Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Life Lessons Series: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus (Part 2)

Life Lessons Series: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus (Part 2)


Life Lesson #11 (Continued...)


Climbing the Mountain of Mental Health and Disillusionment

How do you climb a mountain built from disillusionment, pandemic fallout, and a severe mood disorder? Especially when the triggers—stress, grief, trauma, isolation, financial loss, sleep disruption, and emotional instability—keep shifting under your feet?

That quote from Epictetus has followed me through every chapter of my journey. But at this point, I wasn’t reacting with resilience. I was collapsing.

After I was laid off during the pandemic, I spiraled into a deep depression—then rapidly into chaos. The mountain felt insurmountable. I spent weeks in bed, gripped by anxiety, sleeplessness, and an overwhelming sense of dread. Without routine, structure, or accountability, my emotional stability unraveled. Sleep deprivation, isolation, and mismanaged medication triggered hypomania. And I lost myself.

I wasn’t me anymore. I had become someone unrecognizable—impulsive, disconnected, reckless. I had forgotten who I was beneath the storm.

A Portrait of Hypomania: Substance Use, Relationships, and Emotional Instability

During this period, my responses to stress were destructive:

  • I used substances daily, disregarding my knowledge of their dangers for people living with bipolar disorder. By 2023, I was diagnosed with a co-occurring Substance Use Disorder.

  • I entered a toxic relationship with a man I met online. Within two weeks, he moved into my apartment and stayed rent-free for two months. He was emotionally, physically, and financially abusive. When he left, I spiraled into binge eating and purging, overwhelmed by shame, self-loathing, and nonexistent self-worth.

  • In 2021, desperate for purpose, I moved in with my parents and secured what I believed was my dream job as a Peer Support Specialist. But my productivity was often hypomania in disguise—fast-talking, high-energy, relentless drive. Beneath it all, burnout, racing thoughts, insomnia, and relentless self-doubt pushed me to the edge.

By Fall 2022, I was overwhelmed by hopelessness and attempted to take my own life. That moment scared me enough to seek psychiatric care.

The Fallout: Hospitalizations, Homelessness, and Hitting Rock Bottom

Between 2022 and 2024, I was hospitalized nine times—often after wellness checks deemed me a danger to myself. I was placed in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and restrained under outdated and traumatizing mental health protocols.

Upon release, I faced housing insecurity—living out of my car, in Airbnbs, and eventually a shelter. I was homeless, unmedicated, self-medicating, and emotionally unstable. I became suicidal, psychotic, and deeply delusional.

I alienated everyone—family, friends, coworkers. Even strangers could sense that I was unraveling. I wasn’t just lost in the world—I had lost myself.

Facing the Fear: Accepting Bipolar Disorder and Finding Stability

Eventually, I made a choice—not to fix everything, but to embrace the chaos and ask: Could I survive this? Could I face the pain, grief, trauma, and fear that I had spent years trying to escape? Could I stop running from my bipolar diagnosis and finally stand still long enough to heal?

In the quiet of isolation, I found clarity: 

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

I didn’t need to climb the mountain inside me—I needed to walk patiently around it. I started to accept that life would always include challenges, relapses, growth, and emotional extremes. But how I chose to react—how I structured my healing—was entirely up to me.

Final Thoughts: Reclaiming Myself: Self-Awareness, Healing, and Self-Worth

Life hadn’t just happened to me—I had been actively engaging in it, even if I wasn’t always aware. I had been reacting without reflection, living without structure. But over the last two years, I’ve cultivated the self-awareness to understand how my past shaped my present—and how my present decisions shape my future.

I’ve let go of fear. I’ve said goodbye to self-pity and self-loathing. And I’ve reclaimed my self-worth.

This is my story, but it’s also a reflection of something more universal: for those of us living with Bipolar disorder or navigating mental health challenges, routine, support, healing, and self-acceptance are not just tools—they are lifelines.

Thank you, Epictetus, for the wisdom. I now understand:

 “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Life Lessons Series: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus (Part 1)

Life Lessons Series: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus (Part 1) 

Life Lesson #11

The last two decades of my life have been marked by unwelcome challenges and unexpected change. After deep self-reflection, I’ve come to realize these moments were necessary. They shaped my personal growth and strengthened my resilience.

From my first manic-psychotic episode to my most recent, life often felt as though it had flipped upside-down—and I had no idea how to right myself. For nearly 20 years, I let life happen to me. My responses—both uplifting and self-destructive—set in motion a series of events I didn’t recognize then as tests of my strength and emotional stability. Looking back now, I understand: it's not what happens to you, but how you react that defines your healing and growth.

