Hello,

I have quite a bit of experience with mental health treatment. I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia about 8 or 9 years ago. I know realize this diagnosis was wrong and oversimplified the problems in my life which has resulted in a lot of mistakes and bad outcomes. The diagnosis was changed to BP2 1-2 years ago. I lost years of my life due to fighting the diagnosis of schizophrenia and then mistakenly accepting it and thus sidestepping focusing on working on all the other much more relevant problems in my life that I had at the time like recurrent depressions, anxiety, low-self worth and interpersonal conflict management. Now, I actually had a paranoid psychosis and that was quite traumatic (I am still struggling with some small after-effects 10 years later) but there are very good reasons to believe that the underlying cause of that was not schizophrenia.  


Now I have become much better at a lot of things due to pyschotherapy and lots of soul searching (of course medication has helped a bit but it's definitely performing below-average for me, most antidepressants and antipsychotics don't work at all, not enough or have side-effects which are quite unbearable for me) but I am still far behind the curve on a lot of things. Especially in the working life.  I have never really worked full-time for a long continuous period but this is the main skill that I will need going forward.  


I realized that what I want in life is a partner and possibly a family - although I am still not sure about children. I have had basically one relationship which lasted for 5 years and which broke down due to a yearlong depression and another small relationship which was very helpful in a lot of areas but which was probably doomed from the start as well. The main obstacle I see right now for the goal of a stable relationship is my ability to function consistently in a working environment. Biologically I am male and finding a potential life-partner at my age in my country is pretty much hinging on my ability to work.

But my depressive episodes are just too common and the risk is just too high that I will fall back into them. So what I am looking to achieve is more stability.

So right now I am managing with ACT and CBT techniques (mostly ACT though) and regular meditation. I know I should do more physical exercise but I am struggling with it at the moment - it's probably the most effective way to change my neurobiology but it feels like it's too much at the moment (I can't really deal with the cold right now and I am lacking some space for indoor activities).  
I have a CBT workbook for bipolar that I should work through but I am not really sure how much it will help, since my problems are mostly the recurrent depressions.  


So I am looking for ways to stabilize my neurobiology going forward.

I know antidepressant medication doesn't really help with that (not in the sense of fixing the underlying dynamics of the neurobiology). So currently my plan to tackle it is :

* learning more about neurobiology in the first place (probably taking a coursera course or the famous lecture series on youtube)
* learning more about bipolar disorder
* physical exercise
* DBT therapy? building self-worth?
* building new helpful habits (I know these are important for one's neurobiology, but what is actually helpful for stabilizing against depression?)  


But what else could I be doing? Any advice new ideas? Specific things that helped you? My goal is to change my brain long-term. I know that that's difficult and it's a long term project. It's not my first rodeo. But I guess it helps to see what others tried or found out.