There’s an old parable large__12801641634about how to catch a monkey.

The story goes that if you want to catch a monkey, you put a hole in a coconut, and inside the hole you put some nuts or fruit. You tie the coconut to a tree and wait.

A hungry monkey will put his hand down the hole and grab the fruit or nuts in his fist. When he attempts to take his fist out of the hole, he finds that his fist is too big.

The legend states that the monkey becomes trapped, not because of the coconut, but because of his unwillingness to let go.

The metaphorical coconut trap is something that everyone deals with.

Do you hold on to times people have hurt you in the past? Are your feelings still hurt from painful words that were said to you? Or do you continue to agonize over times when you have messed up? Is letting go of your own mistakes difficult?

There are two people in a row boat, each one with an oar. One person feels hurt or angry, and they stop a rowing, while their partner keeps at it.

The boat moves in a circle, going nowhere.

The anger, frustration, and pain people experience keeps them from working together to move forward.

These tightly kept feelings don’t do any good. They don’t change the past, and when acted upon they do not change anyone else.

They merely keep you stuck.

Another trap that keeps people from feeling free is regret over what they did or didn’t do in life.

It’s like a cage, where they feel like they’re interacting with the world, but they’re being held back. It may feel safe to hide under anger or resentment. But the reality is that this cage keeps a person from participating in and enjoying life.

Most people don’t even realize what it is that’s keeping them from moving forward.

They may blame their unhappiness on their bad luck or how other people treated them. Or perhaps they may understand their own role in the situation. They understand by holding on to their anger and hurt is like poison. They know they’re trapped by it, but they feel powerless. They hold on to their hurt and pain as if it’s the most important thing in the world.

For some people, holding on to their anger or pain becomes the center of their lives. It becomes the scapegoat for everything wrong, for all the missed opportunities in their life.

Most people greatly underestimate the amount of control they have over themselves. When children are young, they have a very difficult time managing their feelings. However, as people mature, they gain the ability to recognize their feelings and decide what to do with them.

If you are holding on to a deep sense of anger, what can you do to find reconciliation?

The first step is to realize that what you’re holding on to is not helpful and is something you want to change. Then you can begin to figure out how you can get to a place of peace.

Do you need to talk your feelings out with a friend or therapist? Do you need to write a letter or have a conversation? Is it enough to decide in your mind that you don’t want to hang on to the negativity, or do you need to do something physical?

Once you are able to let go of these emotions, once you let go of the fruit or open up the cage door, you will have a sense of freedom that you never imagined.

