If you are strongly tempted to drink alcohol, Dr. Miklowitz recommends trying to put yourself off for an hour after the urge starts. “There is value in delaying responses,” he says. “Sometimes that request goes away in an hour.” It can be helpful to set boundaries with the people around you who are drinking if you feel you are being lured in. If you living with other people can be difficult during a pandemic when people in your home have no other places where they can socialize or drink safely, but try to talk to them about why important for your mental health. ”“ At the very least, you need to try to be clear that you don’t want them drinking around you, ”says Dr. Magen.
If you find that you are constantly thinking about alcohol, Dr. Miklowitz recommends looking into a support group like Alcoholics Anonymous. “That support can be very helpful right now – and there are a lot of organizations online,” he said. If you see someone as a therapist, they may be able to help you work through this or guide you in the right direction. And if you don’t, that could be a bigger reason to try to find someone to talk to.
5. Come up with a regular sleep plan.
As we said before, good sleep is essential for the management of bipolar disorder. Research has found that lack of sleep increases the risk of bipolar occurrence, especially manias. “We don’t have a very good idea of what exactly is going on in the brain, but we do know from patients that poor sleep is bad for people with bipolar disorder,” says Dr. Magen.
And, Dr. Magen says, sleep deprivation can be a vicious circle for times. “Sleep deprivation can trigger manic periods in which you have less sleep, so you get a recovery cycle,” he says.
If pandemic stress is affecting your ability to sleep, it is important to try to find specific strategies to reduce the specific factors involved, even if it can be difficult. For example, if you’re concerned about the number of COVID-19 cases in your city, consider limiting the number of visits you can check to local case accounts, or even blocking temporarily on certain sites you usually go for that information. Or you may find it helpful to add meditation or other calming exercises to your daily routine. The specific strategies may depend on the cause of your particular stress.
If you can’t identify what is behind your sleep issues, Dr. Miklowitz recommends that you do your best to make sure you follow the rules of good sleep hygiene. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), these include:
- Going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning, including weekends.
- Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, calm and at a comfortable temperature.
- Removing electronic appliances, including TVs, computers, and smartphones, from your bedroom.
- Avoid junk food, caffeine, and alcohol before bedtime.
- Being physically active during the day – this can help you fall asleep more easily at night.
“All of these can be very useful,” says Dr Miklowitz. With that said, almost everything is harder these days. Even a high level of sleep hygiene may not cause a diffuse stress to stop your sleep. So if you are still struggling to sleep after resolving problems on your own, ask your primary care doctor to contact a sleep medicine doctor. They should be able to offer you a more appropriate treatment. On the other hand, your psychiatrist may be able to safely prescribe medication to help you sleep.
6. Ingest regular caffeine, if at all.
And we’re back to another vicious circle. By gaining weight and not sleeping less you can turn to caffeine to try to help you stay awake throughout the day. But higher levels of caffeine can trigger an event.
A systematic review of 17 studies of bipolar disorder and caffeine published in the journal Bipolar Disorders last year he found that drinking higher amounts of caffeine was linked to more manic, hypomanic, and mixed symptoms. The researchers were not entirely clear why this happened, but said it could be due to an effect on your sleep patterns (which could indirectly lead to a manic event), or an influence on how well your body metabolizes your medication when you consume caffeine. Avoid ingesting more caffeine than usual, even if you are tired, says Dr. Miklowitz. Then, try to focus on good sleep hygiene for your next bedtime.
We are living in a very difficult time, and it is understandable that you may have difficulty managing bipolar stimuli. If you feel that you are struggling, talk to a medical professional who will help you decide if it is time to try a new treatment plan.
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