Bipolar, You Can't Control Everything

Bipolar is a serious illness, and managing it takes quite a lot of effort and control. We try to control our sleeping patterns, our work schedules, the things we eat, the times we take our medications, and so on. And often times it works, our efforts to control our world keep us sane. By controlling our world, we avoid our triggers. It's when we find ourselves in a situation that we can not control that we don't know what to do.

Take for example job loss. Job loss is a very difficult situation for the average person, but a person with bipolar often assumes it's a personal failure; the end of success. When we face something that makes us feel as uncomfortable as this, we become even more structured and vow to make sure it never happens again. Hopefully, this will take a positive direction, such as going back to school.

There will always be things that we cannot control, and these things can be a huge source of anger, frustration and stress. If we want to be bipolar and successful, we have no choice but to make a reasonable effort to control our environment. Yet at the same time, we need to be tolerant towards the things we can not control, particularly the desires and actions of other people. We can influence many things, but some things are simply beyond our control. We can't control people and we cant' change the past.