I know music has already been stated, but learning an instrument during my episodes greatly helped me. It's not super interesting at first, but if your symptoms are like mine and others, sometimes just having the boring distraction of practicing a scale pattern can be that helpful. Learning the patterns of the major scale and doing that repeatedly can just be a nice way to productively occupy your mind and hands long enough for the episodes to pass when they get bad. And once you get to a point where you passively start hearing different ways to play that scale, you begin to improvise and it can actually go from boredom to fun. Another cool trick is that if you're used to typical 12 note scale stuff and associate Major sounds with "happy" sounds, it can give your brain just a little cognitive dissonance and help jolt you out of some moods if you're in a lighter episode.
Again: it's something that has worked for me. I don't think there's anything wrong with you if it doesn't work for you. But maybe it could be worth trying if you have access to an instrument.
Physical. Support your local library!