Becoming Empowered by Your Mental Illness

I've just come out of one of the most difficult mental health spikes I've experienced in recent memory. The depression side of things wasn't so bad, as I've learned to manage my mental energy with gratitude practices, mediation, and overall giving myself fewer expectations during those difficult times. Mania, however, is a completely different story. Hypomania, which comes along with my Cyclothymia, is a state of being in which I crave a "hit" of some sort. I need a high to keep me going and usually that comes in the form of overspending, over-drinking and an accelerated, and sometimes frightening, sex-drive. The mania sides of things hasn't been easy to manage. So much so that I spent most of my mental health spike in bed trying to stave off these horrible feelings by watching Dragon Ball Super on my phone. But the truth is, in order for me to work through it I've had to spend more time focusing on my emotional difficulties in order to get through mania.  In either case, I need to continue to look at my mental health as an opportunity to grow. What is my mental health telling me that I need to work on? Am I putting too much value on negative emotions? Am I putting too much value on positive emotions? Am I not giving myself enough of an opportunity to breath and remove expectations of myself? Or am I working on my mental and physical health enough in my every day life? This podcast episode explores those ideas of using our mental illness as an opportunity to check-in with where we are, check-in with our mortality, analyze how we feel about ourselves and face the honest difficulties in which we need to face. ------------------------ We now have a community in which you can leave comments, questions, and share your story with us over at http://www.dopeamine.life/community We also have a free brand messaging course available at http://www.bit.ly/startmessage --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/happychemicals/message