The beginning of mania? How do you deal?

Hi @fluffyunicorn, welcome to the forums. Great name! Childhood toy? Random thought? Endearing nickname? Whatever the reason for your name, it's a great choice.

We have quite a few wise members on here who would relate to your experiences. There was a recent thread by @Former-Member talking about her diagnosis that is worth a read. You can find it here. Lots of interesting perspectives and some links to other relevant discussions.

If @MoonGal, @Kurra, @mrkotter @BeeGee or @Silenus are around they might be able to pop in and say hello. I'm pretty sure they've lived the highs and lows and have learned a few lessons along the way.

Your description of the manic phase is almost textbook. Just reading it gave me a bit of a rush! But, like you say, the high is followed by the low and it's often not worth it.

Sounds smart to get an earlier appointment with your psychiatrist. Did that work out?

Mania is so seductive. After awhile you know it's happening but you don't want to stop doing the things you are doing even though you know all the consequences.

It's hard to find the right people to talk to. Finding people that can understand is hard. I had to explain to my boss that yes, I understand that you don't want me working long hours but I'm running a little hot so if you don't send me home I will be working those hours. My boss knows my diagnosis but it still took a bit to explain the situation to her. Which made it really tough.

I have found people in my private life that are great and understand but only a handful, it's not something all my friends know - not even all my close friends know. It's good to talk here as well.

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@fluffyunicorn wrote:

Does anybody else get like this and how the hell do you stop it?! I'd love to hear about your highs. I want to feel normal.

Hugs to everyone

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Yep, I'm also type 1. $50k in the hole one year. Unfortunately I don't get the entire I want to have sex with anything that breathes thing. That's probably a good thing. Otherwise I'm like you. I used to do weeks on end with less that 4 hours sleep a night. Sometimes I wouldn't sleep. I have no idea what I did because it was nothing productive really. Then crash. Always a crash. The bigger the high the bigger the crash.

Funnily enough the embarrassment fades. The people that care about you and are your friends will forgive you for the things you said and did. The others? Who cares, they aren't your friends.

I try to just roll with it. Why beat yourself up over something that isn't your fault? I find it only makes things worse. I spent the day feeling really negative. It was all in my head but I don't worry about it so much. I know being in your situation is very serious but try not to be hard on yourself.

Getting better? I'm not going to lie it takes hard work to get better. Very hard work. It took me about three years to get on top of it. It takes perserverance. It's a grind with no obvious payoffs at first. It might even get worse before it gets better. I found getting a good doctor, taking my meds no matter the side effects, and a very good psychologist made me better.

I'm not trying to say it's all too hard - you can get better I just want to be realistic about what it takes.

p.s. About your studies: talk to someone at uni. In this situation they will be very accomodating for any extension you need. It happened to me before - at one point the wiped six months of university fees (after the census date) because I fell really ill.

I just want to add:

@fluffyunicorn this must be a really hard and confusing time for you. I wish someone said the following to me when I was in your shoes:

@fluffyunicorn you are still an incredible, worthwhile, and great person. The illness does not change how much of a worthwhile person you are. Your personality and the values you hold are not changed by your illness. You will get better and you should be proud of yourself.

That's a really great point @mrkotter. Thank you.

Ahoy there @fluffyunicorn great name btw just wondering if its a refference to the unicorn fluffy toy from deadpool movie hahahahaha

anyways im GonePirate or GP for short i have bipolar type 1 aswell

got it in spades

and from my experiance starting a new med can often trigger a high

ive noticed that in myself over the last 6 years since ive been doing the whole mental health treatment thing

your right when you say the down side gets more coverage too

i thinks thats just because when you feel 'good' or high you tend not to feel the need to like talk about it

i often get swept up in the wave of mania

early intervention and identification of mania is key and a great skill to have

kudos for that

awareness of self and awareness of emotion is a valuable weapon in our arsenal during the battles with bipolar

those darn highs aye

darn beautiful

darn deadly

hahaha allow me to elaborate

i have noticed the patterns of bipolar highs and lows sinc ei was 15

felt like three different people at times

the loud and life of the party larikan who drinks like a fish takes drugs and f@#ks as much as one can f@#k

this person spends money like its going out of fashion i spent 4k in a month on random irrelevant shizzz

burn through paychecks as i burn through bridges

losing relationships with friends and family as i chase the high into the up most heights it can reach

