Between Extremes: Good and Bad Coping Mechanisms
There are many ways to cope with Bipolar, here are some of mine.
There are a million ways people cope with anything — grief, anger, frustration. Anything that can make them euphoric in the midst of discomfort. I have my own coping mechanisms and they aren’t all bad, neither are they good. I suppose this stems from depending on whichever episode I am having.
There’s not one way I cope through a manic or depressive episode. Some of the actions I take overlap with each other depending on what the mood is for that day.
TRIGGER WARNING: Talks about vices, suicide, mania, and depression.
1. Smoking (Vaping)
Yes, this is one of the bad habits I have subjected myself to. I would never recommend this to anyone. There comes a point sometimes when people would ask me about it or those who have quit are telling me they miss the feeling and I always tell them that I will not encourage them to do it at all or to not go back to the habit they have tried hard to quit. I am not proud of this one but it does take the edge off of me many times and thus remains a bad habit.
I won’t lie to myself and tell myself “I can quit whenever I want” because the truth is, I can’t yet. But because I can no longer finance it as much as I was able to, I’m slowly getting to the point of slowing it down. For that, I give myself grace and time in order to do that. It helps that I have people in my life who do not do it, but it was also people in my life that sort of urged me in this direction. I do not blame them, I have a mind of my own and I gave in to the temptation.
2. Going out on adventures nearby
I can’t say for certain whether this is good or bad. It’s good in a sense that I am moving my restless body and I am out here literally touching grass in the park. The solitude of people-watching refreshes my mind from all of the city noise that consumes my head 24/7. It helps slow down the thoughts running a hundred miles an hour.
When I am manic, I don’t even think twice, I just get dressed and go wherever I please and this puts a huge toll on my energy and my capacity to do the things I should have been doing. But in a depressive episode, this helps me breathe and hone my appreciation for nature and the little things and it gets me out of bed from rotting, which bring me to number three.
3. Bed-rotting
It’s been a term coined by my generation wherein we stay all day in our beds rotting the day away. As much as it sounds like a bad habit (and I will not lie, yes it is), sometimes it’s all I need to get away from all the hustle and bustle of my life, specifically in my academics where my brain is running all the time trying to attain, retain, and remember information and follow up with the exam dates and deadlines.
Simply laying on my bed with all my stuffies seems to slow things down for me even for a little while. Again, this is something I do when I need to breathe from living.
Unfortunately, it does come with repercussions. I tend to do my work at the last minute because I decided to rot, it wastes my day when I should’ve been ahead with my deadlines, and when I do it too much, it makes me feel horrible. I feel glued to my bed with no intentions of participating with the world that I am in. In Tagalog I often say ‘Nakakatamad mabuhay’ (I feel too lazy to live) and it’s not a great feeling especially being in a depressive episode. The rotting gets so bad to the point of crying because I can’t move, my mind won’t let me move even when I know I have to, I feel like a boulder unable to move from its post.
4. Impulsive Financial Decisions
Here’s how I distinguish a manic purchase from a depressive purchase:
Manic = Material things
Depressive = Food
After my last relationship ended, I went on a huge shopping spree, I treated my friends out, I bought stuff I didn’t even need, I was THINKING of buying a gaming laptop just because. My credit card definitely got used more than I told myself to. I went over my budget limit for spending and I was out here spending money on things left and right.
Then when I felt depressed, I ordered whatever food I wanted, went to expensive restaurants to “try it out”, which in hindsight, is not inherently a bad thing but I would overspend on food and therefore, start overeating. I go through my credit card bill and it’s taken up most of my spending limit just from the amount of food that I get for myself.
5. Physical Activity
Now I would say this is a good thing until my mania kicks in and I overexert myself. Currently, I have swimming as an extracurricular, I bought rollerskates even when I didn’t know how to rollerskate (I do now though), I take myself to places I can sprint and run and walk. But there would be times that my excitement of being outside and running around takes a toll on my body.
One time, I went alone to an interactive science museum on impulse and spent a whole day there and going everywhere I wanted, walked to places, commuted, and that same day, I crashed and burned. I took a 10 hour nap that no one could wake me up from and this caused everyone to panic. My roommate thought I had killed myself cus I had a good day and then suddenly went AWOL. I had my mother panic and contact and bother everyone I knew to check on me. Everyone was calling me NONSTOP for 5 hours straight all because I was so tired I couldn’t wake up.
The fact that people thought I had killed myself speaks volumes now that I know I’m Bipolar. To them, I was somehow a flight risk, and THAT didn’t feel great.
6. Maladaptive Daydreaming
This one occurs the most. It’s everyday and it’s exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. These are the times when I start talking to myself when I’m alone with my thoughts. I would have open dialogues with myself and pretend I was the people in my life, going back to conversations where I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say, imagining that I was the most important person in the world, imagining I had superpowers that could help the whole world, imagining I had a rare illness with no cure and I was being used for scientific research. All that jazz.
I suppose this is what makes the Bipolar-ness more obvious. Sometimes these situations start to feel real as my brain cannot distinguish it from reality and the emotions during more “realistic” situations come up and I work myself up and then suddenly I’m angry and irritable, or I get so depressed I start ugly-crying at something I have only imagined.
I was told that people with Bipolar was more prone to feeling things more intensely than others would. And just going back to the breakdowns I’ve had over a situation that didn’t exist proved that.
Having an overactive imagination, I wish felt as good as it sounded, but in reality, it’s not even the good things you always daydream about. It’s more about where you are now and making different decisions, saying different choices of words rather than the one you made and wanting a different outcome to cope with the situation you are in at the moment.
The Bipolar mind is a wild ride that I would not wish on anyone but wished they could come see what it’s like. Then maybe, there would be more sympathy.
I would say these are all I can muster up for now. I would be interested in knowing if you resonate with these and share with me your own coping mechanism whether good or bad and whether you have Bipolar or not. I’ve decided to share these things in hopes that it can reach someone and let them know that they aren’t alone.
This is just the first of many entries for Between Extremes. Let me know what you would like to hear next and if you liked this article, feel free to give me a few claps, I would highly appreciate it.
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