Bipolar

[pentecostal girl]

I have recently diagnosed with bipolar and OCD. However, I was wondering if any of you can tell that you're fixing to start another cycle? If so how do you cope? How often do you have them. Mine seems to be every 3 months

 

[Alive again]

Yes, I have learned my warning signs over time and can moderate and take better care of myself, and sometimes it comes anyway.

Welcome to the forums!!!

 

[Kristen.NewCreation]

I learn from each episode more and more of my symptoms and keep a list of them so that I know what to prepare for when I notice that I'm changing. Recently I came off of a hypomanic episode and straight into a depressive episode, so I learned new things about how I can cope in the future if that happens again.

Have you noticed anything specific for you?

 

[pentecostal girl]

Sometimes I can. I just learned that I apprently cycle every 3 months so I wrote it on my calendar so I could prepare myself every 3 months. However, others times I have no idea when it hits. I can wake up depressed, but I still do my best to push myself to be social and not be confined to my room. It also seems like everything is alot more intense than what it is. A small mistake is drastic in my eyes whenever I am going thru a cycle. Not to mention, I'm stressing my family out because I keep falling back into the same slump. I overspend or I self injure.....it's just too overwhelming sometimes. Does anyone ever feel like that?

 

[Solomon's Portico]

Hi Pentecostal girl,

Yes being overwhelmed is difficult Ive felt it often. Stressing your family out is also not fun either. I have a hard time with figuring out my cycles, they often come quickly my medication helps a lot. but not all the time. I'm going through a depressive state now. Hard to concentrate I try hard to push though it by continuing to do everyday things. I dont know if that will help or not, its just sometimes you just have to ride it out. talking to people helps too. God bless

 

[schrodingers_cat_lives]

Sometimes I can. I just learned that I apprently cycle every 3 months so I wrote it on my calendar so I could prepare myself every 3 months. However, others times I have no idea when it hits. I can wake up depressed, but I still do my best to push myself to be social and not be confined to my room. It also seems like everything is alot more intense than what it is. A small mistake is drastic in my eyes whenever I am going thru a cycle. Not to mention, I'm stressing my family out because I keep falling back into the same slump. I overspend or I self injure.....it's just too overwhelming sometimes. Does anyone ever feel like that?

I'm assuming the overspending occurs during manic phases which is common. I too have the compulsion to do this. If you know this about yourself you can take some steps to be preemptive. For example, if you start to feel the onset of a mania, give your credit cards (if you have them) to someone you trust to hold for you until the mania passes. You may also want to withdraw a certain amount of money from your bank account, put in envelope and have someone hold it for you and ask them to not tell you where it is no matter how much you ask until the mania passes. I think of this compulsion to spend similar to junkie thinking. Mania impairs your judgment and everything you see, seems like the best thing in the world that you simply must have.

Try to exercise some discipline no matter how strong your feeling to shop is by avoiding to walk into stores you like and ask your friends to not invite you to go shopping when you're in that state. I just recently went thru a mania and had the compulsion to spend. i usually do my shopping online, so what i did was something new. Amazon has this wishlist app that you can use for any website, so everytime i went window shopping online, instead of buying something on impulse, i would add it to the wish list or add it to the cart on website, then instead of hitting "check out" i would leave it in the cart, gave myself a few days and then i'd go back to it on a less compulsive day and ask myself: Do i still really need and want this item? Often, i'd end up realizing, i no longer wanted it as bad as i did before. Also, by placing it in the amazon wishlist app it sort of satiated the need to "collect" because i would tell myself, i have it there to look at later and could always purchase it on a later date if i still wanted it, plus, since i had it saved on that list, i didn't feel that it was a lost item i'd miss out on if i didn't buy it then and there. i would also organize the items in order of priority, then add up what everything would add up to. Once you see how much the total is, it might work as a deterrent, since much of overspending occurs on impulse and at different occasions which is why you don't realize how much is being spent. You end up losing track which is why we spend beyond our means once the frenzy takes over.

Now that i'm pretty much out of the mania, i went back to all the saved carts filled with intended purchases and now that i'm sober, i no longer want them....see them as wastes of money and sure am glad i never purchased them.

 

[jsrdrnr]

Sometimes I can tell when I am about to go one way or another, but usually not and I have a lot of mixed episodes. I really hate mixed episodes. When I feel it coming I do the best I can to prepare for it. If I am just hit for it all I can do it just use my coping skills and walk through it. It really is hard sometimes. I am just glad that I don't have to walk through it alone.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

Recently (this January) got diagnosed myself, and now that I've been on Risperdal for 3 months my memory is finally restored enough to backtrack through the years and figure out when I've been hypomanic, semi-depressive, or in a mixed state.

My hypomania seems to be more characterized by irritability than by euphoria. The only instance where I've ever gotten the euphoria when when I went full manic in December. With the irritability, I feel like everybody else's opinion is stupid, shallow, and in need of my correction, and that those people would revise their opinions if only they did a little research or reflection that they are too lazy to do. I become obsessed with making sure that the facts I have and the facts everybody else has are true. So lately, when I start to feel like that, I try to take a chill pill and think about people I love with whom I disagree, and how they might feel if I started shooting my mouth off about how stupid I think they are. That seems to provoke enough guilt to push me into a semi-depressive state, which I can easily recover from by immersing myself in late 80's and 90's culture, because those were the years of my life before I think I started having bipolar symptoms. So long as I can ground myself in memories where the things I enjoyed didn't seem pointless, I can pull out pretty easy.

The mixed states are horrible, though. I start getting relativistic and postmodern, even atheistic in the way I think about my own mind states. (It gets pretty bad, because I'm a behavioral psychologist by profession, so I know exactly how the atheist thinks about the mind.) I start questioning what's real and what isn't. If I start having relativistic thoughts, so far all I've found that works is immersing myself in 80's and 90's culture again. My memories from those years are clear enough to push me back into a sense of reality.

I'm in the process of carefully titrating my coffee dose each morning. The other day, a 7-teaspoon cup threw me into a mixed state that I only got through by going to the video store down the street from my apartment, where they sell all sorts of old Super Nintendo and Playstation games that I used to play. Alcohol also seems to put me in a depressive state, because last Sunday I had a single beer at my associate pastor's house, and I woke up pretty severely depressed. I would titrate alcohol, except that it seems pretty pointless if only a single beer could set me off, and I'm even more afraid of my depressive states than I am of the mixed states, because at least in the mixed states I don't think about suicide.

Oddly enough, thinking about my divorce has zero effect, mainly because the bipolar diagnosis kind of relieves me of all the guilt and questions of self-worth that I felt after my ex named off all the reasons she didn't want to be married to me anymore. Like, I realize that I'm responsible before God for my OCD and irritable tendencies and that they're all forgiven, but it's a relief from depressive self-blame to know that even my decision to marry someone who I felt had questionable beliefs was a decision I made while impaired.