The primary treatment for bipolar disorder is medication but research has shown that stress increases your risk of having symptoms and depressive or manic/hypomanic episodes. Research also suggests that psychotherapy helps with those issues and by using a combination of medication and psychotherapy, you can cope better and reduce symptoms of bipolar.
If there are other psychological issues you can work toward changing them.
Psychotherapy tries to change your thinking and coping styles.
The way you react to and cope with stress is affected by your thinking style or how you perceive yourself and your world. For instance, if you have a perfectionist thinking style you will be more stressed by making mistakes than someone who doesn’t. By learning ways to be less perfectionist, you will reduce your stress levels and reduce your symptoms.
Another important influence on how you react and cope with stress is what is called your coping style. These are how you react to the things that trigger stress for you. So if you keep putting things off it will probably create more stress than if you had gone ahead and done those things. Many people procrastinate. By finding ways to recognise and change these types of patterns you will improve your life.
Treatment can involve many things and the ideas below don’t include all possibilities. To start, treatment might include:
- Reducing anxiety about telling others about your illness. This involves reducing the shame that many feel from being diagnosed.
- Learn all you can about Bipolar. The more you know the easier it is to understand your experiences and symptoms. This can make it easier for you to predict what’s going to happen and become more active in managing your symptoms. This will help you to feel more in control.
- Learn to recognise your early warning signs of depression, hypomania and mania. If you can learn to pick up on the changes that lead to an episode and have mastered the psychological approaches to reduce the symptoms then you may be able to stop the cycle from being too strong. Or you could get to your psychiatrist for variations to your medication.
- Learn to recognise triggers that lead to changes in your mood. If you can neutralise their effect then this can also prevent major mood changes.
- Good routines. Sleep and regular routines are very important for bipolar disorder. Changes to your sleep patterns are often a sign of worsening symptoms and a time to try and settle things. If you develop regular activity or routines the impact of this risk can be reduced.
- Plan your life by thinking about all the pros and cons before making important life decisions.
- More positive attitudes about the future will increase quality of life
Once these are covered we can also look at the longer term issues that are often associated with relapse:
- Encourage support from family and friends.
- Treat anxiety conditions. It is very common for sufferers of bipolar disorder to also have problems with anxiety. The anxiety symptoms were often present before the first episode of hypomania and mania. If you learn how to reduce anxiety, the severity of your Bipolar will also reduce. If you are anxious about things in your life it will increase your stress and make your Bipolar worse.
- Treat drug and alcohol problems.
- Change unhelpful thinking styles. A lot of our fears and anxieties come from how we think about ourselves. Many of these can be habits developed when we were young.
- Change unhelpful coping strategies. The way you react to stress is like a habit. You may know that it is not helpful but you do it anyway. Habits can be changed.
- Address the effects of childhood experiences, trauma and or maltreatment. No one has a perfect upbringing so we are all impacted by things that have occurred leaving unhelpful thinking and coping styles. This means that you may be more sensitive. You could also find yourself in relationships with people that trigger mood swings and episodes.
Treatment is tailored to each individual by finding out what is most important for you.