The grief in bipolar recovery and the development of a new ego and identity structures

last night I did a little sharing of my story with a family group of people that our loved ones of people diagnosed with mental health conditions and the first hour they do their class material and then the second hour I share my story and I've done it a couple of times before and so I was actually struck by the conversation that happened they read a part of the material that says recovery is the development of a new ego and identity structures to replace those damaged by our illnesses recovery is about wellness that is the redevelopment of a new and healthier personality and lifestyle an independent personality that is strong enough to stand on its own recovery takes place through creation of new patterns of behavior that make our lives more satisfying and productive and from that there was a conversation by the parents and loved ones and they were kind of saying how their loved ones are in the grief stage of they can't get back to who they were before so when I shared my story I talked about that i believe it is about creating a new self you can't really get back to the one that you were before and i didn't really say but if a person gets stuck in the grief face it's going to make it so one can't really move into this phase of rediscovery and recreation of oneself and that may include some of the old structures and then this sheet goes on to be like oh you got to give up your hopes and dreams and build a dream of lesser whatever and stuff which is kind of old thinking but they're trying to put it in like a positive light but i still think that it's important to harvest one's mania if one had mania and move towards that not just about developing patterns of behavior and personality structures to help one function as a cog in the machine of the society because it's a cog in the machine of society that we're all suffering from uncertain number of us go into these supposed crisis mental illness states and it's a state of connecting with a different compass that wants us to create a different reality or we don't have to go into these states of crisis it's trying to show us something it's trying to show us that we're all one thing we're all one consciousness and we need to co-create towards that so that's why I don't really believe in personal recovery to just personally recover enough function to somewhat function in society and that's why I feel like I've done the best one I've been living in community or had a lot of interactions that are just based on being human and not really focused on mental illness at all so I was pretty inspired by just hearing their dialogue before I spoke I didn't say anything about it I was just listening to them but it seems like ever since that time I shared a couple of months ago and the woman said she's starting to believe her son that hey if we all acted this way we would create a different world or something whatever she said each time I go to something mental health-related it's usually a pleasant surprise and the perspective people are taking and and the one lady at the group yesterday even said well if they went back to their original personality that would just mean they would be back to beginning again they would be mentally ill again because that sort of was part of what caused the mental illness it was it was concurrent with the occurrence of the supposed mental illness and I was like wow that's kind of spot on because i think i might have said that before where someone new has to come into play so I definitely grieved the loss of my former self for several months but then I went like okay well I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain now so let's see what happens so I find it interesting that it's right in the literature of a family support group class that basically we need to create a new self and that's why I've talked about embodied mania and harvesting and practicing and embodying some of the grief is at least four people that go into mania is grieving the loss of manic co