Bipolar Disorder: Monitoring Your Mood

When you have bipolar disorder it can feel like your disorder is in the driver’s seat of your mind and you are just along for the ride. It can create a helpless, hopeless feeling when you feel like your mood cycles are happening unpredictably and you don’t have any control over them. That helpless feeling can make you feel like your life is not really yours. You are being “lived” by your disorder. 

Like Diabetes?

Years ago I had a doctor try to help me with accepting and understanding my bipolar disorder by comparing it to type 1 diabetes. It was a helpful analogy because diabetes is a straightforward, clear cut disorder with an easy to understand issue–your body is unable to regulate its blood sugar naturally and so you have to help your body. 

As I have learned more about diabetes from friends who have it I have been amazed at how similar the experience of learning to manage diabetes is to learning to manage bipolar disorder.

Monitoring Blood Sugar

When someone is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes she is informed by her doctor that she has a disorder in her body that makes it impossible for it to naturally regulate its blood sugar. She is instructed that she will need to give her body assistance by monitoring her blood sugar multiple times a day, every day, for the rest of her life. The information she gains from monitoring her blood sugar level will help her know if her body needs insulin or additional sugar to keep her blood sugar within a safe range.

She also learns that she has to be careful about food choices to make sure her body doesn’t get overloaded by too much sugar and cause a serious overcorrection that can be dangerous. She might have a small piece of cake, but remove the frosting, or if she’s at a restaurant and orders lasagna she might take half of the piece of lasagna home to avoid eating too many carbohydrates at once. The doctor can teach her some of the basics of how to make safe food choices, but most of it is learned by experience.

She will learn that there are other factors that can impact her blood sugar level. Stressors can have an impact, in either direction up or down. Sleep, the amount and quality, can impact her blood sugar. A friend of mine once told me that there are over 45 different factors that can affect your blood sugar level. 

Each person is different and it is important for them to learn to proactively identify which factors impact their blood sugar and manage those factors by making choices or setting boundaries that help them proactively care for their disorder more effectively.

It’s Not Fair!

Someone with diabetes might feel like it is unfair that they have to be so vigilant in  monitoring and managing their blood sugar all the time. I would agree with them, it isn’t fair. But fair has nothing to do with the reality of their situation. 

A friend of mine who has diabetes also has a son with diabetes. She told me that he hated having diabetes as a boy. He just wanted to be “normal” so once when he went to a scout camp for a week he didn’t monitor his blood sugar and didn’t use insulin. As a result he ended up in the hospital in critical condition.

Fair or not, someone with diabetes has a choice. She can choose to monitor her blood sugar proactively, actively working to keep it balanced so she can live a healthy life. She can also choose to deal reactively with her diabetes, neglecting to monitor and manage her blood sugar and end up being forced to face the consequences of getting sick and ending up in the hospital. She has a choice to make every day.

How to Monitor Your Mood Balance

This comparison helped me understand my disorder better because they are so similar. With bipolar disorder my brain is unable to regulate my moods and emotions in a healthy way and I need to give it help with medication/supplementation, counseling, self-care and managing stressors. 

One challenge I had, however, was how to “monitor” my mood, or check my “chemical balance.” I remember telling my uncle one day back when I was in college that I wish there was a way to analyze my brain chemicals to identify what was out of balance. Unfortunately that technology doesn’t exist yet. 

Over the years I have discovered a way to monitor your mood simply and effectively using a mood tracking app. 

I use the Bearable app. This is not a sponsored post, and I don’t receive any benefit–financial or otherwise–for recommending the app. I recommend it because it is the best mood tracking app I have used. 

Using a mood tracking app helps you to begin to identify your mood cycles, symptoms and triggers so you can “monitor” your mood balance and learn how to treat it effectively. Similar to diabetes, you should track your mood balance multiple times a day, regardless of how you are feeling, so that you are able to create a more accurate picture for yourself, your doctor and your therapist.

With Bearable you are able to track:

  • Mood
  • Symptoms
  • Factors that can impact your mood (i.e., places, social interactions, activity level, menstrual cycle, personal care, productivity, appointments, social media, weather, etc.)
  • Sleep 
  • Energy level
  • Medication and/or supplements
  • Nutrition 
  • Health
  • and more…

You can customize almost anything within each category. That list may look like a lot and seem overwhelming, but it is very easy and quick to input the information by simply tapping the relevant items. It only takes me a few minutes each time I “check my mood.” You can also set up reminders for yourself throughout the day. 