Diagnosis, Grief, and Emotional Extremes

When I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder in 2006, I was an Honours graduate from Carleton University mourning the death of my grandmother—my soulmate—who passed away on my 22nd birthday. My life became a complex mix of achievement and sorrow, dreams and heartbreak. Caught between extremes, I turned to substances to dull the weight of my emotions. It was a way to escape the reality of bipolar disorder—a way to exist in the numb void between joy and grief.

This emotional polarity became a recurring pattern. Yet even in moments of despair, I made positive choices and showed resilience. Still, adversity never strayed far.

Recovery, Remission, Relapse, and Resilience

After four years of remission, I was accepted into a graduate diploma program at Humber College. Life felt balanced again. I was proud and optimistic.

Then, just three months into the program, my six-year relationship ended—followed the next day by my nomination as Event Management Chair, overseeing one of the college’s most important events. Once again, I found myself in a bittersweet place: standing in success while mourning loss.

Instead of confronting the pain, I returned to self-medicating. I sought the numbing void between overwhelmed and empty. By the end of the term, I suffered my first manic-psychotic episode in four years and was hospitalized.

Recovery came slowly. Through structure, routine, and healthy habits, I found stability and space to reflect:
 How did I fall so far, so fast? Why hadn’t I learned from the past? Why was my instinct to run from pain rather than grow through it?

I no longer trusted myself. My self-worth was low. Doing what was easy—what was wrong—was easier than doing what was right. That’s when I knew I needed to begin the hard work of self-awareness, self-love, and emotional healing.

It took three years, two internships, another hospitalization, summer school, night school, and a relentless inner fire—but I graduated from my PR and Communications program. One teacher described me as “a tenacious student who would find success in her future.” I’ve come to believe that when life happens to you, your reaction—your resilience—is what shapes your future.

Then There Was COVID-19

By 2020, I was in my longest remission since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I had spent seven years in Toronto, supported by an incredible social worker and a 23-member outpatient care team. I was thriving, training as a Peer Support Specialist at a hospital’s Recovery College, and immersed in psychoeducation, trauma therapy, and self-care practices. I created a Crisis Plan (WRAP) and medical directive, sharing it with friends, family, my medical team, and employer.

Then came March 2020. The world changed.

I remember walking to Recovery College that morning feeling healthy, happy, and whole. By evening, I was stockpiling supplies, preparing for an indefinite lockdown. The country was in crisis. Fear and uncertainty filled every space.

Soon after, I was redeployed by my hospital to support frontline efforts. I was assigned to the ER. While part of me was relieved to leave the isolation of my apartment, a larger part trembled with fear—of the virus, the unknown, and what the hospital would ask of me.

After two weeks, I was exhausted but useful. I was adjusting. Then an email invited the Recovery College team to a virtual meeting. There, we were all laid off. The entire program was being dissolved.

In that moment—unaware I was the one screaming until a colleague mentioned it—I unleashed years of fear, anxiety, betrayal, grief, and pain. My emotional response was immediate and overwhelming. Everything I had built began to unravel.

Peace turned to turmoil. Wellness to relapse. Stability to chaos. Hope to heartbreak.

It’s Not What Happens to You, But How You React

So, how do you face a mountain of disillusionment built from a global pandemic and a mood disorder triggered by stress, trauma, isolation, grief, instability, and loss?

How do you react when mental health, emotional wellness, and everything you’ve worked for feel like they’re slipping away?

I’ll continue this journey of reflection and healing in Part 2.

Join me Saturday, August 2, 2025, as I share what came next—how I chose to respond when tested in ways I never imagined.
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Monday, July 14, 2025

The Importance of Routine: How Women with Bipolar Disorder Manage Daily Life

 

The Importance of Routine: How Women with Bipolar Disorder Manage Daily Life

One of the greatest lessons I have learned on my journey to better health and mental wellness is the importance of forming Structure, Routine and Healthy Habits in my daily life. In fact I learned the lesson so well that the phrase structure, routine and habit is a daily mantra I say to myself as a reminder of how important these pillars are but how implementing these three ideas have changed my life and overall mental health mindset.


Some might say I am rigid in my routine because I create daily to-do-lists that incorporate everything from making my bed to brushing my teeth but I don’t see it the same way. As a blogger, writer and a lover of journaling I find comfort in writing things down. I also pull from my past experience as an event planner where attention to details is key and everything is considered an event. I combine the two skillsets and come up with a robust list of daily tasks that keep me busy and focused. 


