Bipolar Flow? bipolar? tripping out?

[Ronin]

Well, it might help to cross check with criteria for giftedness & its range.

Faster tempo & work with information are entirely normal for some intelligence range.
That those in other parts of that scale prefer to label what they don't understand by stigmatizing terms like 'mania' without bothering to research is another issue.

 

[Sideways]

What precisely of that feeling makes you feel so unsettled with it?

I think that it seems to be temporary - it doesn't just come and seem to stay, which makes me feel like it must be "something happening" which I don't understand. I know I should probably enjoy it while it lasts, but I'd feel a lot more reassured if I knew what was going on. I don't think I want to chase after it and try and get it back if it's something like hypermania.

Normal would definitely be worth chasing after if that's what it's like...

 

[EveHarrington]

IME hypo mania isn't about efficiency. I've had med induced hypomania and it's a bit chaotic. If you look up info about mania, I think you'll find that it's not a state of high efficiency so much as a state of increased chaos. In examining symptoms, increased efficiency would be desirable, right? If people who were bipolar were highly efficient, it wouldn't be a disorder. Have you known anyone who is truly bipolar? I have. I would never in a million years describe their mania as efficient. I see it as extremely chaotic.

Please be wary of labeling positive emotions as mania. For YEARS I feared being too happy------or even a little happy------because I feared being labeled as bipolar incorrectly again. I have nothing even close to bipolar (anything). I am finally confident in my diagnosis and am able to disregard people who tell me "you're so bipolar". No, I'm not. I have a good doc who hasn't even considered that I'm in the realm of having bipolar emotions.

Seriously------it's CRAZY to fear being too happy! I'm mad that I lived this way for so long. (I'm not saying you're crazy, rather it's crazy that I was afraid of being happy because it could potentially give me another disorder.)

 

[Sideways]

Seriously------it's CRAZY to fear being too happy! I'm mad that I lived this way for so long.

I'm hearing what you're saying about mania and chaos. Yeah, I've had 2 bipolar friends in the past. And while they got lots of stuff done, it was always very chaotic. More often it was starting multiple things and not getting anything complete, or at least completed in a sensible and responsible way. And I have a calmness that they definitely didn't have. There's nothing urgent about what I'm doing, to the contrary; although it could easily look urgent from the outside just because of the sheer increase in function. But it's organised rational calm and effective function, which is what I imagine as the antithesis of mania.

I'm not completely convinced about whether it's dissociative, but my awareness is intact, so I think probably not.

I think it's making me twitchy because it goes away. I don't want to be scared of feeling normal, or happy even. At the same time, if it goes away so fast, it feels a bit like it's just emphasising what I don't have, and how much more difficult my life is than the norm.

Committing to recovery, surely, would increase how much it hangs around and if I believed that was going to happen, then it would be really motivating. But maybe I'm a bit stuck at where you used to be: maybe I'm not persuaded that 'recovery' is going to happen or something. It's great to tell kids they can be anything they want, but at some point, you need to let go of the dream to be an astronaut if you're just no good at maths, you know?

I want it back. But at the same time I don't, because it feels like, if that's happiness? If that's "recovery", I'm never really going to get there.

Obviously have my depression hat on at the moment. Cue Motivational self-talk!

 

[Friday]

I want it back. But at the same time I don't, because it feels like, if that's happiness? If that's "recovery", I'm never really going to get there.

Except you already ARE there. For hours at a time.

For me that's how I know I'm on an uphill climb. I start have good times. A few minutes here, a few hours there. Then more and more frequently, for longer and longer, and more and more regularly. It's not a steady climb, usually? More like leapfrogging. But the occasional hour every few weeks/months turns into a few days together in a row, turns into most days for a little while. And then whole days here and there, start stringing into weeks, and the good times start becoming my normal, the bad times are what's unusual. Util I've got months and years. I still have bad times, but just like the good time is the freaky weekend of WTF? in the middle of a bad run? I have a bad weekend, in the middle of a good run.

 

[Sideways]

@Ronin - for a very long time, whenever anyone raises the concept of giftedness or intelligence or IQ in relation to me, there's a little flap door that it goes through on the way into my brain which directs it straight to the junk pile. Suggestions like that actually make me angry - not sure why.

But I took a moment yesterday to take a look at the concept of giftedness, which I mostly filtered out. But it led me on to the concept of multipotentiality, which a person can have with pretty much any average or over IQ.

And it may be completely unrelated to what I was experiencing here. But it was something I related to a lot; particulate deliberate underachieving, avoidance, and isolation. I actually felt like someone had just fed me an alternative reason why some of these things which I attribute solely to trauma, might be amplified by a much more benign concept that (hurray) isn't even seen as a mental illness!!

So, despite the angry "ignore that" initial reaction - thanks for that. I was given a book in high school by my philosophy teacher called "I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What I Wanted" or something like that. And I learnt in high school that if there's any topic that I want to learn about, there's books I can read which will bring me up to speed. That the only barrier to learning about any given topic is an interest in it. And with the multipotentiality idea, it suddenly feels like, yeah, that's pretty common, and it's probably one of the reasons I isolate, and it's not all ptsd doom and gloom.

So thanks for that. I'll be looking into it further and see if it offers a solution to the chronic "which direction do I go now?" thing that's mind of defined my professional life!

 

[Sideways]

As an aside: I decided earlier this semester that I seem to be pretty good at the landscaping design which I've been studying for a few years. Post-legal career abandonment! But I decided that it's not what I want to "be". And I started looking into opportunities to get into working in a radio station, because I know I'd enjoy that too. At least for a while.

Haha, at one point I did testing for the armed forces and they tried to get me to sign up so they could teach me medicine! Hawhawhaw!!

 

[aut555]

I lived with a bipolar. When you are up, you feel like you can do anything. But it colludes with depression and anger. My ex was bipolar, and a psy md and it runs in his family. He also is a hoarder, a common trait among bp. He has problem restraining spending, he does have some grandiose idealization. But he is a highly functional bp. He doesn't want to take lithium and has told me so.