Is it possible for people with underlying mental illness to live a very normal life just like every other individuals irrespective of their mental status?
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Is it possible for people with underlying mental illness to live a very normal life just like every other individuals irrespective of their mental status?
I take my medications, the prescribed dosage when I’m told to. I work with my doctors to find out exactly what works best with me, combined with all my other medications, and what makes life easier to deal with. It can be a tedious process but it’s worth it. Go to the recommended therapy, even if you only go a few times. You never know if it will work until you try. Sleep. Try and sleep a healthy amount, and try and break bad sleep habits. This helps a lot more than you’d think. Find out if there are any sleep issues such as insomnia or hypersomnia, and then talk to your doctor to figure out how best to deal with these.
Find people you trust. I can’t stress how important this is. People you trust are going to be your support system through everything, the good and the bad. They’re going to be the people who listen to you cry, or laugh, the ones who are there for you through the bad side effects, through the medications that don’t work, through the therapists you don’t get on with. These people are important. Avoid toxic friendships and relationships as much as possible. Make peace with your illness. Being ashamed of it and hating yourself for it will do no good. Making peace with it and learning how to live with it may be difficult but it helps. It’s an important step and one that any good psychiatrist should help you towards.
Don’t listen to the people who say that medication is bad and that natural is better. It’s not. Medication has been proved to be effective and safe, natural does not mean better and can put people in danger if their mental health issues are not treated. Take your medication.
To me, a large part of living a normal life with mental illness is accepting that life is always going to be weird and uncomfortable. Let’s just get that out there right away. It’s weird, but it is something that you can decide to be in control of.
I faithfully take my medication, have learned good coping skills, and see my therapist when things get rough, but there is always this…bubbling inside. It feels hot and tarry, churning and oozing. It bubbles because all the medication does is dull the bumps; makes a moraine rather than a mountain out of molehill. Sometimes some hapless thought or feeling—things that once use to be erratic, viciously fanged beasts—falls into its putrid, sticky depths to be smothered and trapped forever, never fully expressed or carried to fruition. The suppression is a bitter consolation prize, to be emotionally castrated when I felt so keenly before. I am writing this now while depressed and struggling, and while I am certainly not enjoying it and never have before, the loss of feeling sometimes makes me feel that I have lost some of my humanity for the sake of fitting in. That’s part of why bipolar is so hard to medicate. But it does have its benefits, some of which confer a sense of normalcy. With treatment and accepting that normal will never be something that I can actually possess, I would say that I am fine. I am more productive. I have a stable job. How in the ever living hell I wound up with excellent credit while bipolar is a mystery to me, but it happened and I am working on buying a house. I do have few, but worthwhile friendships. I have learned about my strengths and limitations, which makes me an honest and thoughtful friend and partner, a good employee. I find joy in excercise and burning out my frustrations. I am self aware and have worked on cultivating an identity in which bipolar is just a facet.