People have bipolar disorder or other mental illness

I have periods of time (usually up to 6 months) where I feel perfect and that I never had an illness, I want to go do this and that, and that I am in charge and in control of everything. However when I get in those moods my previous case worker / counselor and friends would say I’m not thinking right and that I’m manic. I get into very heated arguments with them saying how could everything I feel be because of this illness, and how would they know if they’re not me. After those 6 or so months are up though i have a huge depression for a while and realize that I am indeed ill and want help before I try to do something stupid.

Best Answer

Yep; You’re definately bi-polar

You sound VERY similar to me – I ‘cycle’ around every 4 to 6 months (i have the added fun of borderline personality disorder thrown in too though lol), and my boyfriend – the only one who hasn’t run screaming or mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth when he actually had to experience what it’s like having a basket case for a long term girlfriend – says that I’m either black or white – there is no grey area with me, i’m never just ‘OK’

Right now I am TOTALLY in the middle of some rapidly escalating mania, I haven’t felt this good for ages! I LOVE my extremely high pressured marketing job, I went out this afternoon and closed a deal worth half my quarterly bonus (SWEEEEET) and have been ranting on at my boyfriend that he needs to quit his job and start up his own business, to the degree that I have started putting together a 3 year financial proposal and have half a lever arch file full of research accumulated over the last couple of weeks or so.

Mania?? Hell yeah, and I love it, but I also totally get what you mean about how others reaction to it just f**king p*sses you off! To me (just a matter of opinion having lived with bi-polar for about 12 years now and i’m 25) you kind of sound like someone who hasn’t really accepted your ‘illness’ yet (i hate that term, i much prefer being called plain old mental than ILL lol )

The way I did was by embracing it. So when my mood starts to change, instead of protesting that i’m fine every time someone who knows me like a good book looks at me sideways and raises their eyebrows, I go, ‘yeah yeah, i’m coming up again’ and I just (dare i say it) enjoy it!

Because I know that in about 3 more months I am literally going to wake up one day and start obsessing over which knife in the kitchen is the sharpest and despairing about why the world hates me Those months are the darkest of my life. The prozac and the lithium come out, I spend months in a black hole, I don’t go out, i start getting hysterical if someone dares to make any sort of MINUTELY critical comment about my behaviour/mood/hair/cooking.

Don’t get me wrong – I have had countless different jobs because when im depressed i cant motivate myself to get out of bed half the time, I have two arms covered in scars from cutting so always wear long sleves for work, and I only have 1 friends who REALLY gets me, only becuse she had quite bad depression when she was a teenager. So i don’t LIKE being this way. But you kind of have to say to yourself, you know what, this is my life. I can’t make the madness go away unless i’m prepared to completely top myself (or give myself a home-made lobotamy and be prepared to live the rest of my existence in a vegetative state urinating on myself all day), and as i’m not prepared to do either of those things, I need to work out how to make it work for me.

When my bf starts noticing that I’m going out getting wasted more, bringing home shopping bags every saturday having conveniently ‘lost’ the reciept, or generally bouncing off the walls, we have this agreement where I am not allowed my credit card (i still have my debit card incase i actually NEED something), and he is allowed to tell my parents that ‘it’s happening again’ so they know whats happening even though i don’t live at home anymore lol.

The only advice I can give you about when you are down is something I do – I have this A3 printed bit of paper that gets stuck on the kitchen wall that says ‘it’s not forever’. It reminds me that OK, I don’t have to be sociable, and I dont have to be happy, and i dont have to get out of bed AT ALL on a weekend – BUT I won’t feel like this forever, and if i can just hold on and NOT do something dumb, and hibernate the crappy bit out, i’ll be back to crazy town in a few months and planning my next adventure

Good luck hun xxxx You will be fine believe in yourself and don’t be afraid to talk to people – in my experience, when you’re of dubious sanity like we are, the ones who care are usually right… Cousellors/thrapists dont work for me because of the borderline personality disorder – even when I am SUPER happy I get confrontational, aggressive, sadistic and manipulative towards anyone critical/talking to me like i’m five/ interrupting my joyful mood! But if it works for you, stick with it!! I still find talking to my bf helps (mainly becuse he learned quite quickly that it’s a one way conversation, i dont actually want his placatory nonsense), and sometimes all you need is someone to listen while you unburden yourself, then keep their opinions to themselves and let you go back to business