Bipolar Disorder and Reducing Stress

Stress often plays a major role in making Bipolar Disorder worse. Stressful events can induce manic or depressive episodes or just make you plain miserable. Research studies suggest that controlling stress is one of the most powerful tools you can use to take control of your life. Developing skills to minimize the impact of stressors in your life will help you manage your illness more effectively.

Begin by identifying the stressor(s) that are causing you to feel unstable. Once you have identifed the stressor(s) you will want to start thinking about a strategy for resolving them. For example, imagine that you’ve been through a manic episode and you’ve charged tons of money on your credit card. You can’t pay your bill on time and you are worried about mounting debt and you also feel very ashamed about your behavior. First of all, feeling ashamed about behavior that occured when your frontal lobes were offline is not useful. Give that up. It won’t help you or anyone else.

Now, you are ready to prioritize the issues creating the stress and define the action steps needed to alleviate them. I find making lists to be very helpful. If you are unable to identify the stressor or prioritize the issues and define action steps to resolve the problem, then you may have some kind of barrier that is keeping you from doing so. Gather more information about the stressor and problem that has resulted from it. Continue to gather information until you understand it thoroughly. It’s quite all right to ask friends and family for help in removing barriers and clarifying issues so that you are able to know what steps you need to take to fix the problem and reduce the stress.

Create an action plan. In this example you might call the credit card company and ask them to work with you on a payment plan that will minimize interest payments and help you pay off your card over time. Another action you might take it to make sure that your credit limit is lowered to an amount that will not create a debt problem for you if you happen to max out your card again.

The steps in this stress reduction plan include: identifying the problem, deciding on a strategy for solving the problem, listing all the steps needed to implement your strategic solution, taking the steps you’ve outlined, and then evaluating how well your solution worked.

Another key to being able to do this is to drop all guilt for your behavior and take steps to move your life forward in positive ways while reducing stress. Doing these things can help ensure that you don’t end up repeating behaviors that wreak havoc in your life.