What are bipolar triggers?
Triggers can cause full-blown bipolar symptoms. They may be people, events, emotions, circumstances, or places. If you don’t learn about your own unique triggers (that rude co-worker, your judgmental sibling, insomnia, etc.), you might spiral downwards into depression, or upwards into (hypo)mania, and your family and friends will be left to handle the resulting turmoil.
But if you do recognize and respond intelligently to your triggers, you can possibly prevent the entire bipolar episode, or at least limit it to some extent.
A very common trigger is stress. This may be negative stress like work-related dramas, a fight with a family member, death of a loved one, etc.; or positive stress like a birthday party, a trip, a wedding, birth of a baby, etc. Other triggers include alcohol or drug use, lack of sleep, and so on.
Think about this for a moment: what are your personal triggers for both depression and (hypo)mania?
In Part 2 I’ll discuss how to analyze your triggers so that you’ll be better equipped to block them before they can cause a bipolar episode.
Cheers,
