anti depressant will sustain your mania. For as long as you take the anti depressant, that’s how I lost everything. My general practitioner just saw on the depression side of my own my anxiety side, it didn’t see the me and because I don’t go to the doctor when I’m manic, and she prescribed an antidepressant, and then I went into mania. I felt so good. I never felt like I needed to go back to see her. I just needed the prescription to be refilled. So that went on for years, for about three years. That’s how I lost everything.

Victoria Volk  50:48
This blows my mind. Like, what is the Mental Health Organization doing to educate general practitioners on this?

Bob Krulish  50:58
Yeah, not enough right now. Not enough. There’s so much more needs to be done.

Victoria Volk  51:03
Like there’s no screening like, like, this just blows my mind. Like, how is this happening? I’m on board with you. Let’s just scream this to the world that’s letters. Maybe you need the Bob Krulish law, go to congress.

Bob Krulish  51:22
Yeah, while we’re working on stuff like that, we’re working on stuff like that, because the awareness level of that needs to be with everybody. I mean, it’s so dangerous, you know, I’ve, I’m on like, 10 different bipolar groups on Facebook. And this comes up almost every day. I mean, one of these groups, somebody is gonna say, did you take an antidepressant before you got diagnosed, and it made you manic? That’s taking precedent make you manic. Because I went made manic. And I’m like, gosh, every day, I see the same thing happening over and over again, today. I’m not talking about this isn’t like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, these are people today that are on an antidepressant, and they need to be on a mood stabilizer with it.

Victoria Volk  52:16
Question now. So, my loved one is exhibiting signs and symptoms of depression. What then are the signs for someone who has bipolar was not being diagnosed? But who is in that depressive state? Are there differences? Are there differentiating factors to look for?

Bob Krulish  52:38
Yeah, definitely. The depression. You know, would be, you know, what’s what’s what’s really obvious in the depression, is they’re no longer interested in things that used to be interesting to them. Like, like a fire all of a sudden, just didn’t want to play golf anymore. And just rather stay in bed. That would be a big sign that I’ve gone into an episode. So what psychiatrists use is a scale, it’s called the manic scale. And and it’s a it’s a question here, that they asked people before they put them on an antidepressant? And it would, it would say stuff like, in your life, have you ever lost a marriage? Or have you ever started a business? Have you ever had grand ideas about your business, things like that, that would that would try to find out if the person ever in their lifetime ever had symptoms of mania, but it’s this scale that they need to have the individual take. And it’s quite, can be quite extensive line of questioning. But psychiatrists to train with this line of questioning, but general practitioners are not, they really don’t get very much education about mental illness, when you’re becoming a general practitioner, and troubling Fact is, but they have the power not to prescribe an antidepressant to anybody and not doing this thoroughly. causes a lot of people have this illness, and be out of control with it. That’s how I lost everything. That’s how the job law, the jobs of marriage, the kids, the money. That’s what took me to the cabin, was being on an antidepressant.

Victoria Volk  54:49
This is my takeaway from everything you’ve shared. You know, when we have a heart condition, we go to a cardiologist. If we have something funny on our skin, Yeah, we could go to a general practitioner. But why would I go to general practitioner when I could go to a dermatologist, someone who specializes in conditions of the skin? So why do we, as a society leave mental illness to general practitioners? And would that be the one thing that you would love to be changed that a general practitioner could not diagnose depression and prescribe antidepressants? because that’d be one thing that could change that would,

Bob Krulish  55:34
That would change the trajectory of this so much. And I would I love general practitioners on that.

Victoria Volk  55:41
Same here.

Bob Krulish  55:42
I just don’t they, they just don’t have, they just didn’t get the insight. They didn’t get the coursework, they didn’t get the training. This is a very difficult thing to diagnose. Even if you’re a trained psychiatrists, you have to go through this lengthy line of questioning to really uncover whether the person is just a very optimistic person, or are they very grandiose, you know, are they a blowhard, and they never quit talking about themselves, or they have pressured speech that you’d find in bipolar disorder, you know, and you really have to be able to pull these data points out, and they’re just not trained for it. They just don’t they don’t have time in their training foreign. So I would either say, you know, get them properly trained, so they can do these diagnostic scales or tests, or, yes, stop prescribing, antidepressants. I think it’s the number one thing that is prescribed in this country are antidepressants. And you’re absolutely right, you wouldn’t go see a GP about a dermatology thing or, or cardiology thing, you’d go see a cardiologist. Yeah, for some reason, we’ve accepted the fact that we go see a GP, when we’re depressed. Yeah, that would change a lot. There’s so many people, I can’t, I can’t even imagine how many, probably million people that have probably been misdiagnosed sometime in their life, and had manic symptoms.

