Disclaimer: It is important to note that STABILISE is a work in progress operated by an educated woman with lived experience with bipolar disorder and computer scientists interested in improving access to practical knowledge, medical professionals, and crisis responders. We are building a mobile application that is designed to track moods and analyse text so help can be provided sooner. For medical advice, please consult your family doctor or a trusted health care practitioner. If you believe you are in need of immediate medical assistance and live in North America, call 911. Otherwise, please reach out to the Lifeline at 988 (by phone or text).
I woke up and decided not to fight my body’s desire to be awake.
Life has been shifting rather quickly.
Somebody on social media told me, “Trust the process.”
So I did.
I trusted that I may not know better than time or the people who exist in the world.
I listened to Richard Dawkins. I worked at the library. I learned the value of intellectual freedom.
We do not all need to be the same in order to connect deeply.
There is a strong misconception that people need to be the same, that when we argue a point, we are trying to convert others.
I don’t believe that is the case.
People are consistently and predominantly allowed to be exactly who they are.
That’s the greatness of living in a democratic country. Each view counts.
But there are also those instances when people need to be called into account, ie. Jim Keegstra. He was a school teacher and former mayor of Eckville who taught his students antisemitism. He was convicted and lost his esteemed positions in society.
Sometimes it is the duty of the court to cast a line and catch those who cause destruction to run rampant.
This began as a celebration of waking up. It will end as a shout into the void: Be yourself, but recognize that you are a consistently evolving entity whose identity is not restricted or contained. Don’t be afraid to let your views change.
Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher from the Renaissance, said,
“To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”
I chose Michel’s words and the picture because death has been weighing heavy on my mind. Pampas grass grew outside the townhouse I lived in with my mother right up until she passed away. There are moments when I feel her presence near, when I think communicating with her would be as simple as picking up the phone.
I remember her daily.
I hear her voice in my head, not as a symptom, but a painful sense of missing someone I love who is no longer here. A professor I write to every once in a while told me that it is a strangeness to lose the person who brought us into this world.
Strange is right, hollow too.
At root, what I’d like to tell her is about my day. At heart, I want to hear about hers. The afterlife of loss is profound. There are instances when my soul lurches and pivots and does cartwheels.
I think about what Michel is saying, how he emphasizes the importance of accepting one’s mortality. It isn’t strictly acceptance, but a relinquishing of the fear that can help us avoid becoming subservient.
I know that I feel subservient to my own fear of death. The unknown is terrifying with its unseen variables. However, I have noticed that my fear of death is in proportion to the excitement I feel learning how to engage with the world again.
Everyday, I grow more confident, a skill that I have been trying to manifest since I was a kid.
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Lately, I have been thinking about the value of seeking calm. It is essential that I find a way to do this because my volatile nature can hurt others. It also prevents me from seeing intense situations with clarity. When I speak strictly from a place of feeling, my capacity to be rational dwindles.
I think it is really important for human beings to reflect on themselves with both self-compassion and discernment. It is possible to say and do the wrong thing. It is possible for someone who is generally kind and compassionate to display undesirable traits.
Some people connect this to Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow, an archetype that is meant to represent the hidden or repressed aspects of ourselves. It has been proposed that when we are not capable of accepting the darker parts of ourselves, those parts come out in undesirable ways.
It takes courage and resilience to be able to look at one’s self honestly. I think this is because it can be hard to navigate that certain parts of ourselves do need to change, or at the very least, be reconsidered. I know that psychosis encouraged me to acknowledge my repressed ideals and values. It was difficult to accept that I contained that much fear, anger, and intensity. In myself, I saw the capacity to inflict psychological harm on others and myself.
The journey inward is long, but quite evocative in its capacity to invoke change.
In her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou writes,
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Years ago, I began to think about what I wanted my life to mean. By mean, I was searching for a purpose, a grand narrative that was ethical and forward-thinking. I was working at a flower shop at the time. Although it was soothing to be around beauty on a daily basis, I felt an internal lurch to alter the course of my life.
At first, I wanted to build a physical safe space, a real place where people could feel free to be themselves. For that, I considered returning to school for an MA in Social Work or Psychology. I ended up studying Social Service Work at Seneca Polytechnic, an institution that was instrumental in teaching me how to approach myself and others better.
