Bipolarity in balance: Beyond the myths and misunderstandings with Clement Baissat

Laetitia: Welcome to The Neurodivergent Pulse, where we explore the often misunderstood world of neurodivergence with experts, parents, teachers, and therapists. Grounded in lived experience, each bite sized episode gives you something practical to try. I am your host, Laetitia Andrac, AI expert, neurodivergent mum, and founder of Understanding Zoe. This podcast is recorded on Dharawal country. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Laetitia: Welcome to The Neurodivergent Pulse, Clem.

Clement: Awesome to be here. Thanks.

Laetitia: You're welcome. I love that today we're going to talk about being bipolar and what does it mean. So, thank you for taking the time to share about this, because there is lots of misunderstanding about being bipolar and what it means. So before we get into this topic and this podcast, I would love for you to share with us what led you to focus on raising awareness about bipolarity, and anything you would like to share with our listeners as an introduction.

Clement: Of course. So, quick background. So, business school, startups. So the first one, it went really well actually, it's doing a few million each year, but I got depressed and then I sold my shares. The second one I went bankrupt, and I was in the up phase. So I started the company with someone I didn't know in Tokyo. The next week we had three person in Civil, and we went from zero to almost profitable. We were losing like two hundred bucks a month, and then I got depressed, and I finally got diagnosed, and it was really a tough moment, but also I was really relieved. I really understood why I had those ups and downs, and I just started to work for, yeah, for another company which is not mine, because I wanted to settle down.

Laetitia: Yeah.

Clement: And after a few years, I really wanted to work on this problem, because it was a problem I wanted to fix. I wanted to fix it for me, but not only for me, and it was really what I had in my heart, to be like, okay, how do we do things in a better way?

Laetitia: Yes.

Clement: Because I was so frustrated. So everything that I've been through, and I was like, how is it possible that something this important is not taken care of in a proper way?

Laetitia: Yes.

Clement: So that's what led to Hope Stage basically.

Laetitia: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, and as you said, the ups and downs, and creating Hope Stage, and raising awareness around bipolar. It's such an important topic. So today, for anyone who's listening to this and they're not really familiar with what is bipolarity, what is it, what does it mean to be bipolar? Would you like to share in your own words what it is, and how it feels on a day to day basis?

Clement: Yeah. So, bipolar, some people say it's a psychological disorder. I usually like to say it's more like something which is a chemical problem. So it can lead to up or down. So, the two pole. So, up is called the manic phase, which is where you have too many, it's usually a dopamine bit, but it could be other chemical, but your brain is sending too much. And then it's kind of a euphoria. You have too much high. You're too confident. You usually don't sleep. It's like being on coke a little bit. If you can see it in a movie, you speak too fast. And on the other way around, you have depression, which is the other pole. And then it's like you don't have dopamine anymore. So your brain is not sending dopamine. And then it's the total opposite. So people know depression a bit more. So you're not going to be able to be confident. You're usually going to have anxiety inside it. You're going to sleep either too much or too little. And you have this sort of dark way of seeing things. And everything is more difficult. And you have more fatigue. You don't have energy. So it's a two pole, and of course you have the middle ground, which is stability, and you can achieve that, and most people do, but we always talk about the ones who don't.

Laetitia: Yes. Yes. Which is something that I wanted us to debunk today, around the myth of being bipolar and what it is. So would you like to share with us the biggest misconceptions, or the biggest myth, that you've witnessed when you disclose you're bipolar, or when you share about being bipolar? When you hear someone sharing themselves that they're bipolar, and you're witnessing someone else's misconception, and the biases emerging from that.

Clement: I guess the most common mistake is to confuse borderline with bipolar.

Laetitia: Yes. Good one. Yeah.

Clement: And it's like the length of the phases. So when you're bipolar, it's usually like at least a few weeks, and the fact that it's going to last, so the phase, and sometimes borderline is more like quick phases, if I simplify a lot.

Clement: Yeah. And so that's one misconception. And also, bipolarity, there's different types of bipolarity, and some people, when they feel a little bit depressed, they don't differentiate what is feeling depressed and having a depression. And it's really a misconception, and so, feeling depressed is usually a few days and it's not feeling good, but if you have external support and you, for example, do some sport, most of the time you will get through it. Having a depression, it means that it's at least two weeks, and you need medical support at this point, and you cannot fix it with like sports.

Clement: So it's, I would say those are the big misconceptions.

Laetitia: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And for yourself, or anyone that you've witnessed through your support with Hope Stage, what are strategies, approaches, tips that you can give to someone who is bipolar, or who is supporting a child with bipolar, supporting an adult with bipolar, supporting a partner? What tends to help, or what helps you, if you want to come from a lived experience, but what have you seen working for yourself, or working for other people around you?

Clement: So I will first answer, like, what can you do as bipolar?

Laetitia: Yeah.