Victoria Volk  57:29
After my second child, I experienced some postpartum symptoms. And then after my third, it was even more so. And good, I gone to a, you know, general practitioner, and I shared what I was feeling and experiencing and you know, the first thing to do was to prescribe an antidepressant. Right? And there was no question of history of mental illness, there was no quote, you know, maybe she did I don’t remember there’s, you know, I’m sure there is some sort of questionnaire although it was, I’m sure it was brief. My point in saying that, though, is I was never asked, well, what happened to you? And I think that’s maybe one question a general practitioner could ask is, what happened to you? Like you said, what have what have your loss has been Have you had a lot of loss in your life? Right, you know, and that’s how I, that’s my angle when it comes to grief and depression and things like that is what happened to you. Because your life and your messages, it’s like, your life doesn’t have to be a train wreck. To stay on the rails, it doesn’t have to get that far, I guess, is what I’m hearing in your message. Like there. There’s hope. Yeah, for recognizing it early. Without there having to be mania where then by then it’s it can feel like it’s too late, right?

Bob Krulish  58:57
Because it does, too. Because mania will run its course. And then if you’re on an antidepressant, that’s like, given that train enough fuel to just burn itself up, you know, it’s just fuel for the fire. And, and when you’re when you’re manic, it’s the weirdest thing because, first of all, you can’t see that you are. You don’t, you would tell anybody who told you that you’re manic, that they were crazy. I remember I’ve said that so many times the people, I, you know, I say I’m just a visionary. They’ll say your goals are ridiculous. Say I’m a visionary, Walt Disney. You’re like his brother. Pooh poohing the whole idea. Walt Disney. I must have said, I’m Walt Disney a million times about the kind of visionary person that I am, and you’re totally engrossed in it. You can’t see that your new girl the weird one, using everybody else’s, the weird one, you can’t see that you’re then and the worst part is it feels so powerful, you feel so strong, you know, there’s you don’t worry, you don’t worry about anything. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t think anything is impossible you think everything is possible, I call it, you know, you’re you’re infinitely hopeful, you know where, when you’re depressed are infinitely hopeless. And that manic state man is a great feeling. You know, and I have to remind myself, you know, why I take my meds every day, because it is a temptation to go, you know, and be nice, you know, I got a lot of work to do in the next couple of months around my book, and I really would use the boosts of being manic right now. And I just had to remind myself that that, that would be the quickest way to lose the kids again. And the quickest way to lose everything else I got. One of the communication strategies I learned, that worked for me, and that works, everybody that I’ve taught this to, is that I, I don’t call them my bipolar meds, that I call them, I get to still see my kids meds. And, and, and they were, I get to see my kid bands. And when I teach people is a find a reason.

Victoria Volk  1:01:31
Those are your why.

Bob Krulish  1:01:33
What is your why, and let that be it, let it be your and I get, I get to keep a job, man, or I get to have a partner mad, or I have money in the bank mad and and then when you feel bad, or unless you don’t want to have money in the bank, you’ll still stay on the medication. And that’s the secret is to find a y that that would be there no matter how you felt.

Victoria Volk  1:02:04
There’s empowerment in that. Right? There’s so much empowerment in that to feel like you are in control of this thing that feels can feel or take your life out of control.

Bob Krulish  1:02:18
Out of control. Yeah, yeah.

Victoria Volk  1:02:20
I thought of another question too. So, for someone listening to this, what came to my mind was, well, you know, if you go to the doctor, and you suspect that your loved one has bipolar, and they go to the doctor, but they’re in a depressive state, they’re not manic, they get diagnosed, or Yeah, diagnosed, I suppose with depression, and so they’re given an antidepressant? Yeah, the solution in my mind, then, well, let’s get you off the antidepressant. If you start seeing those manic symptoms, what do you say to those thoughts, like to someone who might have might be having those thoughts to a loved one who might be considering getting their loved one off the antidepressant? Or someone listening? Who might just take themselves off or whatever?

