I su ff er from Bipolar disorder, and, have somewhat of an interest in science. During my time in and out of mental health institutions in my late teens, I noticed that sometimes mental health professionals can struggle to rationalise why their patients are thinking in the way that they are. This can develop into a lack of empathy towards them, often used as a way of coping with the horrors of the job. I appreciate it sounds strange but I think the ‘egg theory of consciousness’, (explored best in a Kurzgesagt video: https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYal ) may be of some use when tackling this problem. This was a bit di ffi cult for me to wrap my head around; it might not be the clearest way of looking at these things. Anyway the idea went something like this: Our consciousness, our self-awareness, any part of ourselves that is aware that a concept of the ‘self’ even exists, can be thought of as a kind of stretchy, self-aware ball of thought, somewhat separate to the rest of the brain but always part of it. This ball can traverse di ff erent ‘pathways of thought’ in the brain. It can be thought of as a bubble, or a ball, of thought, whichever model you prefer. Here is where the rabbit-hole of this idea gets stranger, more intimidating, but also more useful: It can be supposed that if this little ball or bubble within the brain where to move about, the ball or bubble itself would need some mechanism of self-control. This, in my head, ironically, is represented by a little man named Steve. If you think that sounds insane then you probably shouldn’t read the rest of the paper, which it is your right not to do, and does not make you closed-minded, it just means your mind is working fi ne enough to recognise when a concept may not be useful for it. Congratulate yourself, seriously, because it takes some people, myself included, a lot longer to develop anything close to that type of self-re fl ective, yet still productive thinking. Anyways, back to the little man who drives the ball of consciousness around the pathways of the brain. The man needs new things to focus on every now and then, otherwise he might get bored. Equally, he can get over-excited. He exists as a being in control of this ball of consciousness and, in turn, the ball exists as any region of the brain that is aware of itself. I refer to ‘control’ of conscious thought as the ‘driver’ of this malleable ball of consciousness I am going to keep going on about. The ball can be thought of in the following way, with a ‘depth’ and ‘creativity’ axis: Depth I I I Creativity <——— (Consciousness) ———> Creativity I I I Depth In my head, the ball can roll around the pathways of the brain by using ‘depth’ movement. This, for me, means our ability to think deeper and deeper about the same thing and keep discovering new things about it. The ball also moves around in a creative way. This, for me, means our ability to jump around from one concept to another, having concluded our thoughts about the previous one. In a healthy brain, the ‘ball of consciousness’ has its di ff erent ways of moving all sorted out and in good working order. The ideal driver can use either sort of movement whenever they need to. When the driver knows about this, it is undoubtably a good thing. When things go wrong with consciousness, I believe the resulting personality traits and behaviours are what is viewed as mental illness. In other words, mental illness can be seen as the driver having issues controlling the path of the ball as it traverses the pathways it has created. The driver’s behaviour, how much he uses his aptitude for depth and creativity, can go wrong and get into bad patterns, bad habits if you will. These end up having a negative impact on the life of the person whose brain the driver belongs to. This is how I have found it most useful to view the brain, as a su ff erer from Bipolar and someone who ruminates on consciousness and other sorts of stupidities when ‘high’. When consciousness is viewed through the lens of a ‘ball’, driven around the brain by some external ‘driver’, bipolar becomes a case of the ‘driver’ (here meaning the little man in control of the ball of consciousness) becoming over-excited and depressed at di ff erent points in time. Yes, ironically, I see this ‘driver' as sharing the same mental health issues as any mental health patient. Other mental illnesses can be thought of using the concept of ‘drivers’. In my view, this is what goes wrong with the driver in each case of illness: • Anxiety can be thought of as an anxious driver having had too much co ff ee, for instance, making them overly self-referential. They ruminate on the way other drivers have better looking consciousness ‘bubbles’ or on other non-productive subjects, to the detriment of the patient’s life. This is because the su ff erer becomes afraid of these ‘drivers’, and any conscious part of the mind at all for that matter. • Depressed drivers can be thought of as those who go around too slowly, rendering the patient themselves bored, and generally disinterested in the whole business of existence. • Psychopathy/Antisocial drivers can be seen as not having spent su ffi cient time traversing between the more logical and more emotional parts of the brain. They have not spent enough time making pathways to use to travel between the di ff erent areas of the conscious mind. This lack of connection between di ff erent areas can lead to a disconnect between the expectations of other people in terms of the empathy of the driver of a persons ball, and the realities of the person • Dissociative disorders can be viewed as the driver and the brain becoming somewhat disinterested in one another. This would lead to a ‘freakout’ of the brain, missing the ‘driver’. They become confused as to why their consciousness no longer has any interest or desire in relating to the grounded, normal life they had lead prior to developing the disorder. • The Grandiosity aspect of Mania in Bipolar Disorder, can be thought of as a person over- thinking every problem and coming to the conclusion that since everyone else does not think in such a way, they must be some kind of genius come to save humanity. It is usually impossible to communicate to a Manic person su ff ering from Grandiosity how they appear to everyone else, as they will usually just over-think this as well. These explanations are only meant as brief suppositions, I only ever use them when trying to better understand the part of people’s mind that is self-destructive, which I believe resides in the mechanisms responsible, or ‘drivers’, of consciousness. Hopefully the idea that these ‘drivers’ themselves su ff er from mental illnesses can be of some use to psychiatrists when they consider how best to treat and view their patients, by giving them a better way to separate the ‘ill’ part of the patients brain from the, usually pretty healthy, other parts of their brain. Liberty, I believe, is the fi nal part of developing a healthy working brain, free from mental illness and is, in my opinion, the best way to treat mental illness. It also happens to be when Steve enjoys his job the most. If someone can have fun, this means they can purposefully switch o ff some ‘balls’ of thought in order to concentrate on properly developing others. This requires a certain level of creativity, fostered in a new place in the brain that Steve has just made up. Anything you want to explore further with Steve, you can, although don’t go too far with that one as it can often lead you back to part 4, mental illness. This thought pattern is one of the most dangerous ones in Mania, it keeps the Manic mind awake, when sleep is what it is subconsciously craving. If this is not something you have ever imagined, good! Thank you for your patience and imagination, the main takeaway from which should be that people in mental health institutions are just people living in their dreams, so be more careful how you treat the dreamer. The trauma that led to this particular insight was many intramuscular injections under awareness of the concept.