I wanted to pass along an additional thought I had regarding controlling BP. It's a concept used in designing aircraft: system redundancy. Basically, have back ups for everything. With depression comes the risk of doing nothing; with mania comes the risk of doing stupid, cruel, dangerous or harmful things in a spectacular way. In order to deal with this you have to do two things. First, find the meds that work for you, work with a psych and therapist and get yourself on an even keel. Once that step is done you can start planning your back ups.
Basically, I treat my manic and depressed selves as if they are separate people (only conceptually, I am not suffering delusions). Then I look at the various aspects of my life that are important to me, and I try to make sure that I have safeguards in effect so my manic and depressed selves can't screw everything up while I am checked out.
Now it sounds complex but it isn't. More importantly it's not possible to do with every aspect of your life, so don't try. However, where you can, try to put in some safeguards. Here are some examples I've done:
1. My wife has the password and username to access my blog. I did this in case I post something embarrassing or hurtful towards her or someone else close to me while I am in a manic state. This way she can go in and kill it, even lock me out of this BLOG until I am back under control.
2. I've signed releases with my therapist and psych so that my wife can talk directly to them and they can talk directly to her. I did this after my last suicidal episode. My wife had trouble getting help for me because people couldn't really talk to her about me in specific terms. If that happens again, she can go in talk openly with them and get all her questions answered.
3. Started using internet banking and gave my wife most of the credit cards. This way she monitors my spending and hopefully stops me before I clean out the accounts and run up debt again.
4. Talked with a couple of close colleagues about my illness, asked them to check with me and let me know if my behavior changes.
5. Finally, I've got my wife asking me, at least a couple times a day, how am I doing and what I have been doing that day. Answering these questions forces me to consider what's going on in my own head, and if I have trouble answering them, or if I go on and on at 98 mph, she knows something's up.
Another coping strategy I have tried to implement. So far, so good, but I haven't had time to fully test it out. Oh, and take this warning to heart, if you get into full blown mania or hypomania you can talk most people into believing just about anything, so it's important to catch yourself on the way up. Once you are in mania you will talk your way out of most things, and you will become extremely angry with anyone that tries to interfere with what you think is a natural high.
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