12 Strategies to Help You Recover From a Relapse

It’s a dreadful place.

Relapse.

Maybe you had hoped you’d never go there. Or maybe you stay awake fearing you will. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to stay there for long. You’ll be on your way shortly.

I prefer to use the term “set back” when I get sucked back into the Black Hole–bam!–stuck inside a brain that covets relief, any form of relief, and will do just about anything to get it. Because it’s certainly not the end of recovery. From depression or any addiction. A relapse merely gives you a new starting place. Since I struggle with this time in and time out in my own life, I’ve laid out a dozen strategies to get unstuck … to recover from a relapse.

Therese Borchard writes the Beyond Blue blog on Beliefnet.

Listen to the right people

If you’re like me, you’re convinced that you are lazy, ugly, stupid, weak, pathetic, and self-absorbed when you are depressed or have given into an addiction. Unconsciously you seek people, places, and things that will confirm those opinions. So, for example, when my self-esteem has plummeted to below-seawater status, I can’t stop thinking about the relative who asked me, after I had just returned from the psych ward and was doing everything I possibly could to recover from depression: “Do you WANT to feel better?” Indicating that I was somehow willing myself to stay sick in order to get attention or maybe because fantasizing about death is so much fun. I can’t get her and that question out of my mind when I’m pedaling backward. SO I draw a picture of her, with her question inside a bubble. Then I draw me with a bubble that says “HELL YES, DIMWIT!” Then I get out my self-esteem file and read a few of the affirmations of why I’m not lazy, ugly, stupid, weak, pathetic, and self-absorbed.

Ditch the self-help

As I wrote in my piece “Use Caution with Positive Thinking,” cognitive-behavioral adjustments can be extremely helpful for persons struggling with mild to moderate depression, or struggling with an addition that isn’t destroying them. With severe depression or a crippling addiction, though, positive thinking can sometimes make matters worse. I was so relieved the other day when my psychiatrist told me to put the self-help books away. Because I do think they were contributing to my self-battery.

Right now, when I start to think “I can’t take it anymore,” I try not to fret. I don’t worry about how I can adjust those thoughts. I simply consider the thoughts as symptoms of my bipolar disorder, and say to myself, “It’s okay. You won’t feel that way when you’re better. The thoughts are like a drop in insulin to a diabetic … a symptom of your illness, and a sign you need to be especially gentle with yourself.”

Put family and friends on notice

The first five weeks of my setback I tried to act like nothing was wrong. I didn’t want to burden Eric with anything else. By the eighth week, however, I knew I needed to fill him in, because it was becoming increasingly difficult to act as if all was peachy. A few nights ago I finally burst into tears and expressed to him how difficult it was to have to work and take care of the kids when I’m combating such intrusive and destructive thoughts. He didn’t say anything. He just rubbed my back. And I felt a whole lot better having opened up to him. Good, solid support is vital for any type of recovery, whether it be giving up cigarettes or booze or, for a manic depressive, trying like hell to temper your moods.

Make necessary adjustments

Sometimes a relapse can signal that you need to make an adjustment in your life. Looking back, I know that mine was partly caused by my summer schedule. Eric and I were very short on cash last summer, so I wrote all of my summer blogs in five weeks. That way I didn’t have to hire a babysitter for the other seven weeks. Moreover, I planned out the summer like a mathematician, blanking on one detail: I’m not built like other people. I am a fragile creature who has an illness called bipolar disorder. Because of that, I can’t expect myself to work at a manic rate and not suffer some consequences.

The adjustments? Eric and I recently sat down with the budget for 2010. I told him that I absolutely needed to put my health first, that we were going to have to come up with the income to hire a sitter next summer. “I’d gladly move into a small apartment, or take a second mortgage on the house,” I said, “but I cannot repeat that mistake because I’m still recovering from the damage done in June and July.” I’m also beginning to interview sitters for next summer right now, so that I am prepared come May of 2010.

Get involved

A Beyond Blue reader commented a few weeks ago that what helps her more than anything when she is depressed is getting involved. I second this. I think that I’ve been able to buffer myself from a full breakdown this autumn by my efforts to stay involved: swimming with the masters program at the Naval Academy at least twice a week, participating in some of the parents’ programs at the kids’ school, and tutoring the midshipmen in writing once a week. Getting involved when you’re depressed or disabled by addiction always feels counter-intuitive. Most of us want to isolate. But when you’re with people, you don’t ruminate as much. You can’t. You’re supposed to be paying attention.