Clement: Um, so everybody's different, and everybody has this bipolar. So I'm bipolar type two, Clem, and you won't have the same thing as me, but as a whole it's really about a different stage. So it's actually the stage of Hope Stage, we call it stage. So it's about understanding.

Clement: So what do you have? What are your triggers? What happened, and really become experts of what it is.

Clement: Then it's about accepting, which is like, okay, I'm different. So I'm neurodivergent, and because I'm different I have different needs, and I cannot do things the same way as other people.

Laetitia: Yes.

Clement: So I have addictive behaviour. So we as bipolar people, we are four time more addicted to drugs than other people. So we cannot take drugs or alcohol in the same way. We have sleep issue. But we also have a lot of emotions. We are emotional. And so it's really about, okay, I'm different, I cannot do the same thing as my friend, and I need to basically accept to tell other people, to ask for help most of the time, to take a treatment, and to take care about my sleep, this type of thing.

Clement: And it's about getting support. So getting support is like, for me, I'm lucky, so I have a psychiatrist, psychologist, and peer helper. So it's really about building the team around yourself, so you, and basically find your path to stability. And so when you do all of that, it's fine. It's really fine.

Laetitia: I love it.

Clement: And if you go back as being a parent, and this is another story, it's about taking care of yourself before helping others. That's the most important. You cannot help if you're not good with yourself. And it's really about helping the person going through the stage, and not doing it for him, which is difficult, because you want him to be like, okay, just take this bottle, and no, it will take time. Acceptance takes time. And so the way we see acceptance doing really well is like talking group, online community, and psycho education, which is like training for bipolar people.

Laetitia: Mhm.

Clement: So that's what we do, and we have really good data showing that it helps acceptance. But if there's one thing, it's like, how can you put your son or daughter, or someone, in an environment where they're going to want to accept, I would say that's the one thing.

Laetitia: Thank you. So we talked about this before the podcast, around the stigma, that being bipolar, your experience as being bipolar, and lots of people will not disclose that they are bipolar. Would you mind sharing, how do you go about that? What is, from your lived experience, ways to disclose it without facing too much of the stigma? Any tips for anyone who's listening to this and being like, oh, I don't know how to disclose it, I don't know if it is safe to disclose it, I don't know if it is safe to disclose that my teenager is bipolar, or whatever is their situation, from your own experience, and also of course running Hope Stage and having helped thousands of people through that.

Clement: So it's really a personal question, first of all, is like, who do I want to share it with?

Laetitia: Yes,

Clement: you don't need to share it with everyone.

Laetitia: Mhm.

Clement: So, is a person someone who is willing to listen, who's willing to understand. Do you want to have a deep relationship with this person? Could be work, could be a friend, but is it kind of worth it to do it?

Laetitia: Yes,

Clement: because we have this amount of energy, where do we want to spend it? So, okay, do I want to do it with this person? Then how do I want to do it? Everybody is different, but what I feel works most is really doing one on one in person, and to ask a question. So, hey, do you know what is bipolar? I usually like to ask with that, because then the person, you can see he's starting to be like, okay, where is he going, and you can have the time, and you can just, and it's really about first helping them understand, because then it's going to be easy for them to accept. It's always the same stage.

Clement: Yeah. The same stages of Hope Stage. Yeah. Understanding, acceptance, and then support. And the same thing for them, when they are listening to you, because they need to understand, they need to accept that you're different, and then they need to get support themselves, because to support you, they're going to need to support themselves.

Laetitia: Yes.

Clement: And most of the time, in this period, which could be tough, they maybe will need to see a psychologist themselves, for example.

Laetitia: Yes. Thank you. It's so simple when you explain it in this way. So, you know, I'm a geek, I love data and AI and all of that. So I'm going to ask you, based on your length of experience running Hope Stage in France, and now you moved to Australia a few months ago, what have you seen in the experience of the people that you've supported? You can share how many people you've supported and so on, but what have you seen as trends, or elements of shift in society, whatever you'd like to share from this length of experience that you had in the space as an advocate in France, and as someone who's done really great work in France, and now we're lucky that you moved down under in Australia, and you're here to help Australians really be supported as bipolar. So what would you like to share in terms of the data, in terms of the learning, in terms of being there from lived experience, but also from advocating for the community?

Clement: I would say it's like, we are responsible, as a tough thing to say, because I know there's this movement of being like, oh, it's not our fault, society needs to help us. I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just saying that society is what it is, and it's not perfect, and it's not doing the way it's supposed to work, that we can basically do a lot ourself. And I think it's really asking yourself the question, like, do you want to spend your life feeling like a victim and complaining about how society is not doing the proper thing, or do you want to take the power that you have and make it work for yourself? And that's, I would say, the most important. And of course there's a lot of great things to help you achieve that, understanding is always part of it, because it really helps, like sharing and talking about it, and technology can help a lot, but at the end of the day it's like, what do you want to do for yourself, and how do you want to use the tools that are now available.

