When stress piles up, these strategies can help balance your mood and keep bipolar symptoms from gaining ground.
Stress significantly impacts mood stability, often triggering mood episodes and complicating recovery. It disrupts how your body regulates stress hormones, intensifying symptoms, disrupting sleep, and making treatment more challenging.
Managing moods is critical for those with bipolar disorder, but stress can make sticking to a management plan challenging. Everyday stressors like work demands or relationship issues can gradually weaken your resilience. Major events, such as losing a loved one or undergoing significant life changes, can lead to more severe mood fluctuations.
These stressors can throw off your sleep, eating habits, and daily routines, making it difficult to maintain your management strategy. Recognizing these challenges is the first step toward adapting and maintaining stability, even in stressful times.
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Here are six practical coping tools you can choose from when grappling with stress and working to prevent an impending manic or depressive episode.
1. Protect Your Sleep Routine
Sleep is one of the most powerful tools for stabilizing mood, though it can also be one of the hardest things to manage when you live with bipolar. Experts recommend aiming for seven to nine hours each night, but what matters most is keeping a steady routine. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day — workdays, weekends, and even vacations.
Your body will start to recognize the rhythm and respond. Small habits, like winding down with a bath or light reading and turning off electronics 30 minutes before bed, can make it easier for your brain to shift into rest mode.
2. Get Moving, Preferably Outside
Any activity in nature helps your mind and creates endorphins that fight irritability, stress, and depression. Getting out of the house and into the outdoors will increase your oxygen intake, and at the same time, give you a fresh perspective. If you absolutely need an excuse to get outside, ask to take your neighbor’s dog for a walk or enlist an accountability buddy with similar health goals. A simple walk around the block can do wonders to boost your mood, too, especially if you don’t bring your phone along and just pay attention to all the sights and sounds around you instead. And if you make your walk a daily habit, even better.
3. Practice Meditation and Mindfulness
Besides our internal struggles, the world around us is teeming with challenges, which can easily add to your stress.
As difficult as it may be, try not to become overly consumed by these external issues. Rather than worrying about future stressors, focus on the present and observe your current experience without judgment. This practice is known as mindfulness.
Ground your awareness in the present and simply notice your thoughts, even if they’re negative. Rather than following the thought, just recognize that you’re thinking. Acknowledge to yourself, “Right now, I am thinking.” And if you need a bit of assistance, try using a meditation app, like Insight Timer or Headspace, to help guide you.
With increased awareness of the present, you may find that negativity diminishes, allowing you to create a moment of peace. And this moment of peace can lead to many more.
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4. Limit Your Exposure to the News
These days, it is very easy to get sucked into the constant swirling of news updates and press conferences. However, let’s face it: Most of these flashing alerts can be negative and drag us down. And that can be detrimental to your emotional state.
So unplug from the 24/7 news channels, which mostly rehash the same negative stories — it’s easier than you may think. Also, consider taking a break from all social media, whether for three hours, one day, one week, or indefinitely. Use your free time and extra focus to pay attention to the positive experiences, people, hobbies, and small moments in your life. Soon, you’ll see your mindset change — for the better — and feel less stressed in the process.
5. Develop a Routine
Establishing a consistent daily routine is crucial for those with bipolar disorder, as it helps regulate mood swings and manage stress. This routine should cover critical aspects of daily life, such as wake-up times, meal times, work hours, and bedtime. Consistency provides a sense of control and helps reinforce a stable circadian rhythm, which is vital for emotional regulation and sleep quality.
Furthermore, by structuring your day, you reduce the number of decisions you need to make, which can help conserve mental energy and reduce stress.
6. Try the 4-7-8 Breathing Method
Deep breathing exercises are powerful for immediate stress relief. This technique works by activating the body’s relaxation response, helping lower heart rate and blood pressure, often elevated during stress. The 4-7-8 breathing technique, in particular, is effective because it focuses the mind and extends the breath, enhancing oxygen exchange.
- Fully exhale through your mouth with a whooshing sound.
- Inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
- Hold your breath for seven counts.
- Exhale with a whoosh to a count of eight.
- Repeat the cycle three more times, for a total of four breaths.
Andrew Weil, MD, a leader in integrative medicine, demonstrates this method in a video.
By practicing deep breathing regularly, you can train your body to respond more calmly in stressful situations, which can help prevent rapid mood shifts and maintain stability in daily challenges.
Reach Out for Help When Stressed
Sometimes, coping mechanisms we try on our own work … but not enough. You may need extra help from an outside source, such as one of the following:
- Seek Out a Therapist or Psychiatrist: It’s important for the management of our wellness and stability that we have a comfortable and trust-based relationship with both our psychiatrist and therapist. If those connections are not solid, it is less likely we can be as honest and forthcoming as needed, or we may even hesitate to reach out in times of an emergency. Mental health professionals need to be responsive to our concerns and act as an ally in our recovery. If newly diagnosed, speak to your primary care physician about referring you to a psychiatrist who has specific knowledge about bipolar disorder.
- Join a Support Group: When living with a bipolar diagnosis, it can sometimes feel like nobody has any real idea what it’s like. And while everyone’s journey with bipolar is different and personal, sharing our life stories in a support group setting can connect us all. From that interaction, we don’t feel as alone, and we can gain valuable wellness tips to add to the toolbox. If you don’t want to attend a group in person, there are many online options, too, with various focuses. Don’t be afraid to try several until you find the right fit for you. Within the bphope.com support network, there’s a supportive community, along with information for people with bipolar, as well as for loved ones and parents.
- Explore Online Resources: If you found the right peer group, but you’re still looking for more specific information or support, check out these national websites: the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI); Bipolar Depression Support Alliance (DBSA); International Society of Bipolar Disorder (ISBD); Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF); and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). You can access resources for local support groups, current research, and mental health education.
UPDATED: Originally posted August 22, 2017
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