There are a number of benefits to using a mood tracking app consistently to monitor your mood cycles. 

  • Bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses are diagnosed based on symptoms and the more information you can provide to your doctor the more accurately he or she can be in your diagnosis and treatment. 
  • You are able to learn to identify what the symptoms are that indicate you are either entering or in a manic or depressive state. 
  • You can identify triggers that may cause mood cycles. 
  • You can see more clearly how effective your medications are and track any side-effects you might be having–both the frequency and severity. 
  • You can also identify how things like sleep, nutrition and menstrual cycle affect your mood cycles.

Using a mood tracking app you are able to understand your bipolar disorder better–learning to recognize what your manic and depressive episodes are saying. You are also able to provide a gold mine of information to your doctor and therapist so you can proactively seek more effective treatment.

What Do You Choose?

With bipolar disorder you have a choice. You can choose to be reactive and allow yourself to be “lived” by your disorder and face the consequences of becoming more unbalanced, or you can choose to be proactive and use tools like a mood tracking app to “monitor” your mood balance, helping you live a healthier, more balanced, more productive life with your bipolar.

It is possible to live well with bipolar disorder. There is hope and there is help!

If you are a mom with bipolar disorder and you want to learn to live well with it, join our free Facebook group Bipolar Moms Learning to Live Well.

Mental Health vs. Mental Illness

mental health vs. mental illness

Over the past few years there has been an increase in the public discussion of mental health due to the increasing stressors in the world. This is such a positive shift towards awareness of mental health needs and challenges. One important aspect of this conversation is the distinction between mental health vs. mental illness. These terms are not interchangeable, and understanding the definitions of both and their relationship is important for anyone seeking treatment.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) definition of mental health: “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices.”

The CDC definition of mental illness: ‘“conditions that affect a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, or behavior.” These can include but aren’t limited to depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.’

Another way to put it is:

Mental health is to mental illness

what physical health is to physical illness.

Physical Illness

There are different ways that our bodies can become physically ill, some examples are:

  • You can contract a virus or disease that is temporary and can be healed over time, sometimes requiring outside intervention–like contracting the flu or a sinus infection.
  • You can develop a disease that may have some genetic predisposition but was brought on by neglected health–like heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
  • You can experience physical trauma that causes damage–like a broken leg.
  • You can be born with or develop a disorder that causes the body to need external assistance–like type one diabetes.
Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

While some illnesses may be the result of negligence or poor personal care, most people acknowledge the value and importance of professional intervention in the care and treatment of these physical ailments. In general physical illness and disorder is not stigmatized and people will seek treatment for their illnesses or injuries.

Mental Illness

Unfortunately, the same is not always true for mental illnesses. Our society has made great progress towards acknowledgement and acceptance of mental illness, but there are still stigmas that cause people to resist diagnosis and treatment. The result is unnecessary suffering.

Mental illnesses, according to the CDC website, are among the most common health conditions in the United States.

  • More than 50% will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lifetime.
  • 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year.
  • 1 in 5 children, either currently or at some point during their life, have had a seriously debilitating mental illness.
  • 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.

Mental illness has a broad range of causes and diagnoses, just like physical illness. 

  • Some people can have a temporary illness brought on by environmental factors or as a companion with physical illness. 
  • Some may neglect their mental health and suffer a breakdown or the onset of chronic issues like anxiety or depression.
  • Others may experience severe trauma that causes emotional or mental damage resulting in mental illness.
  • Some people are born with a genetic predisposition to developing a mental illness.

Years ago I was struggling with accepting my diagnosis and need for treatment. My psychiatrist at the time asked me if I would feel the same if I had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I said no, of course not. Diabetes is a real, very serious disorder that if not treated could result in serious illness and even death. The doctor then told me that a diagnosis of bipolar disorder was no different. 

He said that bipolar disorder is a chemical imbalance in my brain that, if not treated, will continue to get worse and cause me to get more ill, and possibly even die. He told me that with proper treatment, however, I can live a healthy, balanced life, just like someone with diabetes who treats their disorder regularly.

This comparison shifted my thinking about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and helped me to focus on treatment and learning the tools necessary to live well with bipolar. To learn more about accepting your diagnosis see Bipolar Disorder: The Stages of Grief.

