Bipolar/Aspergers support and chat thread

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I thought the manic episode was ending, but it seems I was wrong. Now I'm thinking I was just feeling the change of hormones as the PMS ended and the monthly curse began.

Tonight I'm more manic than ever. I keep hyperventilating, like I'm getting little mini-anxiety attacks. I had an imaginary conversation with someone and they (the imaginary version of this person who was not actually there) told me that to be honest, they were afraid of me, because I seemed really unpredictable and possibly dangerous. I freaked out. I've always considered myself to be absolutely harmless and gentle and to be told that I might be dangerous was a huge blow, much more so because it came from someone imaginary, which means that somehow it came from my own mind. Scared the hell out of me.

Last night I had terrible nightmares again. I woke up crying, couldn't get back to sleep.

Every little thing is setting me off. I seem to be getting worse rather than better. I barely survived work today. Considering canceling my private lessons after work tomorrow, though I don't want to lose the money (or disappoint my student).

What I feel like is, if you've ever tried psychedelics, the moment the trip begins and the world sort of shifts, and the lights get brighter, and you feel like you can't close your eyes. This will only make sense to people who have tried psychedelics, but if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's like that, except it's lasted for over two weeks now.

I wrote to another doctor. An English friend of mine goes to him. But my friend said he's often out of the city so it might take a few days for him to respond. I'm starting to worry that I need help urgently. I feel stuck in a bad trip. Paranoia all the time, intense anxiety at best.

A tip for everyone who gets manic: watch the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. I have a stash of episodes in reserve for panicky moments, and it's playing in the background right now. It helps a LOT. His voice is so soothing, everything is so safe and comforting, it brings the panic down a lot. All the lovely little things he says are making me cry.

I'm currently waiting for a cup of melissa tea to brew. It's a fairly strong herbal sedative. I'm hoping it will help as well. I've had a couple of beers tonight, was hoping it would calm me down, but no luck. Giving up on that. If the tea doesn't work I may resort to diazapam (valium), but I'm worried that won't help either. Nothing seems strong enough to make me calm down.

Funny i read today that under stimuli/boredom can make one just as much anxious as over stimuli no wonder I'm often so anxious here.
All stimuli ain't the same i asked disability services if I could be a "train conductor" i love the whistle they blow it's funny trains are relatively ok yet bus is hell.

I got an appointment, but it's for Monday morning. So I have to survive until then, then hope he gives me the meds I need, then wait for the meds to kick in. By then I might not even need them.

Canceled all private lessons for the week. I'm losing money here but I can't handle going. Actually the teaching itself would be fine - it's the public transport getting there and back, where all the people turn into reptilian monsters who want to eat me alive...

I told one of my coworkers today about my problems and it turns out she's a nurse, only teaching part-time. She suggested I try mixing melissa with mint to make very strong relaxing tea, take sedatives or tranquilizers if I need to, just to get through the days until this appointment. She has anxiety issues as well which she takes medication for, so she has professional as well as personal knowledge of my situation. She said if I am in need of sedatives, she can get some for me.

It was nice to be able to tell someone what's going on and have them actually understand and offer to help. When I've told a few other friends, they really didn't understand, and although I'm sure they care about me and would help if they could, they had no idea what I needed.

So, counting the days until Monday now. I will survive.......

HYPOMANIA b*****s!! ! f**k YEAH!! !!

After my positive experience sharing my troubles with my co-teacher yesterday, today I decided to be brave and also share them with my other co-teacher.

I got the worst possible response. It's the same one I usually get when I tell someone I'm autistic.

"I used to know someone who had that, and you're nothing like them." It's always followed by a facial expression that either says "so stop making things up for attention" or "so stop being a ridiculous hypochondriac" or "so stop worrying about it, there's nothing wrong with you." (In this case, it was the second one.)

I almost started crying. I had been using every ounce of inner strength and willpower I have, along with what might be a dangerous amount of sedatives, to keep myself under control so I could do my job for the past couple of weeks. I almost started shouting at her when I replied, telling her she had absolutely no idea what I was really going through, and that what she sees is not what's real. I told her I am heavily sedated right now and I'm still fidgety and restless and nervous. She didn't change her expression, but at least she dropped the subject rather than insisting she knows more about my own head than I do based on a single experience with a single unmedicated adolescent person half a lifetime ago.

Now I really deeply regret telling her. I suppose it's probably just paranoia, but I spent the rest of the day feeling like she was judging me. I'm afraid she'll tell other people what I told her. I should have just kept my mouth shut.

Three more days until psych appointment.

I'm so sorry to hear that Kotshka. I really hate those experiences. I've had people deny I could be bipolar too but that was a long time ago when I wasn't sure myself.

I'm becoming manic again and my thoughts going int he direction of synchronicity and existentialism. I feel my sudden interest in philosophy was because of a synchronous event and I can't even remember what led to all this happening. I had about 7 books to read but couldn't feel comfortable reading them (couldn't get the focus) so I picked up Jung's biography that had been sitting in my bookshelf unread for over a whole year. It was during another manic episode. I realized this when I could actually read a book late at night for three hours straight. Then I got interested in philosophy after Jung kept mentioning certain philosophers.
I suppose it happened when I tried to read this book called Of Mind and Music and I begun to pick up on just what philosophy was and I preferred it over the usual regurgitating of facts. I love facts but I love ideas more.