i feel invincible like tomorow doesnt matter its all about the ever present here and now

this person has earnt me many addictions

but has also given me a great deal of joy

in these highs i feel my mind open

it floods with ideas

i get a drive inside myself that no one can dissuade

i have a muse who whispers sweet magic into my ear as entire story concepts and worlds appear in my mind and i just write and write for days on end

im confident

anxiety dissapears

im outgoing

and im happy

oh how i am happy

but there is no joy in existance without a down side

especially for those with bipolar

my highs can get too high and go psychotic

ive found myself in a psychosis three times in my life

not fun

not happy

very very dangerous

thats why i tried meds

and stuck it out

trying about 7 different anti depressents

and 3 anti psychotics

an 2 mood stabilisers

i still to this day cannot identify many of the early warning signs of mania

i can however limit the dangers

and limit the damage done to myself socially emotionally and physically

ive never had a credit card so i cant get into any debt

and i direct debit my bills as soon as im paid each fortnight so i can never fall behind on them

i tell my friends those close true friends where im at so they can 'watch over me' and make sure im not goin totally awol or going pirate

i have support in place just incase

psychologist and psychiatirst

case worker and peer support

for me its not about avoiding the highs

its all about harm minimisation if that makes sense

anyway i feel ive rambled long enough

got any questions just shoot away

and remember... we are not bipolar, we just have bipolar

Thanks so much for your reply @Former-Member!

It's actually a wifi password that came with a friends modem, I really took a liking to it haha. Just having a read of Flower's thread now, some great advice in there!!

I couldn't get any earlier app with my psych but they are going to see if any of the other practitioners at the clinic have an earlier slot, I probably didn't explain to them the extent of how I'm feeling.. Took my medication a little earlier than usually last night and slept a full 10 hours, feeling pretty calm this morning. I'm normally pretty hyper from lunch til bed but I've woken up with a head cold so maybe today will be a little more mellow!

Again, really appreciate you taking the time to reply 🙂

@mrkotter

Seductive is the perfect word for it hey, you know it's not right but you're feeling so good that nothing can bring you down. That's really brave to share it with your boss, definitely a smart idea. I think I'll explain it to somebody at uni for sure, there are days when I can't concentrate and there have been a few times where it's impossible to make it there at all. I actually failed a few units in my first year coz I crashed hard during exams, I had no way to explain what was going on and just had to accept that I performed poorly.

Geez 50K!! That's impressive. I've always been pretty irresponsible with money but before my diagnosis I just assumed I was going through phases of wanting things and then saving. Looking back the 4 pairs of $150 dollar high heels I bought in one go when I was in year 12 probably weren't a necessity haha.

It's true that your real friends will forgive you. When I'm on a low I get really bad anxiety about what everybody must think, I guess it will take a little bit of time to learn that other peoples opinions shouldn't matter. Do you know if most people with bipolar get the anxious thoughts too?

Do you mind me asking about your treatment? At the moment I'm just seeing a psychiatrist kind of sporadically, do you see a doctor for medication and then a psychologist for therapy? I've not being doing any kind of therapy so far and as much as I think my psychiatrist is great I'd love to talk to somebody on the regular. Would you recommend a psychologist or a counsellor or something?

Thanks so much for your reply 🙂

@GonePirate hahah it isn't but that is a much better story than mine! Actually a movie I've been meaning to watch.

Thank you so much for your honest words, really spoke to me.

I don't know how to insert a quote but when you say you've felt like three different people at times.. That's actually what I said to the counsellor the first time I ever went to talk to somebody about it!

It's like there's a good high where I'm flying up in the clouds and I'm so untouchable, everybody wants to be my best friend and I'm careless but it doesn't matter because I feel incredible and I'm having a great time so why would I ever stop the partying or the sex or the spending money.

And then there's a bad high where I'm irritable and angry, nothing anybody does is good enough and nobody is moving fast enough for me to get anywhere or do anything. I've ruined so many relationships with friends when I've gotten like this saying and doing horrible things. And the obsession with sex is like nothing I can explain. I completely destroyed my last relationship, cracking tantrums when my ex wasn't keeping up to me. I would stay up for whole nights crying thinking there's no way he could possibly have loved me if he didn't want to go again and again and again. I've been single the last two years and while it's better this way - I'm not hurting somebody else, I feel like it's horrible for my own wellbeing coz I can go out and do what ever it is I want with no repercussions. It makes the low that comes after that much worse, the self loathing and thoughts that nobody cares for me and nobody ever will.

