Featured Image by Sean Stratton 

This article begins the idea of a Practice Based Cure for Bipolar Disorder. We look at what bipolar does to our mental, emotional, and physical stability. Four precise and powerful techniques are introduced for reclaiming stability in our lives. Video lessons for this are available at the bottom of the article.

A Practice Based Cure.

Some people who struggle with bipolar learn to manage it so well that it no longer has a negative effect on their lives. That’s an important fact. When I was first diagnosed, everywhere I looked I was told that bipolar was incurable. This wasn’t an empowering thing for me to believe. It’s true that there is no fast, easy, and complete cure. Each medication has downside and every therapy has limits, but does this really mean that bipolar has no cure?

Let’s do something really useful by challenging our idea of what a ‘cure for bipolar’ is. By definition a cure is that which relieves or heals the symptoms of a disease or condition. A complete cure for bipolar may not exist yet but partial cures do. Anything that relieves bipolar symptoms without harming us is a partial cure. Medication can definitely be helpful (and at times necessary) but the best partial cures don’t come in pill form. The most successful and sustainable partial cures are practices, based on techniques, that we can use daily in our lives.

A practice based cure is made up of sustainable techniques that relieve your bipolar symptoms. Reliable, practical, and effective techniques already exist for treating bipolar symptoms and more are being developed. The best techniques are customisable and can grow with you to become more useful over time. They can even become so effective in practice that bipolar symptoms are consistently very low or nonexistent. In this article we will introduce four techniques for you to begin practicing.
To sum up:

• A Practice Based Cure means practicing good techniques that alleviate bipolar symptoms.
• These techniques become increasingly more effective as we get better at practicing them.
• Eventually we can become so skilled at doing the techniques that we are successfully released from bipolar symptoms, and our bipolar becomes benign.

The importance of Stability.

Bipolar disorder attacks the stability of our life. It puts us in an ever changing state of flux where we have to play catch up with our perceptions, mood, and energy levels. Stability allows us to govern ourselves: it gives us autonomy.

When we lose our emotional, mental, and physical stability it alters how we perceive the world and changes what we are capable of doing. Mania presents a totally different world to us than depression, or euthymia. We act differently and make different choices when we are in an elevated or depressed state. The outcomes from these acts can change how other people see us, and also how we see ourselves later on when the manic or depressive episode has ended. When we are unstable we lose some control over our perceptions, decisions, and actions – which may have unintended destructive results. It can also occasionally work out well for us, but the point is that when we lose stability we lose the ability to govern our lives in the ways that we want to.

Forging a Practice Based Cure for Stability.

Having stability with bipolar means being in a balanced mood most (or hopefully all) of the time: no uncontrollable manias or endless depressions. Stability is something that we can reclaim and reinforce, even in the midst of a severe episode or mood swing. Stability is something that we can practice and get really good at and it will always help us. If you can master stability then most of the symptoms of bipolar (i.e. lengthy and intense manic and depressive episodes) will disappear. This is what a Practice Based Cure means: learning and practicing techniques that successfully alleviate bipolar.

There are countless techniques that people figure out on their own, or are taught, to manage bipolar. I will share some of my own techniques that work by letting me end a manic or depressive episode very quickly. Years ago if I was trapped in a bipolar episode it would take me months to return to a basically euthymic state. Now it only takes a couple of days. This means that I spend almost all my time in a state of stability and my bipolar no longer disrupts or hurts me. I want to share these techniques in the hope that they are useful to you, or at the very least that they provide some clues and ideas that help you to create your own practice based cure. Let’s move onto the first technique.

Mapping Bipolar Disorder.

Take a good look at the diagram above (click and enlarge). It is a map of the six episodic phases of bipolar (represented by five bordered shapes) and the transitions from one state to another. Elevated states like mania are at the top, and depressed states are at the bottom. Highly productive states are to the right side of the map, and unproductive states are on the left side. For example you can see that Hypomania is a highly productive state with an elevated mood, or that Mania is a totally unproductive state with a super-elevated mood. See how decreasing mood and energy leads to Subsyndromal Symptomatic Depression (SSD) and then, if the slip continues, into a Major Depressive Episode. This map is very useful but complicated. Let’s just focus on the Stable Zone centered around Euthymia (see below).

This is a good place to start. The Stable Zone is made up of three states: Hypomania, Euthymia, and Subsyndromal Symptomatic Depression (SSD). An easier way to think about it is: Slight Mania, Normal Mood, and Minor Depression. When we are in the Stable Zone we can feel energetic and excitable, or at other times sorrowful and uninspired, but we can still function well. The Stable Zone is where we have control of ourselves and can work towards what we want. It is where we get stuff done. The most important thing to practice first is how to stay in the Stable Zone. This is the foundation of my Practice Based Cure.

The Four Skills of the Stable Zone.

Living in the Stable Zone long-term boils down to four skills, please follow the links to find out more:

1. Knowing which state you are in now: Phase-Finder Quiz
2. Bailing out of mania.
3. Ramping up out of depression.
4. Steering by Kindness when you aren’t fully in control.

I hope this article is useful to you, thank you for reading it! I believe that these articles will help to educate people with bipolar and give them skills for a future of mental wellness, not mental illness. Please consider Supporting KindBipolar and joining our email list (we never send spam). Be kind to yourself and have a great day.