I have never been a lover of chaos or surprises, I thrive on predictability and structure as they give me a sense of stability and control which oftentimes by the nature of my mood disorder I have no real say over when a Bipolar episode occurs. When I am in the midst of an episode I feel overwhelmed and my thinking is disorganized so when I experience remission I use the tools that I have learned to create structure, routine and healthy habits that contribute to managing my Bipolar Disorder and the chaos that can come with it. 


What others may call rigidity I consider finding my rhythm in a world where I come with my own background music that isn’t always pleasant and can sometimes be too loud. By writing down my goals and objectives for the day I stay on-task and I feel a sense of balance especially because I give myself grace knowing that my lists can sometimes be ambitious and may not be completed but as the great Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind said, “Tomorrow is another day.” 


In this article I will discuss why routine matters, how to build a routine that works for you, I will give an example of my own daily task list, discuss the role of healthy habits, what you can do when your routine gets thrown off and how to stay consistent when developing structure, routine and healthy habits without burning out or feeling overwhelmed.    


Why Routine Matters for Women with Bipolar Disorder


Routines are essential to women experiencing mental illness as they provide structure, reduce anxiety and give individuals a sense of control. Predictable daily routines can help alleviate decision fatigue, decrease feelings of being overwhelmed and promote a sense of stability. Routines also help regulate sleep patterns creating a healthy Circadian Rhythm (sleep-wake cycle), increase energy and assist with the regulation of emotions. Developing a routine can also increase a person's sense of safety when experiencing unstable moods. Finally, routine acts as the opposition of chaos which can often arise during a Bipolar episode. 


Routine can be especially important to women who are balancing multiple roles like parent, daughter, professional and caregiver. When wearing multiple hats in your daily life, routine can help compartmentalize those roles and assist in navigating your way through the challenges that may come with each. Routines can also support the consistent management of your  mental health and keep your illness in remission for an extended period of time.  


Building a Routine That Works for You


When building a sustainable routine that works for you it's important to take things one step or one habit at a time. For example, I would not recommend an overhaul on all your all your habits good or bad, at once. Rather choose 1-2 sustainable positive habits that you currently practice daily and 1 habit you find challenging or want to change.  


Before you start building your daily routine ask yourself what foundational habits you already practice and write them down in your dedicated Tasks and To-Do-List journal: 


  • Do you wake up at the same time? Do you go to bed at the same time?
  • What time of day do you have breakfast?
  • What time of day do you shower/dress or brush your teeth?
  • If you take medication what time of the day is that task assigned to?
  • What time do you eat lunch? What time of day do you eat dinner?
  • When are your work hours?
  • How many tasks do you complete in a day? (be realistic and kind to yourself when considering this question)
  • When do you usually have downtime? What are some self-care activities you do during this time?


After reflecting on all these questions it is also important to ask yourself if there are any habits you have that you would like to change? Anything you would like to do differently? Are there any tasks that you wish to change or add? Building a routine that you can follow daily will not be easy, it will take work to develop and implement but the benefits will be evident once you have finished building a routine that works for you. 


Below is an example of my daily routine (don’t laugh at me please) and honestly 85 per cent of the time I follow it to the letter but there are times that life, caregiving responsibilities or my illness gets in the way and I’m unable to complete everything. During those periods I have learned to give myself grace, self-compassion and understanding that I’m human. 


Onika’s Tasks and To-Do-List 2025

  • Wake up- 5:00am
  • Meditation and Prayer
  • Make Bed/Clean and Organize Space
  • Shower/Brush Teeth/Dress
  • AM Medication-6:00am
  • Coffee Time!
  • Prep Gym Smoothie
  • Gym Time-7:00am-8:30am
  • Banking, Budgeting, Bills
  • OnikaDainty.com (write 3 articles)
  • Counselling (weekly)
  • Education Hour
  • Update and Review 2025 Calendar
  • Check Email/Social Media
  • Dinner & Downtime at 7:00pm-9:00pm (self-care activity, journaling, audiobook or listening to music)
  • PM Meds and Bedtime-9:30pm

At-a-glance my daily routine might seem “over-scheduled” but the reason it has worked so well for me is based on my life experiences and being able to determine what I need to make my life flow in the right direction. Certain items on that list are “non-negotiables” for me like waking up and going to bed at the same time daily or taking my morning and evening medication. Others I am more flexible about based on my mental state and other daily responsibilities like being a caregiver to my mother who is experiencing dementia. Life always will get in the way of your plans but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one.


