Sometimes “crying out” the pain of an emotional situation works. I just did it with a friend. She, lovingly, sat across from me as I cried about a situation that I find hard. And it worked. I did, actually, feel better after crying out my emotions. But once, a therapist told me to “cry out” my bipolar depression. Instead of fighting the depression and pushing away the feelings, he told me my bipolar depression should be cried out.

In my history with bipolar disorder I have experienced many sleep problems. Typically, I can’t get to sleep at night and require sleep medication nightly to induce sleep. And while, historically, I have slept through the night after this medication, more recently, I’ve had trouble with mid-night awakenings. And I consider bipolar wellness to be highly correlated with sleep duration and quality. So what is the deal with sleep and bipolar anyway?

Dating with bipolar disorder can be tricky for so many reasons. You’ve got a bipolar routine to maintain, emotions to keep in check and a massive elephant in the room that you will have to deal with at some point. This evening I will be having a first date. And I have a fear of dating with bipolar disorder.

My father was a drunk. My father was a fall-down, blackout, greet-people-at-the-door-in-your-underwear kind of drunk. He was not a man who wanted kids. He was a man that had little to do with me. And he was a man with bipolar disorder.

On Monday, I was told that my kitty – one of my best friends – has less than a month to live thanks to a tumor in his belly. He went from a clean bill of health in September to now, soon-to-be euthanized, in November. I’m gutted; I’m grieving; and because I have bipolar disorder, I have extra problems to worry about.

For many people with bipolar disorder, there comes a point where they look at their lives and realize: their lives are so messed up. Often employment, family, friends, hobbies, financial welfare and many other things have been harmed by an uncontrolled mental illness. I often hear from people in times like these and they want to throw up their hands and just give up. I can understand this. Sometimes a mess seems so big that we will never clean it up. But I’m here to tell you that no matter how messy your life may be, you can make it better.

I have this thing, and I don’t know if it’s the bipolar, specifically, but I get wired and tired at the same time and it sure feels bipolar-y to me.

Stress and bipolar disorder don’t mix. In fact, stress and illness, in general, don’t mix. It pretty much doesn’t matter why you’re sick, it’s well known that your illness can get worse when you’re put under stress (Mental Illness, Stress, ... and Relapse). What does this mean for bipolar? Well, when I’m stressed I have experienced greater symptoms of hypomania and/or greater symptoms of depression depending on the type of stress.

If there’s one thing that affects my bipolar moods above all else it is sleep. I consider getting the right amount of sleep to be critical in maintaining or achieving wellness. It’s also critical that this sleep happen at exactly the same time every night. In short, being a control freak about sleep is a good thing.

A while back, I wrote a post on making unimportant decisions when you have bipolar disorder. I was talking about things like deciding on what socks to wear or what to eat for dinner because even those types of decisions can baffle people with bipolar and cause great anxiety. But what about when you have to make the big decisions? How can you make life choices when you have bipolar disorder?