Things Not to Do If You, a Friend or a Loved One Has Bipolar DisorderBy Marcia Purse, About.com GuideUpdated April 02, 2012Reviewed by a board-certified health professional. See About.com’s Medical Review Board.Ads:
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AdsLoved One with Bipolar?http://www.coping-with-bipolar.comLearn how to cope and deal with your loved one’s bipolar disorder.3 Herbs that Beat Anxietyhttp://www.a2xanxiety.comDoctors Reveal 1 Weird Compound to Calm Anxiety that May Surprise You1. Patients: Don’t Hide Symptoms from Your DoctorDid you know that it takes an average of nine to 10 years for people to be properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder? There are two big reasons for this. One is that doctors miss the diagnosis all too frequently, even when hypomanic symptoms are brought to their attention. The other is failure of patients to report symptoms.More often than not, it is depression symptoms that send people to see a psychiatrist or other therapist. You may have viewed past hypomanic symptoms as just “not depressed,” “feeling like a normal person” or “feeling good.”If you respond to antidepressant therapy, you may think, “Wow, it’s working” and not recognize that you’ve gone into a hypomanic state (the severity of mania makes it much more likely to be recognized). But if you don’t relate your behaviors to your doctor when you’re “feeling good,” he or she may not realize you’ve gone too far in the opposite direction from depression until the symptoms escalate into serious problems.2. Patients: Don’t Let Your Doctor Skip Physical TestsThere are physical illnesses whose symptoms can overlap with those of bipolar disorder and complicate its diagnosis. They include lupus, epilepsy and Lyme disease, among others.
See: Diagnosing Bipolar: Ruling Out Physical Conditions
3. Patients: Don’t Stop Taking Your Medications on Your OwnUnless you’re having a severe side effect, you should never discontinue medications without your doctor’s supervision. Abruptly stopping some medications can cause serious side effects, too. For example, the reaction many people experience when they discontinue certain antidepressants is so unpleasant it even has a name: SSRI discontinuation syndrome. If you want to stop taking one or more of your medications, talk to your doctor first!
See: 5 Bad Reasons to Stop Taking Your Meds
4. Patients: Don’t Keep Toxic People in Your LifeYou know who they are – the people who hurt your feelings constantly, the ones who drain your energy, the ones who attack you again and again. Depending on the relationship, it can be relatively easy to very difficult to actually remove a toxic person from your life. But it’s essential that you do something about it.
See: Toxic People – Who They Are and How to Avoid Them
5. Patients: Stop Damaging Your BodyThere are some dangers inherent in bipolar disorder that make it more likely you’ll do harmful things to yourself or be intimidated into letting medical personnel give you inadequate or even improper treatment. It’s up to youto take action about these issues. Understand why they happen and what you need to do, with insights from others to help you.
See: Don’t Give Up On Your Health – Part 1
6. Patients: Don’t Meddle with Your MedicationsSuppose you’ve been prescribed 150 milligrams of medication X, 30 milligrams of medication Y and 50 to 75 milligrams of medication Z per day. That means your doctor has given you permission to take from two to three 25-milligram tablets of drug Z in a day depending on your judgment. But you don’t think that’s enough, so you start taking 100 milligrams of drug Z or 60 milligrams of drug Y. Almost immediately you start having side effects, have a mood change or another problem occurs. Think that’s far-fetched? Think again.
See: Disastrous Medication Changes
7. Parents: Don’t Refuse to Think About Giving Your Bipolar Child MedicationsIt’s understandable that a parent may be uneasy about giving a bipolar child the types of strong medications that are needed to guide that child toward stability. Certainly there are risks involved with these drugs, as there are with all prescription drugs. But remember that your child is suffering, and there are few other options to help him or her.
See: Important Reasons to Use Medications for Bipolar Children
8. Parents: Don’t Miss Out on Opportunities to Help Your Child at SchoolChildren with bipolar disorder often need special assistance at school. They can have trouble focusing, have anger issues and be easily tormented by other children. Also, it’s quite common for a bipolar child to have co-morbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to take medications at school. You need to know your child’s rights and implement the available programs.
See: School Tools: Individualized Education Program (IEP)
And: School and Medications
9. Loved Ones and Friends: Don’t Challenge the Diagnosis or Dismiss the TreatmentI can’t tell you how often people with bipolar disorder tell me that their friends or family members refuse to accept their diagnosis or refuse to learn anything about bipolar illness. Common responses include: “Oh, you’re just trying to get attention;” “Snap out of it, get a job and quit whining;” “If you only (prayed more, tried harder, ate more vegetables, etc.) you’d be fine; or simply, “I don’t believe it,” ending the conversation.Bipolar disorder is a serious illness that can disrupt every phase of life and even cause death. It can be disabling. Don’t refuse to listen and learn.
See: Don’t Challenge My Diagnosis
And: Don’t Tell Me How to Get Over Bipolar Disorder
10. Family Members: Don’t Destroy Yourself for a Loved One’s Bipolar DisorderThis is an exceedingly difficult issue. When do your needs outweigh the needs of your bipolar spouse, parent or grown child? Only you can decide, but if the time comes when you need to make the decision, do whatever is necessary to take the best care of yourself. Insights from others may help you if you’re in this position, and we offer several.

Low Vitamin D Common, May Affect Depression1 image Vitamin D has been the target of a wide variety of studies lately looking at everything from how it affects your blood pressure to the length of your life.

