Product Details
Finding Your Bipolar Muse: How to Master Depressive Droughts and Manic Floods and Access Your Creative Power

Finding Your Bipolar Muse: How to Master Depressive Droughts and Manic Floods and Access Your Creative Power
By Lana R. Castle, Lana Castle

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Product Description

Do creativity and mental illness truly go hand in hand, as many people believe? Or are all creative artists a bit "crazy"? Do psychotropic medications cause creative droughts? Are suffering and deprivation necessary for creative work? Or is there a better approach? Lana Castle draws from research, interviews, surveys, and her own experience to examine what bipolar disorder and depression bring to the creative mix. Drawing from forty-five years experience in the arts, Castle shares first-hand knowledge, tools, and resources to help both aspiring and professional "creatives" affected by mood disorders overcome challenges and move forward. Illuminating and inspiring, Castle's new book helps artists of all types deal with depressive droughts and manic floods. With sensitivity and grace, Castle explains how "creatives" can tap their talents to recover their lives. Readers will learn how to: manage medications and treatment without thwarting creativity; find focus; set daily, weekly, and monthly goals; develop self-esteem and independence; use their creative talents to generate income.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #607327 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-10-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 256 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Castle has penned an upbeat, insider's guidebook for those faced with a similar set of circumstances. Considering the disorder's potential for creative and artistic output, Castle offers sound advice for managing the illness while establishing a creative career. Castle stresses the importance of physical health and its link with mental health, insisting that "you simply can't reach your creative potential if you ignore what sustains your body through the day and night." Drawing from personal experience and interviews with other bipolar artists, Castle provides practical strategies for coping and thriving, like her rules for bipolar "success," a prescriptive outline for sleep, nutritious meals, emotional support and "crisis planning." In the section dedicated to "finding and organizing your creative space," Castle explains the need to minimize distraction with a calm, clean work space. For those using their creative talents in a professional setting, Castle includes an incisive "pro" and "con" list to use when deciding to reveal one's bipolar diagnosis to potential employers. Castle's informal tone can grate when it gets overly imperative, but her encouraging tips and strategies address well the contemporary problems facing bipolar artists.
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Library Journal, September 2006
"Offers highly pragmatic examples [and] helpful information...distinctive in its approach to helping creative readers with bipolar disorder."

About the Author
Lana R. Castle is a writer, speaker and mental health advocate based in Austin, Texas. She is the author of Bipolar Disorder Demystified: Mastering the Tightrope of Manic Depression. A member of the National Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance Speakers Bureau, her mission is to openly and honestly communicate her thoughts, feelings, and experiences with mood disorders, suicide, and recovery to help as many people as possible.

Customer Reviews

New Bipolar Book - A Great Help 5
Finding Your Bipolar Muse left me on an incredible high. It's both motivational and practical, and the Toolkit really helped me crystalize my goals. The book covers it all, from taking care of yourself and your creative environment to setting priorities, de-stressing and improving productivity. This book is a must-have for people with bipolar disorder. It totally blew me away.

Winner!5
Straight-forward, helpful and witty, I really enjoyed this book. Castle blends pieces of personal info., the experience of others, and factual information in a way that encouraged me to explore my own creative ideas. I, too, am bipolar, and thought that no long-term good could come out of my writing, but I feel inspired to give it a try! Her ideas and the way she relayed the wide scope of opportunities to use creativity helped me find a brighter perspective on it all.

Even better than her first book and a good follow up5
This second book by Lana Castle on bi-polar disease is even better than her first. She leads you gently through the steps to live successfully in the world. If you have a loved one in need of encouragement and support, help can be found in this book. I have recommended this book to several of my friends and have had good feedback.