Clement: Psychiatry, I would say, is kind of the stone age, to be honest. I feel the technique, and it's done. It's like sometimes I feel like, come on guys, you cannot give me something which is like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and we need to change that, and it's why we're here, because we have a lot of new possibility. I've used AI a little bit myself as like therapy. I would say that I'm not perfectly happy, but I think there's a way here. And if I want to share my vision of the future, I feel like it's really about connecting the dots, and connecting all the resources we have, and basically being able to personalise the path for everyone. So right now, most of us, we don't have the money to have our personalised path. So we'll go through the same path as anyone. But if we gather the right data, and maybe give it to our kind of AI companion, then we can personalise the path, and I feel like for the psychiatrist it's having better data, giving better treatment, for the psychologist knowing where to intervene, and maybe when to get a meeting faster. It's all about that, and it's going to be really cool, because I think we're going to fix the system and be, hey, maybe we live in 2025, let's do something about it.

Laetitia: Yeah. Yeah. And this is exactly what Understanding Zoe does, right? Connecting all the dots, and having this personalised access to the right information, with the support of all of the support team that you have around you, so that it's not AI hallucinating, it's in a controlled and specialised space. I like what you said, around this greater understanding of self gives you this agency and this ability to advocate, but at the same time I really embrace a social model of disability, saying that it's societies that decide who is disordered and who is ordered, and it's not because you're not behaving like the eighty percent that you're necessarily disordered, you're just doing it in a different way. So who gets to decide what the right or the wrong way is? So yeah, it's a very interesting debate here. In terms of your vision, for the future, if you had one message for policy makers, educators, bipolar people, workplaces, whichever you pick, and you can pick many, about supporting bipolar, what would it be?

Clement: It's really a little bit the same as you're saying, I feel education is the main thing. It's really that we need to learn, we need to know that, I would say it's normal, it's just being different, and we accept that everybody's different. So why not go a step further? Because at the end of the day it would be so boring if everybody was the same.

Laetitia: Yes.

Clement: Can you imagine a society where there's not that many artists, or great engineers, but also without, it would be so boring. So really educating the new generation, which is done quite well, I feel, seeing things in a different way, that it's fine, and we don't have to look at someone and tell them to do it the same way, you can do it in a different way. And, yeah, I think at school, I talked about it with the minister in France, and it was really like, can you at least give the possibility to teachers to learn about those things, and to create courses for volunteer teachers to really be able to know, and then at school, in class, they can actually teach the new generation, and then in twenty years it will change everything.

Laetitia: That's so true. That's so true. Thank you for sharing that. So now, more a personal, quickfire question. What is one small and simple practice that supports you personally as bipolar?

Clement: I would say it's like trying to sleep better. It's like the most difficult part, and I'm still struggling. But it's like building a system to help me sleep, and for me it's like I don't take any substance. So when I talk about substance, I'm talking also about coffee, talking also about alcohol, because it affects me much more than others. So really, it depends, maybe it's not your thing, and it's about having all these little techniques, for example, a sleeping mask is so underrated. Most people don't do it.

Laetitia: I do, I have a sleep mask, I can't sleep without a sleep mask.

Clement: It's so great, and even if you sleep well, you're actually going to sleep better.

Laetitia: Yeah. For me it's just the lights. I'm very light sensitive. So at night I just need zero light.

Clement: But everybody is light sensitive. It's like, just some people just live their whole life not doing it.

Laetitia: Yeah.

Clement: And maybe they can sleep better, which is, yeah. And same thing, so earplugs, depending on where you live. Having those breathing exercises to get to bed, or even, if you wake up, when you wake up, to get out of bed and go writing, for me is really what helped me to put my words somewhere. And not being afraid to take medicine, when I think things are not good, then I'm like, okay, no worry, I take it for maybe two to three days and then I fix my sleep, and I don't let my sleep go too wide, because I'm bipolar, I know they can start a phase.

Laetitia: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So for anyone who is listening to this today, and they want to find out more about you, about your work with Hope Stage, how can they connect with you?

Clement: Um, yeah, my email is quite easy. And just on LinkedIn also, wherever you want, and I'd be happy to help.

Laetitia: Thank you. Thank you so much, Clem.

Laetitia: Welcome to The Neurodivergent Pulse podcast. It's time for our Quick Pulse with Zoe, our special guest. So, Zoe, what helps you find calm again when you have lots of emotions moving through your body?

Zoe: I use a mood kit and I ask for some help.

Laetitia: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Zoe. And why do you think understanding your own feelings, and asking for help, can help you?

Zoe: Because it makes me calm and relaxed, and it helped me reset my mind.

Laetitia: That's wonderful. Thank you, Zoe, for joining us for a Quick Pulse check on The Neurodivergent Pulse podcast. That's a wrap for The Neurodivergent Pulse. If this helped, follow the show and leave us a quick review on your favourite platform. You can even share this episode with someone who needs it. You can learn more about our platform at Understanding Zoe, the