Over the years I have discovered that there are many tools that are necessary to properly treat my bipolar disorder. As I have learned each new piece it has helped me to live a healthier, more balanced and more productive life.

Medication and Supplementation

This one is the most obvious, but also one of the most difficult. One of the biggest reasons for this is that there is not an exact science to identify which medication or combination of medications will be right for each person. I used to say that my doctor was playing “guess and check” with my meds to try and find the right ones. 

For me, finding medications that worked never happened. I really wanted to get well, and I tried everything my doctors prescribed. But I struggled with terrible side-effects and was often not able to tolerate a therapeutic dose of the medication. 

Thankfully after over a decade of struggling and searching my doctor and I found a nonprofit that had developed a micronutrient treatment specifically for people with bipolar disorder. After my doctor reviewed the studies that had been done on the treatment he agreed to help me transition to the micronutrients, and they worked! 

A few months after I switched to the micronutrients I woke up one morning and felt like I was truly awake for the first time in over a decade. To learn more about my experience with medication and supplements see my post Bipolar Disorder: When Medication Doesn’t Work.

The struggle to find the right combination of medication and/or supplements can feel discouraging at times, but most people with bipolar disorder need something to help their brain function in a healthy way. Thankfully there are any number of options to help doctors in the process of discovering what each patient needs to get balanced. Additionally, there are a growing number of practitioners that are discovering the benefits of micronutrients in the treatment of bipolar disorder.

Counseling and Therapy

This is another tool that may seem obvious but many people, like me, resist going to counseling. For me, it was the result of stigmas, and a misunderstanding of what counseling was. Growing up I had heard a relative frequently say, “my therapist said this” or “my therapist said that” and I remember thinking “I will never let someone else tell me what to think.” Unfortunately, the result was that when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I said I was willing to take medication, but I refused to go to counseling. 

Over the years, however, I discovered that counseling is an essential tool to help someone with bipolar disorder learn how to live well. When you have bipolar disorder you frequently see the world through a distorted lens and can develop unhealthy thought and behavior patterns, unhealthy boundaries and may have unhealed trauma. All of these can continue to cause mood cycles, even after the medication or supplements are correct. To learn more about counseling see my post Bipolar Disorder: Counseling is Essential.

Mood Cycle Survival Guide

An especially valuable tool for proactively managing your bipolar disorder is a Mood Cycle Survival Guide. This guide helps you successfully navigate your mood swings, rather than reactively just suffering through them. 

In this plan you:

  • Identify your Response Team
  • Develop an Early Warning System
  • Determine your Power Priorities
  • Learn how to Reboot Your System

Using this guide will help you proactively care for your mood cycles to lessen their impact on you and your family and shorten the duration of the cycle. Get your free guide to create your own Mood Cycle Survival Guide here.

Self-care Routine

Developing a self-care routine that you do daily to keep your brain and body healthy and balanced is also essential. Some important tools in your self-care toolbox are:

  • Mindfulness Meditation
  • Yoga
  • Exercise

To learn more about self-care see my post Bipolar Disorder: Self-care.

You Have a Choice

Years ago, I had a friend whose father developed type 2 diabetes. His doctors gave him strict instructions about how he needed to care for himself in order to keep himself healthy. He was told he could live a long, healthy life if he was willing to follow the care instructions given to him by his doctor. Unfortunately, he didn’t listen. He liked the habits he had that were against the doctor's orders and he lost his legs, his eyesight, and ultimately his life.

Bipolar disorder is a treatable mental illness. It isn’t necessary to suffer indefinitely, being at the mercy of your mood swings and doing damage to your life and relationships. It is not easy, but it is absolutely possible to live a healthy, balanced, productive life if you are willing to do the work necessary to learn each of the tools. There is hope and there is help!

If you are a mom with bipolar disorder and you are looking for support in your journey to live well join our free Facebook group Bipolar Moms Learning to Live Well.

What Are Your Bipolar Emotions Saying?

One of my favorite animated children’s films is Inside Out by Disney. It makes you laugh, cry and is a genuinely wonderful movie. But more than that, it is extremely insightful and teaches some powerful lessons, even for adults.

One of the messages of the film is that emotions aren’t good, or bad, they just are. And not only that but they also have a purpose. Learning to understand the purpose of the emotions is a powerful thing. Instead of judging and shaming yourself negatively for experiencing certain feelings, you can learn to feel them without judgement. You can learn to understand what your emotions are trying to tell you, and then what action you should take based on what you are experiencing.

