What does Bipolar Disorder feel like?

What does being bipolar feel like?

I get this question a lot. You may have seen some of the symptoms on the chart from my last post and thought, “Well, everyone experiences that from time to time,” which is true of most of the symptoms on the chart, but it’s about how those symptoms are experienced that determines whether or not you’re dealing with bipolar disorder.

There are a few things that make bipolar disorder different from normal mood changes:

First, bipolar moods don’t typically match up with what’s happening in your life—there’s a disconnect between what you feel and what is happening.

Second, the moods you experience are extreme and seem to come and go without reason. Bipolar moods aren’t usually a reaction to anything like normal moods, but they can be triggered, so there’s not always a total disconnect. Eventually though, there probably will be, because mood states last for weeks or even months at a time in normal-cycling bipolar disorder.

And that’s another thing about bipolar disorder: moods fall on their own sort of cycle, kind of like a period, but with emotions instead of blood.

While people who aren’t bipolar can experience extreme moods, they are almost always triggered by some event in the person’s life. It’s a totally normal, sane reaction to be depressed when, say for example, your pet dies. It’s normal to feel good in response to things going well in your life, such as getting a job you wanted. What’s not normal is laughing and feeling giddy at a funeral or hysterically crying and wanting to kill yourself even though you just got accepted into college.

In my own experience with Type 2 Bipolar Disorder, something SUPER small can set me off (like dropping a spoon on the floor that I was going to eat with), I have a reaction that is WAY out of proportion to what happened, and I stay in that mood for a week or longer.

Either I’m set off, or I fall into a cycle where my moods rotate every week or two weeks. Typically, I have a week where I feel pretty good; I have a spring in my step, I’m happy, I smile at people, I talk, the world is bright, I get things done. That progresses into a week of anger and irritability, where even the sound of another person’s voice annoys me and I just want to be left alone. Then, I spend at least two weeks in severe depression, having random bouts of hysterical crying and wanting to kill myself. Between all that, I have some periods of normalcy, too, but I don’t really notice them as much.

Another thing that happens to me is I stop reacting to what’s going on around me. I remember one time I was hypomanic for a few months, even though a lot of bad things were happening in my life at the time. I was pretty much unaffected though, because of my hypomania. I’ve also had times where everything is really going well, and I’m debilitatingly depressed. It goes both ways. If my cycle is set for depression, I’m probably going to be depressed regardless of what happens.

But since being put on an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer, I’ve kept a pretty even keel. I don’t feel extremely sensitive and emotional like I did before, and I don’t have crying spells like I used to. Though, I also don’t have days where I feel like everything is perfect and the world cannot possibly get any more beautiful. The tradeoff is worth it to me though, because I’m more productive now than I ever was when I was hypomanic.

So, in general, that’s what being bipolar feels like in my own experience. I’m not saying that’s what it’s like for everyone with bipolar, but if you ever find yourself feeling like your emotions run like clockwork and are amplified, you should probably talk to someone and try to get some help. You’ll be better off in the long run, even if you don’t have bipolar disorder.