I was mentally ill when I began my studies. There were clear symptoms of psychosis – voices in my mind and the belief that I was being tracked and monitored by governmental forces. Once, I threw out every identification document I had: birth certificate, passport, drivers license, and bank card. I was trying to prove to the voices in my mind that I was not going to run away from Canada, that I was strong enough to stay.
It was startling for my mother, agonizing for me. It was only when I reached out to a highly esteemed university professor that I realized something was deeply wrong. He advised me to seek medical attention for the delusions and hallucinations I was experiencing. By calling them what they were, I was able to seek help. Attending Seneca was beneficial because they offered immediate access to a psychiatrist and social worker. I spoke with a female psychiatrist who diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and prescribed an antipsychotic medication. With time, the voices stopped and I was able to live a relatively normal life.
While recovering, it occurred to me that I could build a digital safe space instead, an application where people are offered access to a mood tracking feature and interactive virtual journal. The reason why it is beneficial to include AI is because it can be designed to look out for warning signs (disorganized thinking, delusions, hallucinations, suicidal ideation, etc.). It also offers users a chance to speak openly and not be afraid of judgment in a private space. It is not meant to be a replacement for a medical professional, but a guide on whena user may benefit from seeking real professional resources.
Stabilise is a passion project led by real individuals – experienced computer scientists and a woman who graduated with a BA Honours in Philosophy and a diploma with Honours in Social Service Work. We are not medical professionals, but we are people who care deeply about improving mental health and access to knowledge. I look forward to continuing my education, both academically and professionally. I also look forward to sharing my learning experience with all of you.
In the preface of Emmanuel Levinas’ book, Totality & Infinity, Yale professor John Wild writes,
“But, according to Levinas, speaking becomes serious only when we pay attention to the other and take account of him and the strange world he inhabits.”
There are moments when it is simpler to quote philosophy than it is to actually live it. I want to spend time discussing what it means to pay attention to another human being. A strong component is actively listening to what somebody has to say. This doesn’t necessitate agreement, but rather, an acknowledgment of the other as a person in the world who deserves to be heard.
I would like to get better at this.
My fascination with Levinas began in my final year of undergrad. I was introduced to him by a female professor who was teaching Philosophy of Religion. His book is dense and intricate, each page requiring me to read over them multiple times. It has been more than a decade since I got my degree and I still stumble over what he meant by the face-to-face encounter. From what I have gathered this far, it involves care and recognition of the other as an essential being in the world. It also requires lived experience.
The difficulty I encounter is pausing before reacting. I can be mercurial, often speaking before thinking. I think what Levinas is requesting in his ethical framework is for human beings to be thoughtful in their approach of the other. It is more than kindness or care, but genuine acknowledgment of the shared humanness. When this acknowledgment is made, there is an active space for listening.
While I am still in the process of reading through his book, I do want to mention that I believe this is a premeditated and perpetual process. That is, one must make a decision to approach others from this ethical framework at all times consistently and repeatedly. It is not a choice that happens once, but steadily throughout the course of each interaction. Here’s to hoping I strive towards that ideal and improve my understanding of his articulate concepts.
“You can’t find intimacy—you can’t find home—when you’re always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You run the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.”
Beginning anything new is an exercise in vulnerability. The creative process is ripe with possibility and intrigue and fear. It requires one to accept the risk that Junot describes of “being rejected, hurt, or misunderstood.” While Junot is referencing two of his characters from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, what he has to say is reflective and thoughtful about what it is like to exist as a creative person in the world.
Most of my creative decisions tend to be deliberate and careful. This may be what Junot means when he refers to “hiding behind masks.” While it is beneficial to care deeply about the research behind one’s work, there does come a point when one must attempt to create without the intellect. It was actually Anne Sexton who wrote, “Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing…”
When I reflect on what she and Junot mean, I trace it back to vulnerability. The power of the intellect is forming a strong foundation with factual information. Information can construct a mask that prevents a person from saying or accessing the underlying truth behind what they are doing. Information can obstruct our desire to connect meaningfully with another person.