In the film Inside Out, the main character Joy, gives a breakdown of what each feeling’s purpose is: Fear is “good at keeping Riley safe,” Disgust “basically keeps Riley from being poisoned, physically and socially,” Anger “cares very deeply about things being fair,” Joy’s job is to keep Riley happy, and Joy doesn’t understand what Sadness is supposed to do, and keeps trying to prevent Sadness from having any influence on Riley.

As the film goes on it becomes apparent that Sadness has a very important role to play for Riley. When Joy finally understands Sadness’s purpose, she encourages Sadness to play her part. With the help of Sadness, Riley is able to get the help she needs to adjust to the changes and challenges she is facing in her life.

When the brain is functioning in a healthy balanced way, feelings are produced by experiences. For example, in the movie fear is caused by Riley encountering dangerous situations, disgust is caused by encountering unappealing food or social situations, and anger is brought on by perceived unfairness.

What If Your Emotions Are “Misfiring”?

What do you do when your emotions are misfiring because of mental illness or unhealed trauma? If emotions are not being triggered by normal outside stimuli, are they no longer valid or useful? Should you label your emotions as bad, or not listen to them when you are experiencing a mood cycle?

Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

Not necessarily.

One of the challenges I faced when I was first diagnosed was that I didn’t know how to trust my feelings anymore. For the years that I went undiagnosed I had listened to the feelings that I was having and tried to interpret them according to what I had been taught by others. 

When I felt the intense, euphoric exhilaration of mania I believed that all the irrational thoughts that were in my head were not only rational but inspired. I made sweeping changes because of those thoughts and feelings, and I told everyone. It all felt right and real.

When I crashed into depression, I believed all of the negative, self-destructive thoughts that were in my head because they matched the negative, self-destructive feelings I was having. I hid myself from the world and tried to numb my brain by binge-watching television and movies.

I develop irrational thought and behavior patterns based on this cycle and by the time I was diagnosed those patterns seemed normal to me. This continued for years after my diagnosis because even though I was trying to find the right combination of medications to balance my brain and working with a therapist nothing seemed to help and I just felt broken and hopeless.

How do you live a healthy life if you don’t know if you can trust your own mind and feelings? It can make you feel insecure and unsure of yourself. Or you may feel belligerent and angry and decide that you should be able to just live on the rollercoaster because that is the way you were made and everyone else will have to just deal with it (see my post Bipolar Disorder: The Rollercoaster).

One important tool to develop when you are trying to learn to live well with bipolar disorder is to learn how to recognize when feelings are produced a mood imbalance. You need to learn to identify the signs that you are manic or depressed and then understand that state of mind is trying to tell you. 

The feelings produced by a mood imbalance can serve a purpose. It is like they are speaking a different language and if you learn to interpret them correctly you can then understand how to respond in a way that is healthy, even if your brain isn’t healthy at the time.

How Do You Identify Signs of a Mood Cycle? 

In the beginning it may be difficult to distinguish between healthy emotional responses and unhealthy ones, because it all feels normal to you. For this reason it is critical to begin tracking your moods and symptoms. Tracking your mood and symptoms will begin to help you create a more accurate picture of what is happening in your mind and identify when you are experiencing a mood cycle, what the associated symptoms of your mood cycles are and even what may have triggered it.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this. You could use a journal, a spreadsheet, or an app. My favorite tool is the Bearable app. (I DO NOT receive any benefit or compensation from recommending Bearable, I recommend it because I love it!) 

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

I struggled with using a mood journal because it required me to think and often I couldn’t think clearly enough to put what I was feeling into words. I also struggled with remembering to write things down frequently enough to create an accurate picture. Another issue I struggled with is how to convey what I had written to my doctor and therapist. Weeks and pages of journal entries can be difficult to condense and quantify, and that can make it challenging to see patterns and connections.

The Bearable App is fantastic because it is very user friendly. It allows you to keep track of your mood, different factors that could trigger cycles, medications, sleep, and other helpful information. The app is very easy to use, and you can set reminders for yourself to input your information each day. It is very customizable, and it gives you a way to view insights to see trends and connections.

When you discover the symptoms of your mood cycle you can learn to understand what your depression or mania is trying to tell you and you can then respond to it in a healthy way.

