How Bipolar Depression Can Affect Your Spending

Get Bipolar Treatment Online.The story I tell myself about money is that I’m not good with it, but the truth is, I’m afraid of it.

Most people who live with bipolar disorder have at least a few stories about impulsive spending during a manic or hypomanic episode.Get Bipolar Treatment Online I certainly do, and I often wonder if those stories might be totally catastrophic if I had access to more substantial credit.

How Bipolar Depression Leads to Spending More Money

The struggle to manage my money starts the moment I wake up, or rather, with the delay of it. When I am depressed, there is never enough sleep, and there is no such thing as waking up rested. As a result, I choose what to purchase based on what requires the least amount of effort.

Choices made for the sake of convenience rarely result in economy. It’s more cost-effective to prepare your breakfast rather than grab a coffee and a muffin on the way to work, or the dreaded Cliff bar from the vending machine during your first break. But staying in bed ten minutes past the third alarm is an excellent way to guarantee you won’t have time to scramble eggs.Get Bipolar Treatment Online

Spending Money as a Way to Avoid Feeling Your Feelings

Sometimes, I fall into the trap of magical-thinking shopping when trying to distract myself from what I’m feeling — or not feeling.

For me, wellness looks like reading many books at a time, writing, playing fetch with the dog, and devouring jigsaw puzzles.

Depression robs me of the pleasure I take in these hobbies by stealing my ability to focus. You can only read the same paragraph so many times before you close the book, and the dog prefers if I throw the ball again after he retrieves it.

This kind of aimless shopping is a bit like flipping through TV channels to escape your own mind. The difference is that the cable bill doesn’t go up every time you decide on something else.

I tend to do this online, and when I catch myself, sometimes it helps to pause and ask what I’m feeling, or more likely, trying not to feel.

How to Prevent Overspending When Depressed

Of course, it’s the people who are missing, and yet there have been times when this waste of money was my holding-onto-life purchase; the thought of my credit card bill was the only reason I had left to go to work on Monday.

This is a situation when borrowing from the 12-step model and checking in with someone close to you can be helpful. You can say something like: “Just logged in to Amazon to buy poo bags for the dog and put a $60 French press in my shopping cart because I’m running low on reasons to hold on. Can we talk?”

If you struggle with this kind of spending — and you do any kind of online shopping (even for practical stuff like poo bags) — it’s best to avoid any type of automation in your checkout process.

Learning Ways to Treat Your Bipolar Depression

Hiding is expensive. The pursuit of wellness is cheaper than the performance of it, but being out as “mentally ill” carries its own cost and pressures to “perform.”

I’ve had the experience of people using my bipolar disorder to undermine my credibility. So, I worry that shortcomings in my appearance (and shortcomings in general) will be taken as proof that I am, indeed, mentally unfit for whatever role I’ve undertaken. I guess some small, deluded part of me imagines applying lipstick will solve this problem.

The answer to bigotry and ableism is not a trip to the salon. That shame is not mine to carry, and yet I feel it. And I have spent so much money trying to fix it. And the wasted money is more shame, which gives me more to hide.

Conlusion

You know what helps you. It’s boring stuff, and it’s tough because these things are not fast-acting. You can do these things for a long time and see no improvement, which may be a sign it’s time for a change in your treatment.Get Bipolar Treatment Online

I said I was afraid of money, but that’s not entirely true; it’s not the money I’m afraid of; it’s the story it tells about my mental health condition. Because if I look carefully at my spending habits, it’s like staring into a clear pond: The reflection will show wellness, hypomania, or depression.