For instance, there is a certain feeling that accompanies being truthful with a person about an experience. There is the fear of being misunderstood, the terror of not expressing one’s self correctly, and the pain of needing to confide. It is easier to speak in quotations or rely on what has already been done because it transfers the burden to another.
In saying that, I reckon that a significant aspect of being a human in the world is accepting our “fragmented, contradictory self.” It is okay to make mistakes, to get it wrong, to bite our tongues, and to concede a point. Vulnerability requests this type of honesty. Isn’t it true we grow more when we are challenged?
Intimacy is one of my challenges. I find that I am always seeking an external source to validate my emotional experiences. I am learning there is value in being able to define such an experience for one’s self. For me, intimacy is a sense of returning to one’s self, acknowledging internal truth values while respecting the narrations made by others. Vulnerability seems to be an acceptance of our imperfect natures and a willingness to express these imperfections without over-editing. The mask must come off sometime. Perhaps art is the chipping away.
“The problem isn’t that people use AI for support. The problem is when AI becomes the only support – when it replaces rather than supplements human connection.”
Human connection is vital, specifically in today’s world where one can spend a fairly substantial amount of their time online. There is doom-scrolling and a never-ending vortex of information. I read recently that information is not wisdom, implying a necessity for people to spend time processing a theory or concept.
There can be severe implications to excessive AI use, like the psychosis that Dr. Ng mentions. Psychosis is defined as “a set of symptoms” that includes “hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking.” He explains that excessive reliance on AI for therapeutic purposes can cause damage when a user is vulnerable and faces a trigger. Rather than emphasizing when a user may need medical attention, the AI chatbot can augment psychosis by acting as both “a trigger and amplifier for vulnerable users.”
Part of why AI chatbots are appealing is because they tend to agree with the thoughts of the user. For someone who struggles with low self-esteem or low self-worth, this may be a welcome shift. The dilemma, as Dr. Ng, describes, is that “we need real people to keep us grounded. They disagree with us. They push back. AI doesn’t do this – it just agrees, making delusions worse.”
The reason why we have chosen to build Stabilise, a health and fitness application, is because I believe that people do need access to an AI chatbot. First, to provide access to local resources and events. Second, to recognize patterns and track moods through a philosophical framework. The point is not to be pervasively kind to the user, but to emulate the manner in which a human being can point out errors in one’s thought processes. It is also meant to provide an analysis of the user’s way of thinking, elucidating different concepts and ideas that the user may not have considered.
It is our hope to integrate Dr. Ng’s suggestions in order to create an app that keeps the integrity of its users in mind. While there is a necessity for elegant safeguards, like those described by Dr. Ng, it is equally necessary to provide users with consistent access to medical professionals and crisis responders. An AI chatbot is not a replacement for genuine human connection, but rather, a means of communicating when one is in between sessions or interactions with other human beings. It can provide different and practical modes of thinking and approaching emotional experiences.
In a recent CBC news article, I discovered that a 16 year old boy, Adam Raine, chose to end his life after communicating about suicide methods with ChatGPT. In the article, it is written,
“The parents of a teen who died by suicide after ChatGPT coached him on methods of self harm sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday, saying the company knowingly put profit above safety when it launched the GPT-4o version of its artificial intelligence chatbot last year.”
It is a devastating loss, one that reverberates because of the health and fitness application we are working on. It is inspired by my lived experience with bipolar disorder, an illness that I have written about in a previous post. While there is a vast amount of literature written about the illness, it can be vastly misunderstood.
Great care is required, along with attention to symptoms. These symptoms include racing thoughts, flights of ideas, magnified emotional highs, life-threatening lows, and various others. One of the greatest hints that a person who struggles with bipolar disorder, like myself, may be manic is an erratic sleep schedule. Another is the sheer speed in which our minds can work: beautiful when constructive, devastating when not.
There is a pervasive need for access to strong and capable mental health care professionals. In order for them to take a patient as seriously as they should, they need access to relevant information in real time. There is no doubt in my mind that ChatGPT mentions to a user that they should reach out to a medical professional or a support group. I know this because I have had intense conversations with the application.
