In 24 years of managing bipolar disorder 1 with psychosis, anxiety, disordered eating, and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), I’ve learned strategies to live well while living with them. Symptoms still rise from time to time but never with the same ferocity or duration they did in the early days. For those of you reading this who are struggling or who might be at the beginning of your journey or who are searching for solutions—it can get better. Not quickly, not easily. I won’t lie. I went through stages. It took me five years to even accept I was dealing with psychiatric illnesses. It took another two and half years to find the right dosage, type, and combination of medication. It took more time to discover tools that helped me stay well. Medication wasn’t enough.
The Power of Experience
There is something to be said about experience. Ironically, the longer I dealt with symptoms, the better I got at recognizing the early signs of them, and the more understanding I developed as to how to manage them. At a certain point, that experience worked in my favor, and my episodes of anxiety, mania, depression, and psychosis became less frequent and less severe, and I started living my life instead of managing my illnesses.
Our wellness tools can be as unique as our fingerprint. They are those actions we can take on our own that can ease our anxiety, stop us from falling further into that inky depression, or prevent an episode from occurring at all.
Be Proactive
My number one suggestion as to how to find wellness is to be proactive and participate fully in your recovery and treatment. This doesn’t mean blindly following everything that health professionals and caregivers tell you. It does mean engaging in decision-making and considering what you want. Use your agency.
Shift From Powerless to Empowered
It’s easy to feel like a victim once diagnosed with a chronic condition. What’s important is to take an active role in getting well. It’s also one of the most empowering. Proactive means not waiting for something to happen to you but, rather, anticipating what might happen and being prepared for it. It meant understanding my illnesses and their symptoms and then going further by seeking out what might help lessen the severity of them when they occurred.
Doing this helped rebuild my confidence and helped shift my identity from someone who was powerless to someone who had a chance. I didn’t always know what to do, but I could always find someone who might.
Where in your recovery journey can you be proactive or more proactive? Who can you ask or work with to participate more fully? Think of this as field research. How does it feel to approach your recovery this way? Experiment a bit. If you like the results, keep going. If you don’t, you can return to earlier strategies.
Whatever works for you is, well…whatever works for you. Do what helps you start living your life while learning to manage your illnesses.
© Victoria Maxwell