The road to recovery with a mental illness is hard. Not only is it long and tiring it can be at times very slow with multiple setbacks along the way. Part of the recovery journey that can be so frustrating is that with a chronic illness such as bipolar or a myriad of other mental illnesses is that you never truly recover, it is always a part of you and while managing it can get easier it never goes away. A person diagnosed with severe mental illness is never cured, so to say, like other illnesses. And this can be daunting and frustrating. I know I have felt illness exhaustion having struggled with this for nearly 25 years especially with my illness feeling more severe and less easy to manage in the last 5 years due to extreme amounts of stress.

I think the best thing to do, all that any of us can do, is try to stay positive and hopeful and not let ourselves get too overwhelmed. And this is hard to do, I know! Because life is hard, stress is hard to manage, and our illnesses on top of all this are greatly affected by these environmental factors making them even harder to manage. Sleep management can be hard too. Too much when depressed, too little when manic and how to keep the balance of regular good sleep when responsibilities in the morning especially like work and school make it hard to over or under sleep even when or bodies need it.

This chart above shows the ups and downs of different types of bipolar and includes depression as well. As you can see there is a cyclical pattern of up to down between mania and depression that people with bipolar suffer from. But the goal is stability, flat lining in the middle, as the chart shows, that is the spot, the “sweet spot” where functioning with bipolar becomes the easiest to manage. When the major ups and downs have subsided and and the mood swings are more even and less severe that is the goal for the most successful and productive point of living with a bipolar diagnosis long term.

So think of it like this- similar to the laws of gravity, what goes up must come down…meaning after a period of mania or an episode of mania usually comes a period of depression or an episode of depression. The goal is to even these out so the swings are not so high and low and evenness/stability can be achieved more easily. This can be achieved, I have found, most successfully with a three prong approach 1) medicine and supervision by a doctor 2) seeing a therapist regularly 3) some sort of group therapy, support group etc. Having supportive friends and family is very helpful too, but it is hard to be open with everyone about struggles like this, at least for me, because there is still such stigma surrounding mental illness. I think finding coping skills to manage and reduce stress and finding coping skills to help regulate sleep help a lot too.

I am still on the road to recovery and in some sense I always will be unfortunately, but I hope with time and hard work in therapy things will get easier and more manageable in multiple areas of my life. I know I can get there and you can too. It seems impossible now (long-term stability) but I am hopeful it can be achieved and that is a huge first step.

Good luck to all on their personal road to recovery-just keep going!