From my experience medicine is the foundation upon which my recovery is built. Before I could even attempt to make the necessary changes in my thinking and my actions, my brain\u2019s chemistry had to begin to work within boundaries that would corral the highs and lows of my mood. For me, the medicines I take are key to keeping bipolar symptoms at bay so that living my life is not interrupted by episodes of extreme mood swings. Pure and simple, I could not live in remission or sustained wellness without it.<\/p>\n
With that said, I also recognize that if all I did was take my meds it would narrow the scope of my mood swings, but would not change my thinking or actions that was my reasonability.\u00a0\u00a0 To live in wellness I have needed to do a lot of\u00a0hard work<\/strong>\u00a0that the medicine does not take care of by itself. Years ago I attended a workshop led by a Psychologist and he said that it is necessary to \u201cwork with your medicine<\/em><\/strong>\u201d to achieve mental health. From my experience with finding wellness and stability in my life, I couldn\u2019t agree more with him.<\/p>\n There has been many times in my journey that I felt like I was working harder than my medicine! Other times I was a bit overmedicated and was in a \u201cmentally-numb<\/em>\u201d state of mind; the medicine was overdone. Getting the right combinations of medicine can be very tricky. But, doing my part in moving towards wellness (working with my medicines<\/em>) has been never too tricky. Instead working with my meds is pretty simple but, oh so hard to do at times. In fact, saying it is hard work is an understatement!<\/p>\n Initially after becoming stable on the medicines my doctor challenged me to start doing what I needed to do. Yes, I saw a counselor at the time, but he was encouraging me to \u201cdo my part<\/em>\u201d which meant simple things like:<\/p>\n When I began to do some very difficult things like the three listed above I began to experience a little more wellness day after day. It was hard work. The truth is that working with my medicine and doing my part has brought me to a 12-year period of sustained wellness. I live with very few if any symptoms of bipolar disorder. And let me repeat, it was\u00a0NOT<\/strong>\u00a0easy. I had to choose every day and still do to work with my meds.<\/p>\n A number of months ago a few folks asked me to make up a list of things that I had done to \u201crecover<\/em>\u201d. So I ended up staring a website that lists the simple little things that we can and do to in order to achieve wellness. If you\u2019re interested check it at:\u00a0www.WhatIDidtoRecover.com<\/p>\n How about you? Are you doing your part in working with your meds? What things have you or are you doing to work with your meds in order to find or you\u2019re your wellness?\u00a0\u00a0 I really enjoy reading your comments and shared insights. Just think of the collective wisdom that we all have together!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From my experience medicine is the foundation upon which my recovery is built. Before I could even attempt to make the necessary changes in my…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,43,44],"class_list":["post-1354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hope-and-encouragement","tag-hope","tag-living-well","tag-medicine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
\n
\n