How Can I Find Hope Living With Bipolar Disorder?

*Photo by Anna Shvets

Hope is an elusive concept when you live with bipolar disorder.

Most people feel discouraged, lost, and hopeless as a reaction to their initial diagnosis. You may immediately deny you have an illness.

It’s normal to feel these mixed emotions. How you handle these emotions will ultimately decide your success in managing your bipolar disorder.

There Is Hope

When I was first diagnosed with bipolar type 1, I didn’t feel any denial. I accepted my diagnosis pretty quickly because I found an answer to my lifelong search for what made me feel so different.

Throughout my journey, I have had my fair share of hopeless thoughts and feelings. In the past, I would fight to get rid of those thoughts. I spent all of my energy trying to feel normal and discounting my feelings. I just wanted to get rid of that negativity.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson since I last felt those feelings.

I no longer fight those negative thoughts and feelings. They are a part of my journey and there’s no reason I should discount them.

Now, I allow myself to feel those feelings. I don’t dwell on them and I don’t fight them. I allow them into my head, acknowledge them, and out they go.

Instead of using my energy to fight the negativity, I channel my fighting energy into my treatment plan.

I control my treatment plan and it’s what helps to manage my bipolar disorder.

You can train yourself to hold on to hope. Like most of the strategies I discuss, it just takes practice.

It takes repetition after repetition.

Trust

If you are younger and just beginning your journey, it’s difficult to find hope.

As you grow older and gain more experience, you will develop a better ability to see the larger perspective. This ability carries over to an improvement in your perspective. Things get clearer.

As a young individual, you haven’t had the opportunity to experience hardship. Adversity helps you grow because you will have proof from your own life that you can get through a struggle and survive.

At this young age, you can only listen to the words of those who are older. It’s hard to listen to hopeful words when you feel so hopeless. After all, you don’t have personal proof that things will get better.

You need to trust.

You need to trust that things will get better. After all, those who have gone before you have lived through their struggles and have survived.

If you are spiritual, your beliefs can provide you with the hope you need to live each day. The realization that there’s something greater in the universe is sometimes all you need. Whether you are younger or older, your belief in a higher power can get you through your struggles.

I’ve spoken about the hope to live and the hope that things will get better. Bipolar disorder destroys these feelings.

Mature Hope

Hope is a component of my treatment plan. It’s not tangible, but it’s something that I can hold on to.

Hope is a way to help us traverse our journey. It allows us to manage the stress of daily life.

Treating my bipolar disorder for the past 20 years, I’ve weathered many storms, trials, and tribulations. It has been far from easy. Getting past each of these struggles has proved to me each day that I really can manage this illness.

Around the time I was diagnosed back in 1999, I dreamed of many things I wanted to accomplish in my life. These dreams provided me with hope for the future.

Bipolar disorder took away most of those earlier dreams. It’s easy to see how you can feel hopeless when you no longer can make your dreams a reality.

You know what, though?

I accepted my diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Instead of focusing on the dreams I could no longer pursue, I created new dreams.

These new dreams provided me with new hope!

Regardless of whether you are newly diagnosed or a veteran of living with bipolar disorder, you can find hope in your life.

You can create hope in your life.

Hope is a powerful thing that can lead to positive action and help you successfully manage bipolar disorder.