Bob Krulish  1:03:07
Yeah, the trick is, one, one thing is that, when they get into that manic episode, they’re not going to want to let go of it. Because it just feels, I mean, I literally thought I can fly. I remember thinking, how weak everybody else was because they couldn’t fly. I’m just so grateful. I never jumped off a building. Wow. But I was convinced that I could fly. So why would I want to stop being able to fly? You know, why would I want to stop this? And so what, where the education comes in? For anybody, it could be somebody that just has a friend that might have bipolar, if they were well educated, they could say, you know what, I’m pretty well educated about bipolar disorder. And I’m not saying that you have it. But I am saying that I see some symptoms that people with bipolar have, like you’re really talking very fast, all the time, and you interrupt everybody, and everybody’s getting upset with you, because you don’t let them talk, you know, and they could start uncovering some of the symptoms that you see. And you can be a mirror to them, you can reflect back what you’re seeing. But you have to know what these things are. You have to be educated.

Victoria Volk  1:04:29
And that was my question too, is circling back to the symptoms. But isn’t that someone who’s in already a manic state that they’re talking fast or can someone who is just in a depressive state still be exhibiting symptoms like that, or characteristics of that?

Bob Krulish  1:04:47
If they’re in a depressive state, they would have a symptom like that, but what you would try to do if you’re trying to find out if they’ve ever had a manic episode is to see if they’ve ever had symptoms. like that in the past? Because that’s a really good question to ask yourself is, you know, do I have any Have I ever exhibited any of the symptoms in my past? I’m about to go on an antidepressant. That’s harmful. If I have bipolar? How do I know, if I’ve ever been mad? And then ask those questions. That’s why I think the education needs to be just about anybody, and everybody, it just doesn’t need to be with people who are currently living with a condition or who have a loved one with it. But it could be really anybody I want to get this information to companies, you know, employers and law enforcement, to judicial system. legislators, doctors, you know, and people, teachers, Oh, my gosh, how cool would this be, if this was taught, you know, and understood somewhere, you know, along the line, it would be amazing. And that would stop here and just prevent so much loss, there’s just so much loss around the stillness, that probably cost billions of dollars the loss, and, and we can really eliminate almost all of it, I think, it’s worth just understanding what the heck is going on. And understanding that when a person’s manic, they are not going to be able to see it, they just won’t be able to understand it. And unless you can give them a lot of good, good evidence, of their manic behavior, without insulting them, and without shaming them without judging them, you know, and, and that’s, that’s a lot of the work that I do is teaching people how to communicate properly, so that they don’t end up making the other person upset. Because if you upset the other person, then you what ends up happening is that many people, whenever in mania will lose all of our friends. Because eventually they just don’t get it. And we’re done with them. We’re done. We’re done with people like that. I’ve lost hundreds of friends, either I didn’t want anything to do with them, because they were too stupid at the time. Or they didn’t want anything to do with me, because I told them, they were too stupid. So, we never got back together.

Victoria Volk  1:07:34
So how has your life changed? How long have you been like under control, had it under control?

Bob Krulish  1:07:43
Probably for a few years, I feel like I’ve had it under control, probably for about three years. And I’ve been medicated for 11 years, I’d say the first eight years was challenging in that we went through a lot of different medications to try to find the right combination of meds. with bipolar, it’s never just one man, it’s usually a combination of meds could be 234567 bands that you’ve taken same time, and we call it a cocktail. And so it took a while to really find a cocktail that worked for me. Now I’m got it well under control, I don’t have any kind of outbursts, I don’t really have any, any signs of mania. And I have very little depression, I take a mood stabilizer to keep the mania away, I take an antidepressant and keep the depression away. And I can live in this little range, you know, they call a new thymic you know, where you’re just in a very normal mood. Instead of being in this range, I’m in this range. You know, in like a normal person, I still have to work really hard at my cognitive thinking to I still have to have the weekly therapy. I still have to see my doctor, I check in with my doctor once a month. And we go over how it’s going. And so those are some of the things that have helped me to stay well. Really just having a big awareness of the illness, understanding the medication, understand therapy, understanding some coping strategies, as helped me to be well with it. And so for the past, I’d say three or four years I’ve been doing really well with it. And I’ve been able to reach out and help others which is the most fun you know, I whether I’m giving a speech somewhere or giving a talk somewhere or doing a workshop or working with people one on one. That’s always the best part of it now for me and it’s another good reason for me to stay healthy because I’m like, I’m trying to be an example to all these people, simply the worst, be the worst if I wasn’t getting enough sleep every night, or, you know, I had to take my own advice pretty seriously.

