One of the most counterintuitive principles in the Bipolar IN Order framework is the idea of going with the flow of bipolar states rather than exclusively fighting against them.
This requires careful explanation, because it sounds — on a first hearing — like advice to let things go, stop trying, or abandon the discipline that good bipolar management requires. It means none of those things.
What "Fighting" the Flow Actually Does
The standard approach to bipolar management treats states primarily as problems to be solved: use medication to lower the intensity, use therapy to process the experience, use lifestyle management to prevent the next one. These are appropriate and necessary approaches.
But when the entire relationship to bipolar states is one of opposition — when every depressive episode is something to defeat and every elevated state is something to suppress — a specific set of problems tends to emerge.
Energy is depleted fighting states that may be partly managed but cannot be fully eliminated. The periods between episodes are organized around anxiety about the next one. And something important gets missed: the information that each state carries about what is actually happening internally, what needs attention, and what the person is learning about their own patterns.
Going with the flow does not mean doing nothing. It means being in a different relationship with the states — one of observation and working with rather than always working against.
What "Going With the Flow" Actually Means
In practical terms, going with the flow in the Bipolar IN Order sense means:
Allowing the state to be what it is rather than immediately trying to make it something else. This is not passive acceptance of harm — if an episode is reaching crisis intensity, intervention is essential. But for states within a manageable range, the practice of allowing and observing creates information that fighting and suppressing does not.
Learning from the state rather than treating it purely as an obstacle. Each episode reveals things: what was building up before it arrived, what helps during it, what the transition out of it looks like, what the person can and cannot do within it.
Working within the state rather than waiting for the state to end before engaging with life. When the flow of depression or hypomania is something to be surfed rather than drowned in or simply endured, a different kind of participation becomes possible.
The Foundation This Requires
Going with the flow in this sense is only possible when a solid clinical foundation exists. Someone in acute crisis cannot adopt an observational stance — they need crisis intervention. Someone without appropriate medication management cannot safely experiment with how they navigate states.
This approach is appropriate for people who have established stability, are working with clinical support, and have developed enough self-awareness to distinguish between states that are within their manageable range and states that require immediate clinical attention.
The Bipolar IN Order framework builds this capacity through a graduated process: starting at low intensity, developing skills at each level, and expanding the range of what can be navigated with equanimity only after demonstrating genuine competence at lower levels.
The Paradox
There is a genuine paradox at the center of this approach: the more fully you can allow and observe a bipolar state without being swept away by it, the more influence you actually have over how it unfolds.
Fighting a state often increases its intensity and duration. Observing it with the kind of steady, non-reactive awareness that develops through practice tends to diminish its grip. This is not a claim about neurochemistry — it is an observation about the relationship between awareness and the felt intensity of difficult experiences.
Going with the flow, in this sense, is not surrender. It is a different kind of skill — arguably a more sophisticated one than opposition — and it produces a different kind of relationship with bipolar disorder over time.