Bipolar Survivor

I am a very spiritual person. That’s one of the things that helps me to stay stable with my bipolar disorder. But only one of the things. I know some people might disagree with me, but I think if I depended on only my spirituality for my stability, I might be worse off than I am right now.

How can I say that? Because I believe that God is an active God. I don’t think He just made man and then took a back seat to watch the show. I think He made us with our own self-will and minds, but that He is very interested in our well-being. In fact, the Bible says that “He is concerned with ALL that concerns us.” (emphasis mine).

That means, He is just as concerned about my bipolar disorder as I am. And He wants me to recover from it just as much as I do. But I just can’t “pray” myself better. There are things He expects me to do to get myself better, not to just depend on Him to do everything for me. I do believe He gave me intelligence to figure some things out for myself. Like the intelligence to realize that I need to take medication for my disorder, and need to take it every day in order to stay stable.

And there are other things I need to do as well, that have nothing to do with my spirituality – things that involve my common sense. For example, I found out the hard way that lack of sleep is a major trigger for me to a manic episode. If I don’t sleep, I go manic. It’s as simple as that. It has nothing to do with God or my spirituality. It’s a very worldly thing. A common sense thing. So I stick to a strict sleep schedule and I avoid manic episodes. Nuff said about that.

Another trigger I found out the hard way is stress. Now this does have something to do with my spirituality. I need to stay as stress-free as possible, as does my life in general. So the more peaceful I feel, the better I can accomplish that. So I pray alot, and I’m pretty peaceful, and so is my life. I avoid chaos and drama and stress, and I stay away from people who might bring those things into my life as well.

I also had to make other changes, like switching from a full-time job to going on Disability and working a part-time at-home job. I eat healthier and exercise. I stick to a basic routine, and I stay busy so I don’t have time to get depressed. These are practical things I do to stay stable.

But being spiritual does help my stability. Like I said, it keeps me peaceful, and it definitely helps with stress. It keeps me on an even keel as well. My thoughts are more positive, and I no longer worry about tomorrow nor dwell on the past and its mistakes. I learned about forgiveness and practice it. I definitely live only one day at a time. Things are much simpler that way.

It also helps me to stay balanced. I believe you need to stay well-balanced in order to stay stable with bipolar disorder – physically, mentally, emotionally, as well as spiritually. I don’t think you can have just one without having the others. They all have to be in order. But with all of them in order, you can be healthy and stable for a long time.

I cherish my spirituality as much as I cherish my sobriety, serenity, and sanity, and don’t believe I would have one without the others. I hope you have the same.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,

Michele

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under Opening Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.