Learning How to Respond to a Mood Cycle

Some of the ways you might respond are:

  1. Discussing a medication or micronutrient change with your doctor or customer support. If the mood cycle is being caused by medication or micronutrients not doing their job, you may need to adjust or change them. Always work with your doctor if you are on medication or customer support if you are taking micronutrients. DO NOT make these changes on your own as it can be dangerous.
  2. Working with a therapist. A good therapist can help you learn to identify if your emotional responses to things are healthy or unhealthy and how to handle the unhealthy responses in a healthy, balanced way. Your therapist can also help you identify if your mood cycle is triggered by unhealed trauma, unhealthy thought or behavior habits, or unhealthy boundaries. 
  3. Learning to practice mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is a very effective tool to help you learn to separate yourself from your thoughts and feelings in a way to look at them more objectively and determine if those thoughts or feelings are healthy or unhealthy. Mindfulness is an important tool to learn if you want to learn how to live well with bipolar disorder.
  4. Developing a Mood Cycle Survival Guide. Your guide will help you learn how to successfully manage your bipolar mood swings, lessening the impact on you and your family and shortening the duration of the cycle.

Just like Joy learned that Sadness served an important purpose in Riley’s mind, you can learn to understand what your mania and depression are telling you and learn to respond in a healthy way, even if your mind is unhealthy at the time. Taking responsibility for your mood cycles, instead of giving into them or fighting them will help you progress on your journey to live well with bipolar disorder.

If you are a mother with bipolar and you are looking for support in your effort to live well with it, please join our free Facebook group Bipolar Moms Learning to Live Well.

Bipolar Disorder: The Recovery Cycle

Once when I was struggling with a depressive episode I went to a counseling appointment and told my counselor how discouraged I was. I felt so frustrated that I was depressed, it felt like failure to me. It seemed like I had climbed a mountain, learning how to live well, and now I was all the way back down at the bottom. I was frustrated and angry because in my mind I thought I had to start all over again.

My counselor responded to me with one of the most profound insights that I had been given into the treatment of my disorder. She said that treating bipolar disorder follows the same pattern as the addiction recovery cycle. She showed me a diagram of the addiction recovery cycle and explained that becoming depressed isn't failure, it is just a shift in where I was in the cycle. 

It is important to understand that these stages do not necessarily always occur in this order, and sometimes you can be in more than one stage at a time, and even regress to a previous stage. But understanding the stages and the basic progression is important to learning how to view your bipolar disorder in a healthy way. 

Understanding the stages of the recovery cycle will help you better understand your disorder and have a healthier outlook on your personal responsibility for selfcare. Learning how to apply the recovery cycle to yourself will help you to stop feeling like you have failed when you have manic or depressive episodes and choose to accept more responsibility for yourself and your disorder.

Stages in the Recovery Cycle

Precontemplation

In this stage you don’t recognize or acknowledge that you have a problem. This can occur before diagnosis, but often continues after diagnosis, too. Prior to my diagnosis I had a feeling for a few years that there was something wrong, but I didn’t really know what it was. I spent a lot of time feeling like my mood swings were my fault, a lack of self-discipline. 

After diagnosis there were many times when I went through periods where I questioned my diagnosis. Often at the beginning of a manic phase I would start to feel happy and productive and I would think things like, “maybe it really was all in my head, I don’t have bipolar disorder and I don’t need medication. I’m fine.”

In this stage you may also feel angry that you struggle with bipolar disorder and feel like you shouldn’t have to work so hard to feel well, so you aren’t going to try at all. You may feel hopeless, like there is nothing you can do about it anyway, so why try. You might feel like you should be able to take care of things on your own, you don’t need anyone’s help, you can take care of yourself. Or you may like the feeling of mania, and not want to lose that exhilaration, rush, creativity, etc. that you get when you are manic.

Contemplation

In this stage you recognize and acknowledge that you have a disorder that needs treatment. It is just the beginning of the process, though, you know you need assistance but may not be fully committed to the journey yet. This could last for a while because it can feel scary to seek a diagnosis or to admit that you need help. There is also fear that there may not be any relief for you. Because of negative stigmas associated with bipolar disorder, it takes a lot of courage to reach out for support.

Preparation

In this stage you are committed to changing and you are ready to get help. This looks like making an appointment with a doctor or a mental health counselor, or reading a book on mindfulness meditation. Each time you recognize the need for a new tool or step you enter this stage.