For several years, vitamin D levels have been linked to depression, but most of these studies were done in older adults who were often in poor health. A new study out this week has looked to fill that gap by examining whether vitamin D levels play a role in depression for younger women as well.

How is vitamin D related to depression?

Vitamin D was first linked to depression in a variety of population studies that looked at the blood of older women and compared it to their risk of a variety of diseases. Among the things that jumped out was vitamin D, which seemed in some studies to be associated with the risk of being depressed. But the data hasn’t been conclusive. Studies that have examined all of the available data have found relationships in both directions, with some showing no effect of vitamin D levels on depression.

In spite of that, there are some thoughts on how vitamin D might relate to mood. Vitamin D has receptors in areas of the brain involved in emotion and also helps produce some of the chemicals in the brain responsible for mood. It’s also involved with activation of the immune system, which could in some cases trigger a stress response and affect a person’s emotions.

Why was it important to do this study in young women?

More studies needed to be done to conclusively say whether or not vitamin D was related to mood disorders. But on top of that, it was unclear if the studies that existed related to the entire population or just those tested directly in the research. If vitamin D affected mood early in life, it might be possible to intervene when someone’s vitamin D levels were first dropping to avoid a more serious case of depression later in life. If there was no effect, health care providers could focus on vitamin D levels in older groups without worrying about younger women. This study helped both add to the literature on depression and vitamin D while also expanding the ages tested.

How did the researchers test this association and what did they find?

The researchers recruited 185 young, healthy college women and surveyed them weekly to assess any symptoms of depression they might have. They also drew blood at the beginning of the study and then at the end of the study five weeks later. They recruited students from all times of the year so they could be sure that season wasn’t playing a role and also asked about a variety of factors that could relate to vitamin D levels, like the amount of exercise they get or the amount of time they spent outside.

The researchers found that lower levels of vitamin D predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms during the five weeks of the study. While the relationship was just an association, the researchers point out that the opposite wasn’t true, namely that more depressive symptoms didn’t predict lower vitamin D levels.

Additionally, the researchers found that the women were surprisingly low in vitamin D. About six in 10 women of color were below healthy levels of vitamin D and about a third of all other women were low.

How does this affect me?

The study provides support for the idea that vitamin D and mood are related in some way and that low levels may be linked to depression. Even if you’re a young, healthy woman, you may still have low vitamin D levels, which can impact your health in other important ways. The test is easy to get and supplementation is simple and straightforward if your levels happen to be below where they should be.

Lithium is not as widely used for relapse prevention in bipolar disorder as perhaps it should be. However, the main reason is simple. It is perceived to be an unsafe drug and, in practice, this requires us to monitor its serum levels and the renal and endocrine function of patients who take it long term. At both an emotional and a practical level, the harm lithium may do weighs heavy in the minds of physicians and perhaps also their patients.

The study by Kessing et al¹ in this issue of JAMA Psychiatry examines the relationship between a bipolar diagnosis, drug exposure, and the risk of renal disease, probably the main focus for safety concerns. By linking the national databases in Denmark, it represents a comprehensive test of how an entire population fares in a socialized medical care system with a strong historical tradition of using lithium. Renal disease is variously described but ultimately defined by declining glomerular function. End-stage renal failure is a hard, potentially fatal outcome and is unlikely to be affected by any marked bias in detection: in Denmark it was ascertained from the national transplantation and dialysis register. Possible or definite renal disease short of renal failure is much more common and may or may not have functional consequences. Stage 3 of chronic renal disease, from which point patients may develop symptoms, is defined by a glomerular filtration rate less than 60 mL/min/1.73 m². Its detection will obviously be increased by frequent monitoring and, while a necessary prelude to end-stage renal failure, it is rarely sufficient: rates of end-stage renal failure are low (about 1 case in every 530 persons or 6861 person-years’ observation in the Danish registers)