8 Things You Can Do When Someone You Love Has Bipolar Disorder by Rick Quall

8 Things You Can Do  When Someone You Love Has Bipolar Disorder by Rick Quall

by Rick Qualls

Bipolar disease is difficult to treat. It is complicated and hard to diagnose. It may take three or more years to identify. It can be a financial nightmare and contributes to the wreckage of relationships.

Bipolar disease is difficult for caregivers, too. What can you do to help someone who has bipolar disease?

  1. Educate yourself about the illness.

My wife was critical in managing my disease. She went with me to psychiatric appoints. She noticed symptoms and side effects that I was not aware of. She was able to give input to my doctors which helped find the diagnosis.couple-hugging-2

Learn what you can about the disease. Meet the professionals treating your loved one. They can give you personal suggestions and teach you about the disease. Do internet research for information and suggestions. Make sure the sources are legitimate.

  1. Address your stress.

Caring for anyone with chronic disease is difficult, but bipolar’s cyclic nature is added stress. Encourage the person with bipolar to develop a support system that includes professionals, friends, and family. The broader their support system the better for both of you. You cannot be the sole source of their support.

  1. Develop your own support team.

Simplify your life. Don’t have unrealistic expectations of yourself. Take time to de-stress by spending time with friends who can help you decompress. Maintain a healthy lifestyle, especially including sleep, exercise, and eating.

Caregivers often feel isolated. Finding others in similar situations help.The support may be face to face, or it may be online, such as forums, and blogs. We can be helpful to others traveling their path toward healing. One Bible verse encourages comforting one another.

“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”  2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NLT)

  1. Take notes.

Jotting down different behaviors, when they occur, what preceded, and what followed. Make sure your loved one knows you are doing this or they will feel betrayed. Share what you learn. You are a team with your loved one. These notes help spot symptoms when they can be treated early.

  1. When your loved one is stable, together plan what to do during the next crisis.

What are the triggers for mania or depression? For example, if insufficient sleep is a trigger your plan may be to use sleep aid medications (see your doctor) short term until you are stable again.

Impulse spending might trigger a manic episode. Actions you can do: avoid credit cards, avoid internet banking, and shopping.

  1. Offer listening and personal acceptance.

Having someone who actively listens and cares help the person with bipolar feel more comfortable about their disease. Stay calm. But do not tolerate verbal or physical abuse. If that happens, walk away until there is a better time to discuss issues.

  1. Be your loved one’s advocate.

They may feel the whole world is against them. Assure them you are there and you have their back, and it will give them calmness and confidence.

  1. Affirm their strengths.

Your loved one may feel worthless. Remind them of their strengths and the tough situations they have overcome. This gives a sense of calmness and helps recovery.

Finally, if you are a person of faith use your spiritual resources. Cultivate a deeper prayer life. And discover Bible passages and promises to give you hope. One of my favorites is: “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Is. 40:31

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Bipolar & Creating Mini Habits For Positive Change

Bipolar & Creating Mini Habits For Positive Change
To change our default setting it must be done one mini habit at a time.

If you are like me, there have been numerous times you were highly motivated to make BIG changes in your mental health journey. One of those times for me was deciding that I needed to exercise at least three times a week. That was a big change to make since I wasn’t even exercising once a week. So I exercised three times that first week, but by the next week I had given it up. I just couldn’t do it. It was too big of a change.

I’ve done this over and over throughout the years since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1995. I would be highly motivated to make a healthy change regarding my sleep, eating, exercising, thinking, or working. It seemed that the motivation to make the change would last a short time before I would revert to my “default settings.” And each time I would feel like a bigger failure. I began to believe that my inability to stay motivated to make a healthy change had to be connected in some way to having bipolar disorder. After all, I could easily become “laser-beamed-focused” on something I wanted or liked to do, so I became convinced that my repeated failures had to have something to do with having bipolar.

It was as though any unhealthy “default settings” I had or any changes that I wasn’t allyousef-al-nasser-261164 that interested in – even though they would be good for me – could only be made little by little because I just didn’t have enough self-motivation to do them all at once. I figured I just didn’t have the self-discipline necessary, or somehow there was a flaw in my character. Those beliefs changed recently when someone introduced me to a book that they had found very helpful in making changes in their life. The title of the book is Mini Habits by Stephen Guise. I discovered that if I began making small changes for extended periods of time, the changes would stick.

In the book, Guise clarifies the difference between motivation and self-will. He says that motivation is short-lived, and to make real change you have to begin doing small things that can be done via pure self-will, and not depend on motivation to do it.

He started to change his health by doing one push-up daily. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But think about it. Had he decided to do 50 per day, that would have required ongoing motivation, and he would have given up when the motivation to do the 50 push-ups had passed. (Which would have been on the first day for me! lol) So his first mini habit was to do a single push-up. Doing just the one push-up, he could make himself do it via self-will power. What he found was that once he would do one push-up, he always did a few more, but no matter what, he always did at least one. He changed his brain’s default setting slowly, over time, and it stuck.

I’ve got to tell you that this little book on mini habits is changing my life!

I’ve stopped beating up on myself for not being able to make sweeping changes in my life. It makes total sense to me. There are small things I can choose to do whether I feel motivated to do them or not. For example, I know I need to drink more water, especially with the meds that I take. But, the thought of drinking eight full glasses of water overwhelms me, and I end up drinking nothing. So, I started with the mini habit of drinking one large full glass of water with my meds first thing in the morning, and I’ve found myself drinking more water throughout the day and enjoying it! I know, it’s not an earth-shattering change, but earth-shattering changes won’t work. Most of us do not have that kind of motivation with or without bipolar disorder.

It only makes sense that our brains have default settings. Those are the settings that our brains default to when we are stressed or things we can do with little to no thought. For example, my default setting for when to eat is when I’m sad, happy, tired, stressed, or when I’m awake! This eating default setting has been a well-worn patterned default in my brain for many years. Unfortunately, unlike being able to go into your computer default settings, make a change and click “save,” we cannot do that with our brains. Instead, if we want to make changes to our default settings, we must make them bit by bit, by starting a mini habit that we can do without one ounce of motivation on our part; a simple thing that can be done by sheer self-willpower.

Discovering these things have become the single greatest key to making change happen in my life.

Your inability to not make sweeping health changes in your life is not a character flaw. It’s called being human!

So, what mini habit can you do by sheer self-willpower that will bring about a simple, healthy change in your life?

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