Many times during treatment, you may have to consider whether to change your bipolar medication. This is a complicated question and a personal one. The answer varies from person to person. If you're considering changing your bipolar medication, here are some things to think about.

I've often felt left out of life. In fact, I often say I'm an alien. It's not because I'm green or have bug eyes; it's because my experience of life is so radically different from that of your average person. I'm obviously not the only one. People with serious mental illness (or other chronic illnesses) often feel left out of life. I'm going to take a look at why this is and how we can feel more included.

When I started seeing a psychiatrist, he said I would get back to life before bipolar disorder (well, I was diagnosed with just depression at the time). He focused on it a lot. He wanted to know how I was doing compared to what I was like "before." But there are so many problems with that thinking. I'm not sure you can ever get back to life before bipolar disorder.

I should be able to fix my own depression -- or at least that's what the world keeps telling me. We have a lot of euphemisms for it: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, walking it off, turning that frown upside down, and so on. And the Internet is full of New Age gurus (and lay people) claiming to know the secret of how to do it -- just buy my book and wave your depression goodbye. But if everyone says it's possible, why can't I fix my own depression?

I'm experiencing hope fatigue. Basically, I'm sick of the very word hope, let alone trying to scrape some up for me and my illness. There are many reasons for this, but believe me when I tell you that hope fatigue is a real thing.

While I know it's tempting, don't try to be your own psychiatrist. Trying to be the psychiatrist is a mistake. Psychiatrists train for 10 years to decide how to help you. Do you have 10 years of training? These people treat others like you every single day and thus have years of clinical experience under their belt. Do you treat others and have years of clinical experience under your belt? For most of us, the answers are "no" and "no." When you try to be the psychiatrist, you hobble your own treatment. And the trust is, I see people doing it all the time.

At this time of year, we might think about how to change various aspects of our lives. We might want to change our looks, habits, or many other things. These changes are often expressed in the form of new year's resolutions. And as most of us have witnessed, new year's resolutions rarely last past the year being new. I think this, in part, is because we don't think about how to change and what's required to change. And in many cases, change begins with one simple idea: not changing has to be more painful than changing.

I thought for a very long time that I could outthink bipolar disorder. I thought, if bipolar disorder is in my mind, then my mind can defeat it. I thought that if I just read the right book, learned the right coping skill or understood the right philosophy, I could outthink the bipolar disorder. And this is not an uncommon feeling. It's one of the reasons that people refuse medications or go off their medications -- whether they express it in those words or not. People think -- errantly -- that bipolar disorder is all in their head, and so their head can fix it.

I've found hope is harmful. I know, the reflex is to disagree with this, but, at least in my case, hope is harmful. I recently found a bit of hope of ending a profound, debilitating depression. I knew feeling that hope was a mistake, but some part of my brain refused to listen to that. And sure enough, it turned out that hope was harmful.

I'm tired of disappointing my loved ones because my bipolar won't improve. I'm tired of looking at my doctor's face as I tell him that the new bipolar treatment isn't really making things better. Their disappointment becomes my disappointment. I feel disappointment in me too. Of course, When bipolar won't improve, disappointment is natural, but it's the disappointing my loved ones that twists the knife.