Sometimes things pile up when you have bipolar disorder. It just happens. One thing happens after another, and pretty soon you feel overwhelmed by everything. If you’re not careful, you can go into a bipolar episode.
If you try to do everything at once, you can go manic and go into a manic episode.
If you let everything get to you, you can go into a depressive episode.
So what’s the answer? You have to face everything realistically, without getting too overwhelmed.
What do I mean by that? I mean, it sounds kind of too pat of an answer, doesn’t it? Too easy. Yeah, even to me. So here’s what I’m talking about: you have to take a step back from all your problems and look at them individually, putting them in a priority order – that’s how you look at them realistically.
You can put them in order by easiest to hardest or hardest to easiest, it doesn’t matter, but you have to arrange them in some kind of order by rank. It just helps to look at them that way.
I put mine in easiest to hardest order – I like to see them that way, plus, I can usually knock off the easiest problem, well, the easiest! Then I start tackling the other problems in order by rank. Before you know it, I’m down to just the hardest problem, which takes a little more energy and creativity to solve.
There have been times, though, that I go right to the toughest problem first, figuring if I can knock that one out, the others are a piece of cake. Other people do it this way, too. It doesn’t matter which order you do them, just that you do them.
You need to do this so that things don’t keep piling up on you, and so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Like I said, if you don’t, you could very well go into a bipolar episode.
This is all just part of the self-care part of managing your bipolar disorder.
Wishing you peace and stability,
Remember God loves you and so do I,
Michele
