Five Top Tips on Dealing With Bi-Polar
I can feel it now surging through my body; a mania. It is building, and I need to intercept before it goes POP!
If like me, you have Bi-Polar and you know what this feels like, this blog may help you today. I am going to tell you how I try to control this.
Mania is often not spoken about when it comes to Bi-Polar.
We often only hear about the depression side but that is only one side of this type of mental health condition.
There is mania and there are mixed moods.
At the moment I know I am in a mild mania.
How do I know this?
- I cannot sleep
- I have a lot of ideas
- I keep missing words in my speech and in my writing – it is like my brain is going too quick for me
- I can physically feel my body itching like there is electricity in it.
- Things are not happening quick enough for me
- I am not that compassionate to people
- I want to spend money
- Talking really quickly
These are all my personal little warning lights.
Last year I ignored these and had one of the biggest breakdowns since leaving the police.
I have had Bi-Polar since I was young. I would say looking back now I definitely had it in my teens. However, I was not diagnosed until I was 29 in 2009 after being with the mental health team for about 4 years.
I always say
“What goes up must come down”
So, the quicker I can intercept this building mania the less likely hood I have of it plummeting into a depression.
So how am I going to deal with this to limit the damage?
1 – Sleep more
I will take more rest than usual and give myself time to chill. That could mean asleep on the sofa, or just chilling and taking more breaks.
Stimulus is one thing that can ramp up a mania in my experience.
When I say stimulus, I mean information that needs to be processed in an average day.
Stress levels, talking to people, watching TV, having to get dressed, reading text messages and emails, those sorts of things.
2 – Limit high-intensity training
This is all I want to do right now – hit the gym and have a massive CrossFit high-intensity workout.
However, this will be more stimulus, so I will take general exercise and do stretching, yoga or walking.
3 – Take my meds
Times like this it can be very tempting to just not take my meds and let this become a massive mania monster because a mania can be good fun, but the fall out is awful!
4 – Hide in a bubble.
I will stay at home mainly and keep myself in a little bubble to protect myself from everyone else’s energy.
I can be very sensitive to others and take things the wrong way when I am building so any negative energy just does not sit right with me.
5 – Cut out high sugar foods
This is only going to cause me to become stimulated physically inside and having these sorts of foods will only send me higher. I will up my water intake and lessen my caffeine.
So that’s me, wish me luck as I venture into this mania head on.
Laura
