How Bipolar Disorder Treatment Can Be Improved with Counseling

It feels hopeless. The depression is debilitating and the mania is all-encompassing. You have tried medications and they don’t seem to help. You are at a loss about what to do. This is where counseling can help as a method of Bipolar Disorder treatment. Although moderate-to-severe Bipolar Disorder generally requires medication prescribed by a psychiatrist, counseling can help teach the client coping strategies and regulation techniques which help lower stress and balance out the highs and lows.

Bipolar Disorder is, at its essence, a self-regulation disorder. The highs are much higher and the lows are much lower than what the general population typically experiences. In order to regulate effect and physiological activation, coping strategies need to be learned and utilized.

Whether experiencing the ‘ramping’ up of an incoming manic episode or the beyond-tired depression, a therapist can help you explore the various stressors that are surging up in your life. Once the stressors are identified, we can find helpful and effective solutions to aid the minimization of those stressors and change your response to an effective one.

Religiosity

For some people with Bipolar Disorder, religiosity, or over-exaggerated spiritualism, can be a major symptom. When this takes place, it becomes easy for the individual to latch on to various ascetic practices such as fasting, prolonged prayer, or substance use (such as marijuana or psychedelics) in order to somehow become more than human or achieve an idealistic state of perfection.

Christian counseling as a means of Bipolar Disorder treatment can help with managing religiosity through the use of the therapist’s ability to be objective about the effect of the aforementioned practices. All of the practices can feed into a disordered physiology that can increase feelings of hypo- or full-blown mania. The therapist can, to the best of their ability, help correct cognitive distortions that can arise during mania.

You may use these practices as a way to regulate yourself, but in the end, they will actually disrupt things even more. Your counselor would help you clearly see how those practices are making things worse and instead, guide you to more helpful practices such as becoming more aware of what is happening inside your body.

This is important because Bipolar Disorder is not only a disorder of the mind but also of the body. Whether in a state of depression or a state of mania, the individual’s neurotransmitters are out of whack. Being able to influence these neurotransmitters through breathing and EFT Tapping is what the therapist will help you accomplish. In the following section, I will describe a few techniques that are helpful in combating stress and promoting and cultivating resiliency.

Techniques to Decrease Stress and Promote Relaxation

Some symptoms of Bipolar Disorder can be agitation, irritability, and the constant movement of legs or feet. These symptoms can help show you that your physiology is ramping up due to your reaction to stress. It is here where the therapist would provide guided, deep breathing exercises to help regulate the increased arousal. It has been shown that when utilizing deep breathing, the parasympathetic nervous system becomes activated.

In the human body, there are two parts of the nervous system: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. A great way to understand these systems is to view the SNS as the gas and the PSNS as the brakes. The PSNS is known as the rest-and-digest system and when activated, it releases the neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine. Acetylcholine helps aid in slowing heart rate and increasing relaxation.

Normally, in individuals with Bipolar Disorder, breathing can become restricted and is performed mainly within the chest. This restricts the amount of oxygen getting into the lungs and can lead to feelings of anxiety, tension, and brain fog, and confusion.

Another technique that can be very helpful in lowering the anxiety that can be present in this diagnosis is called EFT Tapping. For some with Bipolar Disorder, it is common that there is little to no awareness of the bodily sensations associated with their emotions. Instead, there is slight-to-full dissociation and entrapment in the mind. Due to this, it becomes difficult to feel bodily emotions, and rather than be processed, they stay stuck in the body.

EFT Tapping helps recirculate those emotions and allow them to be felt and reprocessed in a safe and calming way. There are nine main areas that are involved in EFT Tapping that are associated with centers of circulation.

A session of Tapping starts with the choosing of a phrase that is decided together by the therapist and client and may be something like this: “Right here, right now, I am safe.” This phrase is said three times at each of the nine areas for a total of three full rotations.

The reason for the spoken phrase is to promote faith. In the New Testament, Paul, the author of Romans, says in chapter 10, verse 17: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” We know that in Christ, we are safe and our eternal life is guaranteed through the death and resurrection of Christ. Because of this, we can confidently say “We are safe,” even when our mind and body is filled with fear and anxiety.

EFT Tapping can be practiced within the counseling session as a method of bipolar disorder treatment to help combat stress, process emotions, and lessen anxiety or panic. It can then be used on your own whenever you feel any discomfort, depression, or ramping up of your physiology.

Have You Eaten? Are You Sleeping?

Bipolar Disorder and the depression and mania that are a part of it can lead to disruptions in both eating and sleeping. When depressed, the motivation to eat can be non-existent. When experiencing mania, nausea and speediness can lead to being unable to eat or being unaware of the need to eat. In either case, the lack of food adds to the physiological disturbance.

In the book of 1 Kings in the Old Testament, chapters 18 and 19 depict the prophet Elijah experiencing the high and low common to Bipolar Disorder. In chapter 18, Elijah is at the top of his physiological mountain. He is at Mount Carmel, a single prophet of God, among four hundred and fifty prophets of the Canaanite god, Baal, as well as four hundred prophets of the goddess, Asherah.

Elijah sets up a test to see whose god is more present and powerful. This would be accomplished by the raining down of fire upon the sacrifice. The other prophets start by calling out to Baal from morning till noon. Nothing happens. Then Elijah prays to God and God sends fire to consume the sacrifice.

At that moment, Elijah orders the other prophets to be captured and killed. This was a major high point for the prophet who has been active for a long time who then flees to Beersheba in Judah, where he went a day’s journey into the wilderness.

In the wilderness, it is apparent that the high that he was on has turned into a low. He calls out to God saying it would be best if he were to die; he then falls asleep. Before he could sleep for long (evident of sleep problems during depression), an angel touches him and reminds him to eat.

He eats, then falls asleep. Again, the angel touches him and tells him to eat. Elijah eats and then, being strengthened by the food, travels for forty days and forty nights until he reaches Horeb, the mountain of God.

I share this example from the Bible to highlight the heavenly importance of eating even when there is a lack of motivation and a depression so deep that the only escape is sleep. Elijah experienced an extreme high, followed by the inevitable crash so common in Bipolar Disorder.

It took the presence of an angelos, Ancient Greek for ‘messenger’ that was sent by God to remind Elijah of the importance of eating. As your therapist, I will encourage the use of a meal journal to become more aware of how much you eat, when you eat, and when you do not eat. Together, we will find ways to help you eat what your body requires even in the midst of depression and mania.

Bipolar Disorder Treatment

Bipolar Disorder can be very difficult to live with; however, counseling as a form of Bipolar Disorder treatment can help ease your burden. As your therapist, I will help you identify the various stressors you face, internally and externally, and aid you through the implementation of techniques that help you cope with your diagnosis in a way that is unique to you and your body.

I will do this through objective insight into your various religious and spiritual practices, provide deep breathing exercises, EFT Tapping, as well as helping you become more aware of sleep and eating patterns. Together, we will find ways to cope that are both healthy and enjoyable to you. If you are interested in meeting with me or one of the other counselors, feel free to contact us today to schedule an appointment. I look forward to talking with you.