The Role of Healthy Habits: A Lived Experience Perspective

Developing healthy habits was the hardest of the three pillars for me. My life– prior to two years ago– was full of unhealthy habits. I was a smoker, a binge eater, non-compliant with my medication, I spent most days in bed watching Netflix and I rarely exercised. The one thing I did do for myself during the summer months was go hiking on the weekends. I made a lot of excuses to justify my habits because I simply wasn’t ready to change. Being healthy is hard and being unhealthy was easy. At least it seemed easy until I started to self-reflect and really examine the toll being unhealthy was taking on me physically, mentally and emotionally. I made a decision to change and I became determined to act. 


The first year of healthy habit building was not easy. I quit smoking (1year and 7 months) and started addictions counselling; With the support of friends and family I lost 22 pounds by developing a nutritional plan that worked for me; I took control of my medication management with the support of my healthcare team. I finally joined a gym that didn’t feel intimidating and have lost 15 pounds since starting my daily walks on the treadmill. 


To create healthy habits for my mental health I restarted regular counseling, joined a local recovery college where I learn psychoeducation and self-care strategies. I sought out psychotherapy for trauma treatment and I set boundaries with family and friends advising them that alone time was needed and supportive time with them was valuable and needed to be scheduled unless there was a dire emergency. Setting boundaries with the people in my life was key to protecting my peace and emotional wellbeing as I found in the past I would get overwhelmed easily by others and I would turn to bad habits to cope with stress.  


What I have learned in the past 2 years is that healthy habits are a choice. They are based on the decisions you make to better your life and the commitment you make to yourself to make a change. None of the above changes were rapid or else I know I wouldn’t stick with them and sometimes I falter (ex. I had pizza for dinner last night) but I give myself grace and know that a setback is not a failure and in order to be successful I can’t give up on my goal of maintaining healthy habits and continuing to develop new ones as I grow and learn on my journey to wellness and mental stability.


What to Do When Your Routine Gets Thrown Off


So what do you do when your routine gets thrown off? Be honest with yourself, it will happen. For myself, it's usually related to mood shifts or episodes, especially the extreme lows when I don’t have the energy to get out of bed, much less make my bed. I also find myself not checking off boxes when my caregiving duties to my mom call me away or simply when you get a life surprise like your car breaking down. What always helps me regroup is giving myself grace rather than feeling guilt and remembering what Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day.” 


If you fall off your routine for longer than desired here are some recovery tips:

  • Just do one thing
  • Shorten the list. Go back to your core 1-2 habits
  • Give yourself grace, self-compassion and understanding
  • Remember your “why.” Why did you start to build your structure, routine and healthy habits in the first place?


Getting thrown off happens to everyone once in a while. It's what you chose to do with your setback that will define your successes in the future. Learning from your experiences is essential to getting through your down times and growing into a person who values their mental, physical, emotional health.


 Consistency and balance are important so do not force yourself to rebuild a routine before you are ready. In order to maintain structure you also have to be flexible. So avoid all-or-nothing or black-and-white thinking when it comes to determining how successful you are at creating and maintaining your structure, routine and healthy habits. Consistency lives in the grey area and ultimately is defined by you and the unique experiences that are a part of your wellness journey.


There is no shame in using tools like alarms, calendar reminders and voice notes to help you maintain the new system of daily life you are building. For example, after a really rough mental health episode I usually have to set 4-5 alarms to wake at my designated 5:00am and if I can’t get up I go back to sleep because I know I am tired and I know my body still needs rest. I remember to give myself grace, show myself compassion because 5:00am comes every day and when I am living in my wellness my structure, routine and healthy habits will return or I will be flexible and readjust. 


Final Thoughts


It’s important to note that structure, routine and healthy habits won’t eliminate Bipolar disorder but they can make life more liveable, more joyful and uniquely yours. I don’t know where I would be or who I would be without the systems I have put in place to find my rhythm in this Bipolar world that lives inside my mind. What I have learned about myself is that even before my diagnosis I was not a fan of surprise and chaos. I simply didn’t have the knowledge or tools to control the instability around me but now I do and I use the tools to my advantage daily. 


I’ve also learned not to feel bad about myself or try to control the outcome of my day when chaos inevitably comes regardless of the structure, routine and healthy habits I’ve established. A part of finding my rhythm is also discovering my flow and there are certain triggers, times of the year and unexpected events or surprises that will throw my routine off. When these times happen I give myself grace and remind myself like Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day.” 


Remember, today is an opportunity to do something you’ve never done before so ask yourself: What’s one small habit you can commit to this week—for you, and your peace?

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