Action

This stage is when you take action, when you apply what you learned in the preparation stage. This is when you start to see and experience change. This stage can be challenging when you first enter it, because you are trying something new. It is really important to have support from others who will encourage you and cheer you on as you choose each day to keep trying.

Maintenance

You enter this stage when you have established habits and patterns that help you live a healthy, balanced, and productive life. One of the challenges I experienced in this stage the first few times I entered it was anticipating the next manic or depressive episode. I was so used to the cycle that steady consistency sometimes caused me to feel anxious. 

This is one of the reasons that it was so helpful to me to learn about this recovery cycle. I learned to stop dreading potential interruptions, and instead viewed it as an opportunity to learn and grow. There is no cure for bipolar disorder, but with consistent, persistent effort you can get to a point where you go long periods of time, sometimes years, without any serious episodes of mania or depression. 

Relapse

This is just what it sounds like. It is a recurrence of the mania or depression that throws off the new routine. Your response to this will determine where you land in the recovery cycle. The more you learn about your disorder, the more you recognize that it is a disorder and not moral or personal failing that causes you to relapse, the sooner you can work your way through the stages of recovery back to maintenance. 

I have also found that the more times I make it to the maintenance stage the more faith I have in myself that I can get there again. I know the way back, and so I can pick myself up, dust myself off and keep moving forward. I never enter precontemplation anymore.

Personal Responsibility

Understanding the recovery cycle has taught me that I am responsible for myself and for treating my bipolar disorder. I acknowledge that I have bipolar disorder, and I accept that I will have it for the rest of my life. If I do not acknowledge and accept that, I risk hurting myself and those I love the most–my husband and children. 

Understanding this recovery cycle has helped me to view my disorder in a healthy way. Relapse is not failure, it is just a shift of where I am in the cycle. This understanding has been a significant step on my journey to living a healthy, balanced and productive life. 

The Path to Wellness is Not Linear

The analogy that I used earlier of climbing a mountain to represent my path to wellness is really not accurate. In fact, that analogy is counterproductive at best, and damaging at worst. The idea of climbing a mountain is a linear path, which means that if you get manic or depressed while you are working to learn to live well, you get knocked back down to the bottom. It reminds me of the game Chutes and Ladders where if you are unlucky enough to land on the wrong square you slide backwards on the board, sometimes to the very beginning. 

One of the greatest benefits of discovering the recovery cycle is understanding the nature of bipolar disorder better–in a more realistic and productive way. There is no cure for bipolar disorder, just like there is no cure for type 1 diabetes. It is a medical disorder in the body that you can learn to manage so that it minimizes the impact on your life. But it will never go away completely. The goal is to learn to proactively manage your disorder within the Preparation-Action-Maintenance-Relapse stages of the cycle. 

As you learn and practice using the resources and tools necessary to live a healthy, balanced, productive life, your transitions through the stages will be easier and the skills you develop will improve. As you implement the tools and gain experience with those skills you will gain confidence in yourself and your ability to recover when you experience a manic or depressive episode. You can also learn to spend greater periods of time in the maintenance stage of the cycle. 

If you are ready to begin your journey to mental and emotional wellness, I invite you to sign up for my free guide to creating a personal Mental Health Emergency Response Plan. This is a fantastic resource to help you manage your relapses in a way that will minimize the impact on you and those you love. It will also help you develop a plan to move out of relapse and back into wellness. There is hope and there is help. I hope you will join me on this journey to living well with bipolar disorder. 

Bipolar Disorder: Counseling is Essential

When I was first diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I immediately knew that I did not want to go to counseling. I had developed an aversion to counseling in my youth because the only thing I knew about it, other than portrayals in the media, was that I remember my grandmother frequently saying, “my therapist said this” or “my therapist said that.” I remember thinking that I didn’t ever want to be dependent on someone else to know what to think or how to act. My independent and immature mind decided that counseling was not for me.

For the first few years I would see my psychiatrist regularly for medication evaluation and changes, and then I would buy self-help books, sure that it was just a matter of learning how to exercise more self-control and self-discipline. But no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t making any progress. I had a fundamental misunderstanding about what counseling was and why it was an important, even essential piece to becoming mentally well.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

It Really Is All In Your Head

When you struggle with Bipolar Disorder it distorts the way you see and experience the world. Emotions and thoughts are meant to help us know how to interact with the world. But, when the chemicals that cause emotion are out of balance and “misfiring” you can end up with a very distorted view of your life and your experiences. 