And now I'm trying to find out what I feel is existentialism at all.

Got another gig to shoot tonight too.

All I need to do is change my camera batteries and clean my lenses. Easy. Even if I'm of the over focused manic variant today.

^^^^

when I 1st got put on the pension my previous "workmates" assumed it was due to depression anxiety /panic may look the same to a on looker though I knew I wasn't depressive , having said this I didn't know what I had at the time

Wow. Today I suddenly feel human again. Actually I've been really tired all day. I guess the 2.5 weeks of hardly sleeping or eating took their toll. I've spent most of the evening just relaxing. Playing video games, watching cartoons, drinking a glass of wine and feeling *calm* for the first time in weeks. Fingers crossed it doesn't come back anytime soon.

I'll still go to the doctor on Monday and see what he says. I'm hoping he'll give me some meds to keep on standby for the next time it happens. I don't want to start taking medication when I don't actually need it though.

i'll say it again drinking booze is a no no, you will understand once medicated.

I'm not getting drunk or anything. I don't drink very often. But when I have a beer or a glass of wine, I enjoy it. Hot spiced wine is a winter tradition in this country, and it has plenty of positive effects aside from the alcohol itself. Too much alcohol is dangerous, of course, and that is true for everyone. But I don't think one drink is going to hurt me. I have plenty of experience with drinking, from a single beer with dinner to entire weekends of chugging whiskey and absinthe, and it's never done anything worse than give me a hangover. I keep pretty obsessively close track of my moods and activities, and there's never been a correlation between alcohol and depression or mania. Maybe I'm just lucky enough that it doesn't have that effect on me.

If whatever medication I get interacts with alcohol, then obviously I will not risk an adverse reaction. I made that mistake once back when I was on antidepressants. It's not something I'm about to do again.

you don't have to be drunk one glass can tip you over only worked it out post medicated I'm done with booze, mainly due to a fact I wasn't aware of the ill effects can occur much latter.

Day four now of Hypomania and it's showing no signs of letting up. I don't care. I wanna enjoy this, and I don't wanna fight it. I just wanna live it out.

The problem being though that seven days is the longest I've had. And as great and as powerful as I feel, I know I'm gonna crash. I don't wanna. Anyone else feel great when hypomania, but feel that fear inside when you realize it may be coming to end? You don't want to go down. I don't want to go back to being depressed. EVER. I want to stay this way forever and ever. Carefree, full of energy and power, where I can do anything. I want it to last.

Sure, it's beginning to scare me. I can sense people following me sometimes and I can see shafows of people watching when I turn, before they disapeer fast.

That's never happened before.

I'm sleeping four hours a night max, and I can't stop eating. I've got a whole load of work done, possibly more in the last three days that I did in the last two weeks or so.I can't stop pacing. I almost don't want to sleep, because I'm scared that I'll wake up depressed. I know it's bad to make hypomania worse, but I don't care. I'm tempted to just stay up all night knowing that that makes it worse, and drink s**t loads of coffee.

That's the scary thing. I almost want to loose control, just for a short while. I don't want it ot go. I want it to stay.

I don't know what to do.

I can't speak for depression though I do find it's true when some have said don't fight deperzoniliztion (sp ?) fighting for me at least makes it worst .

-Double post-

Last edited by Otherside on 07 Dec 2013, 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I thought my mood had crashed this morning but apparently not. I'm still manic. Every single sound is pissing me off, bright lights are irritating me, EVERYTHING is irritating me. I'm going insane. I have no idea how the heck I'm gonna deal with going out tomorrow. To a city. To meet someone. In a city full og lots of people. I'm probably gonna end up punching someone if this goes on.

It's just getting out of control. I ran around the house and outside of it butt naked. I've jumped on furniture, I'm pacing, I can't sit still. It's driving me insane. I have little money anyway thank god, so spending hasn't been an issue. Thank god I'm seeing a psych on Monday. I'm still off my meds. This is a mood swing like I had before then. Wild, energetic, full of power and life and energy and where the whole world is some blissful euphoric eutopia and it's all more colourful and brighter and more beautiful and there's a sense of understanding you never had before because everything makes sense because it just does and this will last forever.

You've got to be careful about enjoying hypomania too much because that's when the crash comes much harder. I don't think I even was manic, just happy, so when the feelings of depression started to come it just felt awful and I was confused about where my good mood went.

Today I'm both hormonal and having a mixed mood.

Last night I became pretty paranoid. I kept smelling gas or candle wax, like right up my nostrils. It was so strong. Then noises outside made me become highly anxious. Today I'm still a bit anxious around people. Saw a police car just pull up outside. I thought well that's great for my paranoia.

Friday night was a good night. A really good night. Now I kind of feel like the honey moon is over and there's no way to get it back. Perhaps I was a little hypomanic.