Bipolar Treatment so you can get off the ride.
Are You Struggling With Bipolar Symptoms?
High Highs
You might love your high moods for the aliveness you feel, but hate them for the amount of damage they bring to your relationships and your finances. Regardless, you may spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to get back there.
Low Lows
Your lows are like a dark pit of nothingness you fall into. It’s beyond sadness and you may often have thoughts of suicide when you are at your lowest. The longer you’re down there, hopeless and shut off, the more impossible it seems that your mood will ever lift again.
Just Along for the Ride
You may feel like you are just a passenger in your own life. Your moods change and you may feel like you’re at the mercy of the mood roller coaster. Sometimes it’s a sharp turn, other times a slow climb. All you know is that it never feels like you’re the one driving.
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The Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential support 24/7. You do NOT have to be actively suicidal to reach out for help. If it’s 2am and you just need someone to sit with you while you cry or just listen and not say the wrong thing - give them a call. Just let them know you need someone to talk to.
Top 6 Myths of Bipolar Disorder
Most people with Bipolar come up with the same strategies to try and manage it. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most common tactics, (along with explanations for why these don’t work long-term).
If you’ve been relying on these rules for managing your Bipolar symptoms, you might have noticed that you get short-term relief. However, you may have also noticed that over the long-term your mood swings has only gotten worse. You may be feeling more unstable or having more severe consequences than you did a few years ago.
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While manic episodes are often enjoyable (to a point) for most people with Bipolar, they also wreak havoc on your life when given free run. The higher a manic episode goes, the more likely it is to have significant consequences in your relationships, finances, and work - leaving you to clean up the mess once you come back down, which has a tendency to worsen shame and harsh self-criticism during a depressive episode.
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With physical fatigue from intensive labor, rest is necessary and helpful. With depression, rest is actually counter-productive and more likely to keep you in a depression much longer. What our body needs during a depressive episode, is actually gentle activation in the form of baby steps to help our energy return.
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While this may work short-term to change your mood, self-medicating is not an exact science. As a result, most people who self-medicate to manage their moods often over-shoot and miss the mark - plunging themselves into deeper depression or sparking a manic rampage they hadn’t intended.
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Depressed thinking is usually overly negative and unhelpful. While these thoughts may seem convincing when you’re feeling down, they’re more often a reflection of your physical state than a reflection of reality. Believing them is more likely to keep you depressed for longer.
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Mania comes with lots of seemingly brilliant ideas, but these thoughts can often be risky and misleading. By following every manic thought, you’re more likely to underestimate realistic consequences and make risky decisions - again leaving you more of a mess to clean up once you come back down.
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This is mania logic in action. In reality, the alternative to the roller coaster is not “bland nothingness”, but a more gentle roller coaster. All humans, even those without bipolar disorder experience mood changes. Someone with Bipolar is riding the biggest scariest rollercoaster with steep climbs and cliff-like drops. Someone without Bipolar is riding the kiddie dragon coaster at the carnival - still going up and down, but not at a terrifying pace or unexpectedly.
How Bipolar Treatment Can Help
When It’s Time to Call In the Pros
Bipolar can affect major areas of your life - your relationships, work, finances, self-esteem, and even your physical health. Everyone has good moods and bad moods from time to time. Certain situations, such as having a child or finishing your degree can cause major changes in mood that are often completely normal and settle on their own. Mood changes aren’t necessarily a problem that warrants therapy, as long as it’s mild and isn’t affecting your life. If you notice your mood changes are bothering you or if they’re negatively affecting major areas of your life, it’s time to reach out. Read on to learn more about how our team can help.
“CBT Treatment for Bipolar has been proven to improve mood, reduce the severity of manic episodes, and improve overall life functioning, ”
Repair Your Relationships
After successfully completing bipolar treatment our clients report less conflict with family and friends because others aren’t riding the same mood roller coaster with you any longer. They often describe increased ability to “go with the flow” when things aren’t going as planned, leading to less blow ups and more enjoyable experiences with family and friends. Our clients also report relationships feel safer because the ore stable their mood feels, others are less likely to pull away. Family and friends often feel less like they need to walk on eggshells to avoid triggering you, which can bring down overall tension in relationships.
Reduce or Eliminate Suicidal Thoughts
Our clients often report a long history of suicidal thoughts during the depressive episodes they experience as part of Bipolar. Bipolar treatment can help to stabilize moods and decrease the intensity of mood swings - which decreases feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and shame that often lead to suicidal thoughts. Mood stabilizing medication in addition to therapy can help to stabilize the brain chemistry that causes Bipolar symptoms, including suicidal thoughts.
Get a Handle on Drug & Alcohol Use
Many of our clients admit to using drugs and alcohol to manage their mood swings - using drugs like Adderall and cocaine to bring their mood up, then drinking or smoking to bring them back down. Our client who successfully complete bipolar treatment report feeling more stable and less reliant on drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. This in turn, often cuts down on the other problems that often come with drugs and alcohol - like DUI’s, fights with your partner, and missing work.
Stabilize Work & Finances
Bipolar treatment can make it easier to keep a job when you’re no longer having “blow up’s” with bosses, coworkers, and customers - a common struggle with bipolar. Our clients who were previously missing work or simply walking away from jobs due to depressed moods report feeling more able to keep up their attendance.
Being able to maintain longer stretches of employment can not only allow you to advance, but can have a positive effect on your self-esteem too. Our clients who complete bipolar treatment also report less excessive spending that often comes with the compulsive shopping that’s common during manic episodes.
Ready to Get Started?
Get In Touch With Us
Perhaps one of the hardest steps you’ll have to make by yourself is the first step of reaching out to us. Send us your info and we’ll take it from there, supporting you each step of the way.
Complete a Free Consult
You might be nervous about making phone calls or not sure what to say - either way we’ll walk you through it step-by-step in about 15 minutes. We like to be sure it’s a good fit first.
Have Your First Session
We’ll set up your first session with your therapist to complete your initial assessment. This helps to ensure we have a solid game plan from the get-go so you can feel confident in the process.
References:
Chiang KJ, Tsai JC, Liu D, Lin CH, Chiu HL, Chou KR. Efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy in patients with bipolar disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. PLoS One. 2017 May 4;12(5):e0176849. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176849. PMID: 28472082; PMCID: PMC5417606.