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Learn how sleep, stress relief, trigger tracking, and daily routines can help reduce bipolar mood shifts.
When it comes to a bipolar diagnosis, treatment, and symptom management, we often hear references to the “journey” and “process.” Much like the old saying, “the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step,” recognizing and navigating life with bipolar can be considered a series of small steps — taken daily — toward the destination of mood stability.
Each person’s path toward wellness is unique, just as each person’s presentation of symptoms and responses to treatment varies. The good news is that there’s a lot of overlap, and you can find some practical strategies in common.
Here’s what experts and everyday people living with bipolar recommend as effective steps to create a calmer, more balanced life and better support stable moods.
1. Identify Your Personal Mood Triggers
The most common triggers for bipolar mood episodes are disrupted sleep and excess stress. By using a mood tracker or journaling regularly, you’ve got the power to begin to spot and address your own triggers for bipolar symptoms and mood swings.
As with all lifestyle changes, starting small and keeping it doable is important. There’s no need to monitor every aspect of your life all at once. Keep it simple by tracking your sleep quality and quantity, your general stress level, and any symptoms that crop up. In time, you can better tailor your tracking habits as you begin to recognize your own personal triggers — such as certain foods or substances, a lack of exercise, or increased social isolation.
When you can see the road bumps on the horizon, you’re better able to plot detours that allow you to keep moving forward. Armed with your own data on moods, symptoms, behaviors, sleep, medications, and more, you can better craft your path toward wellness.
2. Get Outside in Nature
When it’s caught early, a change of scenery can sometimes help to improve a darkening mood. If you’re able to spot early warning signs of an impending depressive episode, you can take small steps to pivot toward a more stable mindset. Before the mood swings sap all of your energy to move, take some time to get outside — ideally in nature — breathe some fresh air, and try to broaden your perspective beyond your front door.
Something as seemingly simple as walking to the mailbox and back or taking a brisk walk around the block can sometimes feel impossible when bipolar depression is holding you back. Making sure to step outside and be mindful of your surroundings and the world beyond your own mind can sometimes help shift your thinking in a more positive and hopeful direction.
3. Create a Calming Home Environment
When a manic episode is on the horizon, everything feels like too much, too fast. Energy levels soar, thoughts spiral out of control, and anything seems possible. For bpHope blogger Julie Whitehead, primary symptoms of mania include “spending sprees, pressured speech, akathisia (the need to move), and obsessions that pop out of nowhere.”
She takes many different approaches to managing her mania and hypomania, and one simple step is to enlist the senses and create a calming atmosphere in her home: “I put on calming music. I have a collection of nature music I use to calm my thoughts when in a stressed or manic state of mind,” she says. Consider your other senses as well, and diffuse your favorite scents, snuggle up with a weighted blanket, and dim the lights — whatever works for you!
4. Prioritize a Consistent Sleep Schedule
Sleep disturbances, oddly enough, can be both a primary symptom and a trigger for bipolar mood episodes. Understandably, creating a sustainable routine for falling asleep each night and waking up each morning goes a long way toward preventing future mood swings. BpHope columnist Carin Meyer ensures consistent sleep by regularly consulting with her psychiatrist and therapist, bolstering her medication routine, and taking a series of practical steps toward establishing and maintaining a steady sleep schedule.
When seasonal sunlight exposure threatens her sleep with too much or too little daylight, she writes, “My husband tacks a heavy quilt over our bedroom window, mimicking the darkness of a winter night. I set a strict sleeping schedule and commit to being indoors by the early evening. And to shield my eyes from any light, I wear my ultraviolet-blocking contact lenses and always have a baseball cap and sunglasses on hand.”
5. Practice Mindful Breathing for Stress Relief
Whether it’s the spiraling upward thoughts of hypomania or mania or the downward-dragging thoughts of bipolar depression, it’s easy to get caught up in your mind and forget to breathe. Deep breathing slows your body’s systems, shifting them away from “fight-flight-freeze” responses and back into “rest and digest” mode.
Regularly taking the time to slow down and take some deep breaths seems like a simple task, and, in some respects, it is. But remembering to do so in the midst of an anxiety attack can be particularly challenging. This is where you can enlist the power of habit.
By practicing deep breathing daily, you make it second nature to call on those calming breaths when your body begins to react to overwhelming thoughts. bpHope blogger Brittney Sibley finds deep breathing to be helpful “when stressed, tired, upset, angry, unfocused, or even irritated.” She recommends the following: “Try deeply inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth in sets of three. This is also a good tool because it requires nothing but reminding yourself to do so in times of sudden distress.”
6. Use Creative Outlets to Balance Energy
The varied energy levels that come with bipolar mood swings can be particularly tricky to navigate safely. It’s not uncommon for people to feel more creative when experiencing hypomania or mania. If you have a creative outlet you consistently enjoy (such as painting, writing, or playing an instrument), direct your focus on that particular art. The caveat is to resist the urge to jump from one creative activity to another or to spend excessive time or money on any one activity. Instead, focus your energy on creative pursuits that are also important to you when not manic (even if it’s harder to engage in them at those times).
And, when bipolar depression is on the horizon, create small goals that keep you engaged in that creative endeavor. This can allow you to experience a sense of purpose and achievement in a much more tangible way.
To further enhance the stress-relief factor, consider setting a concrete goal for your creative pursuit. For example, if you enjoy painting, consider aiming your energy at creating a piece for your home or as a present for a friend. Especially when the seasons change, or your mood darkens, having something beautiful, handmade, and peaceful to enjoy can help calm the stormiest of moods.
Building a Sustainable Wellness Routine
Living with bipolar is uniquely challenging, and there are many paths to wellness. Finding what works for you, personally, can feel both rewarding and discouraging, depending on the day. Surrounding yourself with a circle of support and dedicating yourself to persevering through trying times — along with a steady dose of self-compassion — can help ease the burden.
Take heart in knowing that you’re not alone. Although there are no quick fixes when it comes to mood episodes and managing bipolar disorder, there are both large and small steps you can take to improve your life in the moment and in the long run. Sometimes moving forward feels impossible, but if you stay the course and keep trying to find what works for you, things will get better.
UPDATED: Originally posted October 27, 2022