Do you have a partner? I've just started dating somebody new and I haven't told him yet because I had been really well, he's an amazing guy and I'm scared because I don't want to hurt him but I feel like with me it's inevitable.

What were your psychotic episodes like? When my psychiatrist asked me if I'd ever had any I said no but after reading a few peoples stories I think I may have had one.. I was on holiday in Spain with friends and I'd been reading one of those trashy romance novels where this girl fell in love with the owner of a nightclub. Fast forwards a couple of hours and we are at a club still relatively sober but I was feeling out of this world and I tried to buy a drink and then when they asked me to pay I said oh no I don't have to pay, my boyfriend owns this club and they gave me the strangest look but I believed it and insisted that he did and they should ask him and I just took the drink and walked away. The whole holiday from that point onwards was like a dream. Mortifying to look back on.

No credit card is a brilliant idea, I have never owned one and a few times I've thought about it but it would end disastrously.

It's great to hear with treatment you're doing okay, there are moments when I'm not 100% convinced I should be taking medication but I know that it would be stupid of me to stop. The last depression I had before I started out on them was so rough, a number of times I thought about how wonderful it would be to go for a drive and simply run off the road and into a tree. Just have to keep telling myself that w/o meds the risk of feeling that way again is so much higher.

Sorry for the novel, it's so great to relate to somebody. Like I said I could never properly explain half of this to my friends haha.

We are not bipolar, we just have it. I like that. 🙂

on the topic of psychosis delusions and psychotic breaks

ive had three in my life

two were mild delusional voice hearing psychosis times

but one

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

it was intense

its where i got my name from Gone Pirate i had gone pirate

it started slow

they usually do

if you just woke up one day in a full blown psychosis i think you would feel it fake and not real

but the subtl change in perspective that adds more and more layers each day is alot more convincing

i was very interested and reading baout past lives and deja vu and shizz

i began to feel grandiose as i do sometimes in mania

i was seeing messages for me in everyday things

lines of words

letters

messages

the internet

like something or someone was trying to speak to me

three or four days in a saw a psychic palm reader

she said i was an old soul in a young body and i had lived many lives before this one

i was flooded with thoughts and feelings often contradictory

i became to determine my past life was one of them anyway i was a pirate

i had a pirate name

and a pirate birthday

i had pirate friends

and pirate things i wanted to do

as the delusion grew paranoia set in

what if people find out about this

the ancestors of my enemies

the government

the hospital

i couldnt tell anyone about it

not my fmily or friends

the past life intensified and i bagan to vividly dream memories

the memories became walking dreams when i was awake

visual and auditory hallucinations

then came the clincher

one day my real life had been determined to be no longer valid and neccesary there was nothing left to salvage and i had a complete and total break of reality

the next two weeks i was a pirate

i tried to sail down a river to the sea on an inflatable dingy fueled by rum and port dressed in a raggy shirt and brown trousers and a drizabone trench coat and pirate hat

i ended up three hours down stream

well it took three hours to walk back to my car anyways

i drove home frustrated and confused as to what had happened and how i even got there

my friends who had noticed my strange and growing ever stranger behaviour confiscated my alcohol

they sent me to my room and watched me for three days over a logn weekend

my at the time housemate

he spoke to me challenging the delusion with evidence and proof

i was certain he was an enemy of me and my mind trying to diffuse me from figuring out what it was my past life as a pirate was getting close to

i was still insanely paranoid

but i had began to receed from the delusion

the auditory and visual hallucinations stopped

and i became aware of my own actions and life again

i broke down

full mental breakdown

this all lasted about 2 months and i spent a further 2 months in my room barely moving and barely eating

i began to feel better and sought help but i often hid the extent of my psychosis from my treatment team

lying or downplaying elements

pretty much a more suitable existence popped out of my head so i opted to abandon reality subconsiously and latch onto the delusional world of fabrication

scary how tangible and pliable reality can be

we make it and we break it

it took me from start to finish about 5 months

the slow ramp up the intense middle the come down the re normalising

...

and the ahrdest part about this isnt that i forgot who i was

its that i forgot about my son... thats what triggered it my ex said i would never see my son again and that she was moving to another state to escape me and i will never find them

that is the news that broke my universe