[Soupe du jour]

What was one of the first coping strategies, good/healthy or bad/unhealthy, or even unconscious, that you used to calm (or try to calm) your bipolar disorder? This need not be one a therapist introduced. Is this one that you sometimes fall back on, for better or for worse?

[Victoria'smom]

Eating disorder and self harm

[Brentus]

Talking to myself aloud and distraction for the most part -- to this day I still will pace around and talk to myself as if someone was there listening when I feel overwhelmed or upset. It's something that really does do some good for me even today. Sometimes just putting words to situations and saying them out loud can help keep perspective and give insight.

[Soupe du jour]

My first notable unhealthy one was drinking alcohol. I drank to ease agitation and other bipolar symptoms. I started as young as 15, drinking occasionally. Then at 17, I was often sneaking alcohol and even showing up to school either buzzed or slightly drunk. I never told anyone and remained mostly a closet drinker. It was intermittent (symptom driven) during my 20s. It reached its peak at age 34, when I had been drinking heavily each day for some years. My tolerance was high and I could drink many men under the table. I had to detox during my first psychiatric hospitalization. It was hard to stop, taking about four years to stop "blips" of abuse, and shift to healthier coping methods. It exacerbated my bipolar disorder and my bipolar disorder made me prone to abuse alcohol.

A reliable good/healthy coping strategy has been "laying low". Avoiding over-stimulation and social interactions (sensory overload). It's not always easy, though, and hypomania and mania makes me not want to. My lifestyle this past decade gives me a choice. I now keep things simple and easy. Choices I've made help ensure that.

[Mountaindewed]

I carried around my blanket until I was 12.

[Mountaindewed]

And then that led into my other coping strageies that ended up turning out to be sensory related the same way the blanket was

[Skeezyks]

When I was a very young child (say around 2 years old or earlier) I began bumping my head at night to go to sleep. I did this up until I finally broke myself of the habit in my mid-teens. Of course, way back then I wouldn't have even had the capacity to think of it as a "coping strategy". But, looking back, I believe that's what it was. Later in life I returned to hitting my head as a means of self-injury which resulted in me developing Meniere's disease & tinnitus. I don't do it anymore...

[Nammu]

Reading voraciously. I tune everything else out and read anything just to occupy my mind. I may not be taking it in tho, I can re-read endlessly not really comprehending. It’s self soothing

[*Beth*]

Good thread!

A few.

I strongly resonate with Nammu's reading. I immersed myself in books when I was a child and teen...I "lived" the characters. And I still use reading as a way to cope, and because I just enjoy reading so much.

Dissociation.

When I was 15, 16 my mom had scripts for huge bottles of valium that she never took (which was unfortunate). "Mother's Little Helper", as they were called. She didn't use them, but I did, sometimes up to 9mg at a time. My mom never noticed the missing bottles. I occasionally smoked pot, but actually, not all that much. It was weak back then (but it did smell so nice, not that gross skunky smell like today).

Then a teacher of mine and his wife took me to a TM class. I was 17. I learned about meditation and the importance of good breathing skills.

Actually, also during my later childhood/teen years I attended services at the Vedanta Center, which is a type of Hinduism. My terribly abusive step-father was Indian and Hindu. At Vedanta I learned a great deal about meditation.

Those were my very early coping skills. I won't label them good or bad, they just were.

[MuddyBoots]

Dissociation