Managing Bipolar and Comorbid Anxiety Disorders

I just recently learned that I have Bipolar II and GAD, at the beginning of this year. I have always felt that my life was either really high or really low and I finally have an explanation for it. I feel relieved in a sense that I know what’s going on, but it was a heavy thing to swallow. For me what worked was going through “Mind over mood” with my therapist. Keeping myself distracted and occupied also helped. I have a golden, so I tend to spend as much time as I can with him when I’m feeling anxious or on the edge. I am on meds, and I finally feel “normal”.

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I have GAD and bipolar 2. The biggest thing for me was learning as much as possible about both, and keeping track of my mood swings and anxiety triggers. Familiarizing yourself with how you specifically respond to the mental illness is really important. It didn’t surprise me because I’ve felt it my whole life. I think it made me better because I finally knew what was wrong with me. First, I saw a therapist to get all my crap on the table. I had a lot of childhood stuff to work out. I also started an antidepressant and mood stabilizer in order to reign it all in so to speak. I’m working on weening off of it. I’ve started taking a high quality probiotic because I read a lot of studies saying it helps with a lot of mental illnesses.

YES!!✋✋ I have GAD and Bipolar as well as other stuff. It's hard sometimes to get through the day to be honest. You have to find what works for you since everyone is unique. But for me I have music and well as kickboxing. But mainly music. It's my only constant in life that interests me. I will have my earbuds in all the time and just drown out everything with music. It helps me alot. When I don't have music like when I'm at work then I kind of avoid everyone (except my patients since I'm a nurse) if I'm high I'll try to burn of my energy and if I'm low I'll just ignore everything and just focus on me. It's hard though because of the anxiety. Currently on meds which is a miracle drug but before that I would kind of force myself to do things that cause anxiety but I would do it with someone's help or someone nearby and talk to that person to kind of distract me from my anxiety. It helps me because I'm easily distracted.

I notice it's easier to feel anxious and jittery with mania but my generalized anxiety also happens while I'm depressed too. Also caffeine metabolizes differently worth me every day and some days it calms me down and other days a little too much makes me manic

I noticed often that I would experience a lot of the physical symptoms of anxiety when in a state of mania.