What Steven Cousley Does

Goal-Setting Health Endeavors for Treating Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, alternating between
episodes of depression and mania. It is a mental disorder
affecting about six percent of the U.S. population. The
average age of bipolar onset is twenty-one.

Bipolar disorder is often triggered by certain physical,
environmental, and emotional stressors in life. Therefore,
knowing how to anticipate or identify these stressors is
critical to controlling and treating this disorder.

In addition to medications, overcoming this debilitating
disorder requires rigorous regiment on the part of the
patient.

What is your role as a bipolar disorder patient?

See yourself as an Olympic athlete. As such, you have a
goal and you train yourself as an athlete with that goal in
mind. As a bipolar patient, your goal is to be mentally
healthy and stay stable for as long as possible without any
serious episodes of depression and mania. If you are an
Olympic athlete striving for peak performance, you will
have to train yourself everyday to make significant changes
in your performance. These changes may take time and you
may even resist them at first; but the sooner you make
these changes, the greater chance you will achieve the
result you desire. Likewise, if you wish to overcome your
bipolar disorder, you will have to come up with a plan and
start new behaviors for optimum results.

Sleep plays a pivotal role in stabilizing your moods. It is
therefore important to keep a regular sleep pattern to
regulate your brain chemistry, which is often the culprit
of the disorder. Restful sleep not only gives you adequate
physical energy, but also enhances the performance of your
hormones and neurotransmitters. Unfortunately, patients
with bipolar disorder almost always have problems with
sleep: in fact, sleep problem is one of the main symptoms
of the disorder.

Research has indicated that bipolar disorder patients must
structure their sleep patterns as their first line of
defense against the onset of another episode of mood swing.

Your sleep pattern can be disrupted by both external and
internal factors. The external factors are environmental
and stressful events in your life, such as watching the
Olympic Games and staying up late for consecutive nights,
or going on a long trip. The internal factor is the bipolar
disorder itself. However, if you are on medication, the
internal factor is more often than not triggered by an
external factor, rather than being the cause of the sleep
problem.

Sadly, many bipolar patients tend to attribute the cause of
their sleep problems to anything or anyone but themselves.
Like an Olympic athlete, you must set your goal to
recognize what triggers your sleep problems. No one can do
that for you! You must always ask yourself: What have I
done to trigger my sleep problems? Once, you are aware of
the external factors, you must do everything possible to
achieve that goal, which is to eliminate those factors that
cause your sleep problems. It is important that you write
down all possible triggers. Like an athlete, you must start
this training process so that you will find the stability
you need in order to get on with your life.

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Stephen Lau is a researcher and writer. He has published
several books, including “No Miracle Cures” on natural
healing; he has also created many websites on Chinese
natural healing, eating disorders, Zen healthy lifestyle,
and mental depression. For more information on depression,
go to: http://www.rethinkyourdepression.com