Counseling and therapy are excellent tools for helping people understand and improve themselves. However, bipolar requires more than one tool. A counselor or psychologist can talk forever without the words connecting in our brain. We need more tools to make that connection work. Researching the disorder, learning what triggers a mood change, understanding how medications work, and getting inside our head to find out why we behave as we do are all tools we need to help ourselves heal. Once we fill our toolbox, we need to use every tool so we can be happy and productive.