How To Manage Bipolar Disorder - 6 Strategies By Dr. Tracey Marks

  

How to manage bipolar disorder that's what I'm talking about in this article today. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and on this blog I write about mental health education and self-improvement so in this episode I'm going to be talking about how to control your bipolar disorder.

 Now the main stay of treatment for bipolar disorder is medication, but I'm going to be talking about things you can do to help prevent or even manage symptoms in addition to taking medication. So this is not instead of. 

Number one: identify things that triggeran episode either an episode of depression or mania. Some examples of this would be things like work stress arguments with family members and a huge one is not getting enough sleep. And it's pretty common in the spring and the summer for the longer days to trigger a manic or hypomanic episode it because people will start sleeping less. So you want to write down these triggers and we'll use them in step six. 

Number two: keep a record of your moods in the form of a mood diary. And this doesn't have to be anything fancy you don't have to go buy a book you could even use the download. But this first one is the mood diary so you're going to use this diary to monitor your progress or notice when your moods are coming on, That's essentially all it is.

Number three establish a daily routine and this is important for anyone because we all need structure but people with bipolar disorder are particularly sensitive to changes in structure and routine. So the triggers that we listedin step 1 are some of the things that can destabilize or disrupt your routine.So here's what a routine should consist of a few basic things at least so you'd want to have a regular time that you wake up and a regular time that you go to bed. You also want to have a regular time frame that you eat your meals.And you should think of these points as anchor points throughout your day and then all your other activities would be filled in around those anchor points.

 Now I realize you're not going to always be able to control your work and your school schedule but if you don't have these anchor points, then you never even think about it and then you just have this kind of free-floating day that just kindof comes and goes how ever it goes and that's the kind of thing that can really lead to say sleep deprivation when you're in a manic episode or starting toget there. And the sleep deprivation is really what can trigger another or amanic or hypomanic episode. The opposite problem of an unstructured day is the tendency to sleep all day when you're depressed. So what do we do to help prevent that problem.

Number four have an activity plan that you implement when you start over sleeping or with drawing from people when you're in the depressed phase. And it's kind of like having a disaster management plan in place before the hurricane comes. So let's say your normal bed time routine is sleeping from11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. but when you're depressed you're going to bed around9:00 and waking up around 9:00 in the morning. And this will be the  forthe person who's got a flexible work schedule or may be you work from home so no one really knows when you're getting up. 

When this when you start doing this that's when you pull out your activity plan which would have things on it like walking the dog, taking a walk around the neighborhood, going to the library,vacuuming the house. These are just a few examples, but they're activities that force you to get your body moving even if you're just slogging through in your depressed state. Because any amount of activity and movement is an improvement and this is what we call behavioral activation therapy. It's a little more complicated than this but this is just one example of it. When you become manic,you'll start going to bed even later and waking up earlier.