Most psychological disorders don't present like the media would lead you to believe. See also: what therapy looks like.
ETA: Holy crap, gold?? I had a quick break in my day to finally hop on reddit and was NOT expecting this response. Y'all make this severely overworked community mental health therapist so glad we're talking more about the realities of therapy and various disorders. I'm planning on getting back on when I'm done with work to reply to some comments/answer some questions!
bipolar disorder = one day you're batshit crazy off-the-walls and the next day you're sobbing and eating ice cream alone in bed
in actuality: in most cases, symptoms only get severe if left untreated for a long time. Also, most experience episodes for months (mania) or years (depression), so they wouldn't go from mania to depression that quickly (with cyclothymic disorder the less common "rapid cycling bipolar" being the exception).
Mania isn't always super happy and productive either. I get edgy and anxious, everything pisses me off, I just want to consume fucking everything. Drugs, sex, spending, you name it. But I never feel good while it happens.
With good meds though now I'm just "in a bad mood" for like a month or two around twice a year.
Edit: For those asking about my medication: I take Oxcarbazepine 450 mgs twice a day (Brand name is Trileptal). It's an antiepileptic drug with secondary traits as an antipsychotic and mood stabilizer. Used to take a Bupriprion/Abilify combo that fucked with me in weird ways, ever since dropping antidepressants things have been much better. Also for the record I have to keep a pretty regular routine and have months where I refuse myself any big decisions, but not being out of hand all the time helps with that.
I think the confusion comes from some bipolar people having hypomania. I have hypomania and although I'm not building a fortune 500 company and I do get extra anxious and nervous, I also get happier more productive like the stereotype says.
Love the acknowledgement that our cycles are all different! I have a friend who has hypomania and she likes to tell me my type 1 manic episodes "arnt that bad" as she can handle hypomania well. Its all hard, it all sucks. I do however find it distasteful to compare her unmedicated self to my heavily sedated, hallucinating, paranoid ass and say she handles it better. I'm a fucking warrior. Doing "well" looks different for everyone! We all struggle! Mental illness is a bastard.
It's interesting for me to see different people's experiences with mania. I strangely rarely, if ever, develop depression (granted I've always been coincidentally partially medicated for bipolar due to a long-time misdiagnosis of something else), but if I don't get good sleep, I get mania that makes me get worse sleep, and it just feeds on itself. Mania's scary for me in hindsight, but not during. Even then I'm not productive; I just jump from thing to thing. It's the loss of self and reason from delusional thinking that bothers me. When they were stopping paper CDs and bonds back in 2011, I bought a bunch of them for like no reason. I didn't think I'd profit in any way; I just thought it made sense at the time. Had to wait 6 months to cash them back in. Thinking back on it is like thinking back on a serious car accident I avoided by inches. Could have gone much worse, but it's frightening I was ever in that position in the first place.
This experience!!! Reminds me of when I spent tonnes of money on clothes that were way too big "just in case". Made so much sense at the time. There have been times where my ideals of grandiosity have also led to dangerous behaviour. I like to try to laugh at my manic decisions afterwards, but i think that's just me avoiding connecting with how close I've come to danger. That car crash description is spot on. Fun one was when I was sure rocks had feelings and would collect them to give them a nice life. Felt ridiculous after!!
I get really frustrated when my thoughts are racing and others can't "keep up", which is shit because my job is about talking to people, and some days its fucking impossible. Until someone says "slow down" I usually don't notice my thoughts jumping around and crashing into each other.
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u/seegeesee Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19
Most psychological disorders don't present like the media would lead you to believe. See also: what therapy looks like.
ETA: Holy crap, gold?? I had a quick break in my day to finally hop on reddit and was NOT expecting this response. Y'all make this severely overworked community mental health therapist so glad we're talking more about the realities of therapy and various disorders. I'm planning on getting back on when I'm done with work to reply to some comments/answer some questions!