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Like I said earlier, I still haven’t fully recovered from my psycho-medical condition and am still getting into hypomanias. However, here is some advice I can give from my experience:
This is probably the single best advice one can give. Read Feeling Good and do the exercises given there. They have proved very helpful to me.
Exercising and especially doing aerobic exercise (jogging, biking, dancing, swimming, etc.) is very useful for preventing or lessening anxieties.
My therapist recommended that in order to sleep well during days in which I’m hypomanic, I should exercise during the late afternoon and evening.
I don’t consume alcoholic beverages, don’t consume caffeine, have never smoked, and have never consumed any of the currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana. While it does not prevent hypomanias, I find that it makes me less moody, more energetic throughout the day, and allows me to sleep better at nights. (I had also tried to refrain from eating sugary foods, but I couldn’t persist in it very well.)
I also take multi-vitamin pills, and some people take many more individual minerals than I do, and while I’m not sure it helps with anxieties, it’s very good for health and longevity.
I also find that relaxing or doing things you love to do is helpful for keeping a good self-esteem. It’s especially important during anxieties. Listening to music, sitting, thinking and doing nothing, taking a time for leisure at the computer, are useful for relief from troubling thought.
That put aside, I should note that working on what you have to do, will make you feel better, and is better than just procrastinating, and will also displace a large burden from your heart, that keeps you nervous.
When I’m hypomanic, I’m getting lots of good ideas: for stories, for essays, random useful thoughts, etc. While a lot of them had seemed silly in the past, some of them proved to be very useful and rational.[ManiaStories]
It would be a good idea to write the ideas down, or even work on realising the essays or articles, because it makes one less excited and calmer. I would be a good idea not to publicise them in public until you’re well out of a hypomania, because they may prove to be immature or silly in the short-run.
I personally may have sometimes been rejected from jobs because of the many things I’ve written and placed online, and which are easily accessible using a Google Search. I don’t mind that because I feel that expressing and publicising my creativity is more important than making myself a better job candidate to some “attractive” jobs. And some employers seemed to be very impressed by some of what I wrote online, or at least did not mind that, and these seem like jobs I prefer.
It is naturally a good idea to receive as much commentary as possible about one’s articles or writings in private before publicising them for all the Internet to see.
It is a good idea to admit that you’re “stressed” - anxious, etc. My therapist said that the word “hypomania” is intimidating because it contains the word “mania”, so one should rephrase it in case the other party is not that knowledgeable about Psychology. Sometimes you may find some of your friends or family (but not all) good candidates for consulting with your thoughts or feelings. I once spent an hour or so on an IRC (= Internet Relay Chat) conversation listening to a 19-years-old whom I knew, talking about her problems. I also consulted people on IRC or IM about my own issues and often found creative solutions or empathy.
This is doubly correct for talking with my family members.
During a hypomania, it is a good idea to maintain a low online profile. Namely, don’t post too much to mailing lists or other forums, don’t chat on the IRC too much (and try to focus on technical problems or your psychological situation), and in general try to maintain a low-profile.
However, I feel that real-life meetings with people and talking to them face to face is actually very good for one’s well-being during a hypomania.
So if you can get a friend or a few to meet with you in a café , or go to a club meeting, it will be a good idea.
It is my impression that often the philosophies and idea systems that we are generally exposed to (e.g: most western religions), are very harmful for one’s self-esteem and prevent one from properly getting out of depressions.
An example for this is what the New Testament says in the Sermon of the Mount: “But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”. As I explained before, people have no control over their immediate emotions and should not feel guilty for possessing ones that they may consider bad. While most Christians I’ve talked to about that, did not think that what that means is that lust was as morally condemnable as rape is, this has been traditionally interpreted as such, and is how I interpret the meaning of the this verse. And naturally, this is just a small example.
Therefore, I suggest you instead study and adopt a more benevolent psychological philosophy, which will help give you enough tools to live your life more happily and to deal with clinical conditions as they arise. My personal favourite is Neo-Tech, which is an extension and re-organisation of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, with many vital corrections. However, I do not rule out the premise that different personal philosophies will be better for different people.
It’s possible that if you’re a university student or a grunt employee, then you can get some relief for your psycho-medical condition. So try to see if it is possible, and if so - do that.
[ManiaStories] I even ended up finding many really crazy delusions I had during my “great mania” as useful inspiration for the following stories:
And, naturally, my hypomanias have been catalysts for most of my other stories.