How to Heal Regrets Related to Your Bipolar Disorder

Acknowledge Your Grief

If you’re like many people, you might suppress or ignore your feelings of grief and sadness. You don’t want to walk through the pain. You’d prefer to avoid opening up the floodgates of tears. This is an understandable attempt to protect yourself. But pretending your grief doesn’t exist won’t help with healing.

As much as it may hurt, take the time to acknowledge the grief created by your losses and regrets. You might even make a list of your regrets as you take this first step toward healing.

Understand the Grief Cycle

As you journey toward healing your regrets, it’s helpful to understand the grief cycle. While it’s not a linear process, it’s still a process with definable stages nonetheless. Just as if you were mourning the loss of a loved one, you’ll walk through these phases.

They’ll include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and eventually, finding meaning in the loss.

Understand Guilt

Of course, working through the losses created by bipolar disorder often carries a heavy load of guilt with it. (This is different than survivor’s guilt experienced by those who have lost loved ones.)

Unfortunately, mania and depression both can cause behavior that later leaves you feeling guilty. Maybe you spent thousands of dollars on a shopping spree, canceled a big event with your family because you were too depressed to get out of bed, or blew off work commitments.

Once your mood has stabilized, you look back with deep pain at the results of these actions. You may feel so overwhelmed by this guilt that you have no idea how you’ll ever find healing.

As hard as it can be, though, you can’t let yourself be hobbled by this guilt. It will only prevent you from moving forward.

Choose Your Focus

If you are experiencing guilt due to bipolar behavior, practice learning how to reframe your focus. It’s crucial to admit and acknowledge how your bipolar behavior has impacted you and others.

But staying stuck in this guilt and allowing it to keep you down is unproductive. It won’t help you or your loved ones. Instead, learn how to focus on positive steps you can take. Focus on looking forward and affirm your good choices and qualities.

Do What You Can to Make Amends

Finding a way to make amends to anyone who has been affected is a vital step when it’s possible. Apologizing is an excellent place to start. If you can take other tangible steps toward assistance, this is also essential.

Counseling

Life with bipolar disorder can be rocky. Sometimes, the guidance and support of a trained therapist are what it takes to help you move beyond regrets and toward healing. You may feel so stuck in your grief and guilt that you have no idea where to even begin. If this sounds familiar, don’t give up hope. Instead, reach out for help. We have worked with many bipolar clients, and we know that finding healing is possible.