How do you control it?
I feel like this is controlling my life. How do I become the conqueror of this disease that I didn’t even ask for?
Sorry to hear that. Bipolar is a serious disease and hard to manage without the medication. CBT can help, and mindfulness. Check our self-help guide about Bipolar disorder.
A lot of it unfortunately is trial and error. Finding the right meds and what works for you is huge. It’s hard but so worth it
I have managesd it for 17 years now and have done it whiltworking as a critical care nurse. In my state, there are no real resources and nobody tells you how to live with it. I would get the extreme side from the drug overdoses that reminded me why the meds were important. The best help was when my cousin told me about a book called the Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide. It was written by someone that actually knew their stuff, made it easy to understand, explained what the meds do, the concept of mood tracking, gave supplemental therapy ( light therapy. support groups, sleep issue, stopping the use of substances). It did more for me and if my patients had known about that book..most would be highly functioning.
My cousin insistence on Support Groups was also helpfully because you always learned something from someone. Even if the info was not useful at that time, it became useful later on. Those little small things made big differences.
Put away the alcohol, weed, high caffeine, and smokes. They hinder the progress and get in the way. 2/3 of bipolar people do it.
Take the meds even when you feel like you don’t need them. After that, you have to learn Feel Your Way. Like riding a surfboard or riding a bike. If you feel everything speeding up around you then your getting in a manic phase (call the psychiatrist for adjustment Then and not later), If your feeling depressed…keep moving until it passes, learn relaxation or distraction, keep googling info, and always google famous people who had bipolar disorder to inspire you (Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill etc…) so your not so down.
Once you do this…you get confident and will feel in charge of it instead of it controlling you.
