Help Across the Board
Two things that I’ve found which help across the board of mental illnesses independent of medicine and therapy are having a daily routine and regular exercise. Another thing that seems to help is to force yourself to do the things you used to love or be interested in like hobbies and friends. This is especially true with depression and bipolar. Basically, what helps me the most when I’m depressed or on the verge of having a mood swing is to pull myself out of myself for a while and focus on something else. I know that sometimes this isn’t possible but when it is, one shouldn’t wallow in themselves, that just makes things worse. It’s my belief and experience that it’s important to be proactive with mental illness and to not just lay down and take it, mainly because once you’re down, it is so very very hard to get back up and the illness will just keep beating on you regardless of if you take it standing or laying down. The only difference is that when taking it standing up you have more control, in that sometimes one can dodge the blows and determine how they will react to the ones that actually connect, while when taking it laying down, one just gets repeatedly pummeled. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of getting beat up and taking it laying down, I want to stand again and that takes more than medicine or therapy, that takes a conscious decician and a lot of internal struggle, but it’s more than worth it in my book.