You won’t even realize it because that is just how your brain works and it feels normal to you. But over time the instability and unpredictability of the mood cycles, and the external damage you do, especially to relationships, begins to provide mounting evidence that something is actually wrong. It really is all in your head, and you need someone professionally trained to help you to sort out the behavior and thought patterns that are contributing to your mental disorder.

The first, most important step on the path to taking charge of your brain is getting the chemicals in balance. I wrote about my experience with this in the post Bipolar Disorder: When Medication Doesn’t Work. Once you have found a way to get your brain chemistry balanced, though, you still have work to do. 

Someone to Help You Learn to See

I described it to someone once like this: Imagine a person who has been colorblind her entire life finds a treatment that miraculously allows her to see color. Just because she can see blue, pink, orange, etc., doesn’t mean that she automatically knows what those colors are. She needs someone to help teach her brain how to understand the world she is now able to see. 

Photo by Designecologist from Pexels

The second essential step on your journey to mental wellness is to work with a mental health therapist or counselor. This person has been trained to help you work through your thought processes and habits to identify unhealthy thought and behavior patterns that need to be changed, healed, or eliminated in order to help you interact with life in a healthy way.

For Example…

One example from my personal experience illustrates the benefits of counseling in identifying unhealthy thought patterns. When I was growing up I would frequently get depressed, and each time I did I would beat myself up for every little thing I did that I thought I’d done wrong because I believed that those actions were causing my depression. It created a habit in my mind that over the years contributed to increasing the severity of my depression. 

Even after I got my brain chemistry balanced, if I found myself getting down, my brain would go into autopilot, identifying all the things I had done wrong recently, which would increase my depression in a downward spiral. Working with a counselor I was able to identify this unhealthy thought pattern and learn how to stop it so that I didn’t experience these self-induced depressive episodes.

Healing Trauma

Your counselor can also help you to identify and work through trauma that you may have experienced that is impacting your mental wellness. Trauma is defined as “a deeply disturbing or distressing experience.” Trauma impacts your mind, body and soul, and depending on the severity often requires profession intervention to heal from it. 

Just as a severely broken bone requires medical intervention, trauma usually requires someone professionally trained to help you identify and heal the damage. Trauma can be severe, but there are also times when seemingly innocuous experiences can be traumatic because of the way we experience them, which is especially applicable to a person who has lived with Bipolar Disorder. 

Working on Boundaries

Another area I have learned is challenging for those of us who have experienced life through the lens of mental illness is setting and respecting boundaries. This is an important area to work through with a counselor because he or she can help you first to learn what healthy boundaries are and why they are essential to living a healthy, happy life. You will also work to discover why you may struggle with implementing and respecting boundaries. Finally, your counselor will provide support and feedback to you while you make the necessary changes to integrate healthy boundaries into your life. 

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Be Patient with the Process

These are just a few of the many ways counselors are essential guides on the journey to mental wellness. One of the things that I have learned is that this is a process that takes as long as it takes, don’t be impatient with it. Sorting out the way your brain works can be challenging, but you will identify therapy goals with your counselor so that you can measure progress and have a focus for your therapy. 

One of the biggest problems for me once I started going to therapy was that for many years I would only seek counselling when I was in crisis, and never in an effort to work through the brain and behavior patterns and habits I had developed while struggling with a brain that was misbehaving. This was such a mistake and caused tremendous discouragement and frustration for me. When I finally realized how critical it was for me to seek counseling not just for the crises in my life, but to prevent them, I finally saw real, lasting, meaningful change in my mind and my life.

Mental Health Checkups

I will likely never stop going to counseling all together. Just like a diabetic has checkups with their doctor to make sure everything is going well, it is important to have “mental health checkups” regularly with your therapist to make sure you are still moving forward on your journey to optimal mental wellness. 

It takes a lot of emotional energy to establish yourself with a therapist you feel comfortable with and the more they get to know you the better they can help you. So once you find a counselor or therapist who is effective and you trust–even when you have reached your therapy goals–it is important to check in once every 3, 6 or 12 months (you decide with your therapist) for your “mental health checkup.”

I am so thankful for the counselors over the years who have helped me learn how to live well with Bipolar Disorder. Counseling is not a crutch, it is a necessary tool that will help you on your journey to learn how to live a healthy, balanced, and productive life with Bipolar Disorder.