Victoria Volk  1:10:15
Yeah, they’re also your helper pills. Right? Cause you’re a ripple creator now.

Bob Krulish  1:10:20
I am a ripple creator, I’ve noticed that it really is pretty humbling to know that and, and I’ve gotten a lot of positive comments back from people. To me, it’s kind of like a, like a spiritual place, you know, where you just feel like I’ve been given this gift now that I can help people with the gift of having bipolar in and it’s really, you know, I’m always overwhelmed. When I hear the comments that I get or read the emails that I get. I’m like, What are you talking about, you know, when an essay, I remember one woman wrote and said, I was just about to divorce my husband. I’m so ready to divorce him. And then I saw your videos on Facebook. And I’m gonna give it another chance. I think I understand this now. And I’m, like, so grateful. And I had that video made, you know, yeah, it’s really a good feeling.

Victoria Volk  1:11:25
You are the Tony Robbins for bipolar disorder, full circle.

Bob Krulish  1:11:31
Yeah, this kind of full circle.

Victoria Volk  1:11:36
I have to tell you something too, 2014, that was the first program I purchased was empower the empowered.

Bob Krulish  1:11:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s great. You might even go into the map, the massive action plan in that program? I don’t know. But that was, yeah, that’s great.

Victoria Volk  1:12:00
There is an opportunity for lightness in the dark, right?

Bob Krulish  1:12:04
There is, there is it helps when it helps to have company in the dark, you know, like, and what I mean by that is, like, like the thing I didn’t like about people. The advice that I hated the most was when people would say, I know how you feel, and it’ll get better. And I’m like, I didn’t know you had bipolar disorder. I didn’t know you lost your family. I didn’t know you had all this happened to you. And they’re like, no, and that didn’t happen. But I just know, you know, you don’t know. No, no. But when I started going to the National Alliance on Mental illness, or they say Nami, Nami see acronym, they have these support group meetings. And I went to a support group. And then I heard people say about the realness, you know, there were people that really did know, there were people that could sit with me in a darkness. Because they been there, you know, and that made all the difference in the world. When I finally started meeting people that really knew what I was going through. So I always say to people, we got to get you in a support group right away, I got to get to meeting people that have this. And so so when they say, like, everybody always says, it’s okay for me to say, it’ll get better. Because I know. I know, from the inside out, I’ve been there. And that that was really the most helpful thing. I probably did. And besides just learning everything I could about the illness was finding other people with it. Thank you for saying that about a Tony Robbins thing. That’s nice.

Victoria Volk  1:13:56
You are a ripple creator. I see it. It’s happening. I someday I am champing for a law, or some changes, big changes for you. I’m cheering you on.

Bob Krulish  1:14:12
Thank you.

Victoria Volk  1:14:15
So, I feel like this was very helpful. I just I had chills so many different times, as I heard you talk. And I think you answered a lot of the questions too, that I feel like yeah, it was good. Very good. Your book, it’s coming out in June 2021, right?

Bob Krulish  1:14:36
Yeah, 2021.

Victoria Volk  1:14:38
I love, love, love the title when screams become whispers I just I love it. I really, I can’t wait to read it.

Bob Krulish  1:14:46
People can go to Amazon and pre ordered if they want. It just won’t get it for a while. But it’s already up on Amazon. I find that to be fun. The people can do that. Yeah, the title is great. Yeah.

Victoria Volk  1:15:04
And where else can people find you? You mentioned you have a course that you’re working on. Correct? But you also mentioned you had some videos?

Bob Krulish  1:15:11
Yeah, they go to either bobkrulish.com or they can go to Facebook and go to my bipolar solutions page.

Victoria Volk  1:15:23
I will get that information from Bob, and I will put everything that you need to get in touch with him to all the resources that he mentioned in the show notes. So, look for those there. Bob, I thank you. Thank you so much. I, I followed my intuition when I came across your bio and your information.

Bob Krulish  1:15:45
So nice of you to say, thank you.

Victoria Volk  1:15:49
I’m just so glad to have you here. So, thank you so much for shedding light on this very important topic. I shared your message. All right, everybody. That is today’s episode, give your feedback, I absolutely do not doubt it’s amazing. But until next time, my friends and when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

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