Mapping your drift, rung by rung
Episodes accumulate before they arrive. The map names your baseline, the small signals on the way up and down, and what you will do at each rung.
For the Warning Sign Map. 20 minutes. Private on this device; nothing is sent anywhere. Not clinical advice.
Who it is for
You have had more than one episode and can see, in hindsight, that there were three weeks of signals you explained away. The map turns hindsight into a reference. It is a snapshot you print, not another app to check daily; ongoing tracking is BipolarOS Patterns territory.
The short version
- Baseline (step 2): fill only the fields that matter. Sleep hours, texts answered, money in and out, how fast you talk. Leave the rest blank; blank is honest.
- Up-drift (step 3): three rungs. Rung one is what only you would notice. Rung three is what a stranger would. Rung two is where you still have a choice.
- Down-drift (step 4): the same three rungs, and note that down-drift rung one is usually "stopped doing a small thing", not "felt sad".
- Actions (steps 5 and 6): one move per rung, specific enough to do tired. "Cancel evening plans" beats "take it easy".
- One-pager (step 7): yes. Someone else needs to see rung two, because by rung three you will be arguing.
- Print it and date it. Redo it after each episode while the memory is fresh.
A worked example
An invented reader, so the mechanics are visible. Your answers will differ.
Up-drift, rung one: you start answering emails at midnight and feel pleased about it. Rung two: you have three new projects and a plan to tell your manager about all of them Monday. Rung three: you have told them, and bought the domain names. The action for rung two is the one that matters: "sleep window moves to non-negotiable; no new projects announced until it has held for a week." Rung one is a watch; rung three is the Recovery Plan.
The one thing
The rung-two action is the whole map. If you only write one thing, write that.