Bipolar Disorder for Dummies by Candida Fink M. D. & Joe Kraynak

Author:Candida Fink, M. D. & Joe Kraynak [Candida Fink, M. D. & Kraynak, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Psychopathology, Bipolar Disorder
ISBN: 9781118338827
Amazon: 1118338820
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

188 Part IV: Helping Yourself

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Chapter 12

Identifying Your Triggers and

Mapping Your Moods

In This Chapter

ᮣ Vocalizing what really ticks you off

ᮣ Tracking your moodiness

ᮣ Sleeping your way to mental health

ᮣ Keeping a running record of quarrels

ᮣ Journaling online or off

Want to try an explosive experiment? Seal a pot of water good and tight, set it on the stove, and crank up the heat. In a matter of minutes, your pot will blow its lid. The same is true with people. Although each person has a different boiling point and can handle varying amounts of pressure, if you apply enough heat without providing some way for the pressure to escape, everyone will either explode or implode. Pressure always finds a release —

in the form of anger or violence, a flurry of activity, a depressive meltdown, or some other discharge of pent-up energy and angst.

Medication regulates your mind’s reaction to stressful events and raises your internal boiling point, but it can’t reduce or eliminate the heat — the external sources of stress. Tense situations, personal conflicts, unresolved family matters, and even major shifts in your daily routine all contribute stress that can eventually upset the sensitive balance of your moods.

Of course, you can’t eliminate all the stress in your life (nor would you probably want to), but you can identify the major stressors and mood triggers and remove or reduce the effects of enough of them to keep the pressure at a manageable level.

This chapter empowers you to rid your environment of the events, conflicts, and structure-busters that commonly aggravate moods. Here, you find out how to identify the main stressors and triggers in your life and begin to address them. We show you how to monitor your moods, energy levels, and sleep patterns. And we help you build an early warning system so you can react to depression and mania before they take control.

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190 Part IV: Helping Yourself

Pinpointing (and Dealing with)

Your Stressors and Triggers

What makes you tick? What ticks you off? What makes the back of your neck tingle? What inspires your deepest passion, enables you to forgo meals and sleep, and drives you to lose track of self and time?

If you’re like most people, you haven’t given such questions much thought.

And if you didn’t have bipolar disorder, you could live the rest of your life in blissful ignorance of the answers. But because you have bipolar disorder, you have a responsibility to yourself to become aware of your environment and the factors that influence your emotions and moods.

People, places, jobs, events, seasons, and even holidays can play a significant role in your mood stability. By identifying your mood triggers and the primary sources of stress in your life, you can begin to remove them, or at least diminish the toxic effects they have on your moods. This section initiates the identification process by describing some of the more common stressors and triggers.

Your job

Your job can be an obvious source of stress, especially if you’re overworked, underpaid, and have a knucklehead for a supervisor.

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