What is it like to be bipolar?!
Question: My mom was diagnosed with bipolar disorder last year and I am just curious about it. I know that they go through manic and depressive episodes but what exactly does that mean? Can someone explain what the racing thoughts are like?
Answers: My mom was diagnosed with bipolar disorder last year and I am just curious about it. I know that they go through manic and depressive episodes but what exactly does that mean? Can someone explain what the racing thoughts are like?
All I know is that it is terrible to live with. Good luck and I hope that your mom gets better.
I have minor bi polor. it sucks. one moment i will be fine with someone and the next i want to rip their heads off for even saying hi. I also start to shake alot when im getting mad all of a sudden.
I can only speak from my own experiences, but the highs are high and the lows are very low. When you are happy you are almost too happy and then sink into a very low state, almost as a punishment for having the good times. You feel over emotional up or down and cant find middle ground. After years I was finally given good medication, it finds the middle ground for me and I dont get over emotional up or down, its like a miracle for me. The racing thoughts are very hard to describe, its like a second person spoiling your fun and making you see too deeply into everything, and the consequences of each action you make. I wish you and your mom all the luck in finding a good medication such as I did, it is totally treatable but takes time to find the thing that works for each person. (happy pills dont work, she needs something to balance the chemicals that are going wrong in her)
Hi Ashley, I think it is great that you are doing some research on your mums illness.
I have had bi-polar - diagnosed about 20 years now and my manic phases are not so much high / happy but rather, high / enegetic when I have little need for sleep, I do wreckless, daring things that I would not nomally do and I become very fast in my speach and somewhat aggressive towards everyone.
Racing thoughts are when your mind is full of ideas that jump from one thing to the next and its impossible to slow the thoughts down. Sometimes it feels so bad like your head will explode with the activity. Its not the same as hearing voices because the thoughts are your own thoughts.
I hope this helps a bit.
Racing thougths...imagine if you were watching a DVD that was turned up so that it was going 5x as fast as possible. Now switch back and forth between DVDs or back and forth between channels on the TV. Thats probably as close to a description of what it would feel like as could be described.
There are a couple of resources I would like to point you to. There is an organization named the Bipolar and Depression Support Alliance. They have lots of info about the illness and medications used to treat it. Also, I recommend a book called "Unquiet Mind" by Kay Jameson. Dr.Jameson is a psychologist at Harvard who has written a number of books about her personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. I direct all of my patients with bipolar to her books and they always say, "thats just like me!" I think it will give you more of a sense of what the illness is like beyond the science and medication.
I think it is kind of an individual thing....how the illness presents.
For me, racing thoughts are something like a jumbled mess of (often negative) thoughts that crash into each other so that none of them are completed. The more stressed I get, the worse it gets.
Bipolar depression tends to be very intense. For me it has been very persistent since I was little...it is an overwhelmingly dark, hopeless, helpless state of mind. Mood disorders distort perception and thoughts...so a person with depression sees everything through a dark lens...so to speak. The disorder tells you your feelings are facts - "everything really is that bad, things will never get better, everyone would be better off without me, nobody loves me because I am unworthy of love, etc". For me, the good things don't touch me, I can't feel it, they can't come through. The smallest tasks become completely overwhelming and my body feels like it's made of lead. I get very withdrawn, isolating myself. Nothing really makes me feel better.
I have bipolar II, which has hypomanic episodes, not full blown mania. On occasion, it is a euphoric rush, but more often it is intense irritability and agitation.
I also cycle extremely rapidly and have mixed episodes...which are particularly unpleasant. It's not so much up and down moods but the utter exhaustion of depression and hypersensitive irritablity.
Sometimes it really makes you feel crazy. And then sometimes you feel OK and start thinking maybe it wasn't that bad. Then it happens again and it feels like it has always been that bad and will never change.
Accepting the reality of the diagnosis and being compliant with treatment (including meds) is the best thing I can do for myself. This means staying on meds and not going off of them when you start to feel better...a major mistake many with BP make. Who wants to have to take meds every day forever and deal with the side effects of them? It can take a very long time to find the right meds for each person...the process is discouraging but it is so worth it to stick with it.
it's good that you're asking this question because bipolar disorder CAN be genetic.
Being Bi-Polar can be a real pain in the *** at times. Going through manic and depressive episodes differs for everybody with Bi-Polar. Some people cycle rapidly from one to the other and can be very unpredictable with regards to when it's going to happen. After a while, you are going to be able to tell what things happen that trigger your mom's mood swings, and hopefully you'll be able to help her avoid these things so she won't cycle between moods very often. The swings between moods are usually very extreme - the highs are VERY high and the lows are VERY low. If your mom is seeing a good doctor, and she gets put on medicaiton that works well for her, she should be in good shape. A doctor will be able to keep on top of things with her help, she just has to be open and honest with him and let him know how her life is going. She has to let him know about side effects from her meds, how she is feeling, if she feels like she is going to swing either way, etc. That way, the doctor will be able to adjust her medicine accordingly and help her avoid the mood swings that come along with being Bi-Polar.
As for the racing thoughts, they are just that, RACING. It is hard to stay focused on one thing for a very long period of time. Of course this makes it hard for someone to get anything finished because by the time they get the idea in their head that they should start on this task and they do get started on it, their thoughts have already moved on to something else and they don't get the job they've already begun finished. It's not uncommon for someone with Bi-Polar to have many many unfinished projects going on at one time. The racing thoughts can also cause people to have problems sleeping - getting to sleep, staying asleep, etc. This too can be a royal pain.
Once your mom is able to get regulated on some medication and she and her doctor are able to find her the right combination to help her stay at a stable level with her moods, she hsould start feeling like she has more control over her thoughts and her life. She should start feeling better in general.
I personally have been able to start finishing things that have been laying around for several months or even things i started doing a year or two ago now that I have a new medicaiton - however, not only do I have the racing thoughts from my Bi-Polar to deal with, I also have ADHD which just gives me another issue with being able to stay focused on the task at hand. I just make sure that I am very honest about everything with my doctor and she makes sure that she adjusts my meds accordingly. She stays on top of everything by having bloodwork done often which checks to make sure the drug levels in my system are ok, and that I'm not having any side effects in my body that I don't notice myself. I feel very comfortable with both my doctor and my medications at this point in time, and I believe that I currently have it all under control, but again, I have to stay on top of everything all the time and make sure that my doctor knows EVERYTHING.
Good luck to you and your mom, I hope all works out well for you both.
Please no one is bipolar they have bipolar- You are a person you are a women a man a girl a boy a whatever you are not a disease - you may have a disease but you are not the disease Bipolar which is one word is now considered by the insurance and medical world as a medical disease like cancer - diabetes etc it is hard to get people to understand and believe this but that is what it is