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.