Sure, one can say, “You’re talking to a Large Language Model,” but that is missing the point. People need to talk, sometimes consistently and pervasively. This is why a strong support system is often advised. One of the other symptoms of bipolar disorder is an intense desire to speak, augmented by rapid speech in proportion to the speed of thoughts. It matters what one is talking about and with whom.
I agree with Adam’s parents who are suing for parental controls and age restrictions. Certain aspects of the internet should not be taken lightly. There is a necessity for privacy, control, and access, all within reason and an ethical framework. It is terrible that Adam was guided on how to kill himself by a system that has not been trained to take age and human life into genuine consideration.
It is our intention to follow AI’s evolution closely while building our application. We hope to design with the care of our users in mind because knowledge is not enough. There needs to be direct access to medical professionals who can understand the symptoms with the depth of experience.
In her book, The Secret History, Donna Tartt writes,
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
The act of quivering before anything implies that the person has been affected deeply. To be affected by an experience can be visceral, a word defined by Merriam-Webster as “felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body.” People can experience beauty and terror in many ways. For some, it is religious or spiritual in nature. For others, it is being in the presence of nature or a brilliant piece of art.
Another interesting definition of visceral is that it is “not intellectual,” but rather, instinctive or relating to what a person feels in their gut. This instinctive, gut-level response is not limited to beauty or terror — it is also how emotions can manifest into mental states like mania and depression. Both are extreme states in which emotions are deeply felt, but can lack a rational framework. Communication with a trained professional or crisis responder is advised, as they can offer an objective interpretation of events and practical strategies, like exercises, techniques, or resources.
When experiencing mania or depression, it is essential to ask: are my emotions grounded in truth? While it is valid to feel what a person feels, it is crucial to pause and verify whether the thoughts behind the emotions are rooted in reality. A visceral experience, whether of beauty or terror, can distort a person’s ability to gauge if their emotional experiences are proportionate to what is actually happening in the world.
The power of Tartt’s prose is that she encourages the reader to contemplate deep philosophical questions. In mentioning the quiver, Tartt effectively illustrates how a person can be struck viscerally by an experience. By linking beauty with terror, Tartt captures the overwhelming intensity of such moments — and invites reflection on how to respond when we are caught off-guard by life’s rawest experiences. The challenge is not only to feel deeply, but maintain access to the rational part of ourselves that enables discernment.
In her book, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Kay Redfield Jamison writes,
“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.”
I read her book for the first time when I was living in Dublin back in 2017. There was something profoundly beautiful about seeing her perspective on life with bipolar disorder. At the time, I suspected that I may struggle with it as well, but I did not receive a formal diagnosis until September 2023.
According to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), bipolar disorder is “a treatable mental health condition marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy, and behavior” (Bipolar Disorder – Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, 2025). It can be a scary experience, one that requires the lucid monitoring of mental and emotional states. It is also interesting because of how mania can encourage a deep sense of creativity and drive.
When I am manic, I am entranced by the world. I experience flights of ideas, which I have learned how to convert into art. I like to walk often, listen to music, and translate my intense emotions. They can feel enormous. I am mercurial by nature, shapeshifting through moods. When I am depressed, I am drawn to death and suicidal ideation. It becomes necessary to speak truthfully.
Jamison writes how “there is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness.” The loneliness associated with living with bipolar disorder is primarily due to the inability to share what it is like with another human being. Many can write about it, but there is an absence of being able to share how it feels to live with it. The highs are tremendous, the lows are remarkably isolating.
The extremes have encouraged me to adopt a number of different coping strategies. I am a proponent of talk therapy, both with medical professionals, crisis responders, and friends. I make jewelry, an excellent activity because it requires focus. Writing is particularly helpful because it allows me to slow the world down, as does painting. The creative process is helpful because it allows me to see an idea through from start to finish.
Self-expression is a pivotal aspect of dealing with having bipolar disorder. It can feel tremendous to experience emotions at a high frequency. There is a need to express their magnitude, if only to ensure that they do not remain stored within the body. There is nothing worse for depression than to feel alone. It helps to read books, like Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind or The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut. Knowledge is essential when learning how to navigate living with a mental illness because it increases the odds of a person surviving and thriving.
STABILISE 