Autism + Bipolar Disorder

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Self-explanatory.
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Having these two would be a double-whammy! I think I may be bipolar, but I've never been able to prove it. Anybody been affected by this?

yup, diagnosed with both.

^ What is it like, out of curiosity?

I was diagnosed with bipolar as a teenager i am a female and currently looking for an AS diagnosis since I do not seem to fit bipolar now that I am not an adult. I am curious to what it is like to have both so I can figure out if its just one or the other or both?

I get hypomania episodes after severe panic attacks.

People with ASD also experience hypomania like moments, it depends on how frequent they are and if it shows up in a pattern throughout the years. This is why I doubt I am bipolar because my hypomania like state only lasts for a few days and can come and go throughout the month, with no pattern or depression following and my interest still interests me. And its mainly just me being hyper. I read on a few sites that hypomania with bipolar usually follows with aggression, agitation, irritability or depression and the person tends to lose interest or get bored in their current fad, where as hyper activity with ASD is consistent and the person loves talking about their interests and do not get bored or agitated with their current fad.

This is just research I have done. Do you always notice it specifically after a panic attack? Would that be considered bipolar? A panic attack isnt really a mood for hypomania to follow. I could be wrong though because I am not an expert as I am just relaying what I have read. Very interesting. I am going to look that up now.

What is your hypomania activity like?

Not all my panic attacks are followed by hypomania, only the most severe ones. My hypomania usually lasts for about three days. When I get hypomania I get extremely happy for no rational reason. I also get an inflated self esteem. I am often full of energy and feel a bit out of control. I'm still in enough control to not do extremely stupid stuff, but I am more impulsive than normal. Hypomania is quite fun for me.

After hypomania I always have an extremely horrible crash. It's the worst feeling in the world. It's like my soul is being attacked by evil spirits. It's nothing like regular depression or stress. When I'm having a crash I'm usually feeling so horrible I can't even cry. I look outwardly normal and I avoid being alone. It often helps me feel better when I'm around people. This is unusual for me because when I'm sad or depressed I usually avoid people. I can often go to school and just do my work like every other day. Regular depression makes it harder to go to school. The one thing that is affected is stuff that I enjoy doing. When I'm having a crash I often don't listen to music at all.

Very interesting. Thanks for the insight! Now do you have both AS and Bipolar or just one?

I don't think I have either disorder. I was diagnosed with ASD as a kid, but I think I'm just a poorly disciplined person with ADHD. Most of my theory of mind issues seem to be related to inattention and my social mistakes are usually caused by impulsivity.

I've heard of other people getting hypomania after a panic attack. I think it's natural for people to crash after mania or hypomania whether they are bipolar or not. I don't think you've actually had hypomania. I have had what you describe, but I didn't get the inflated self-esteem or the crash that follows.

co-morbid conditions can be confusing because they often do interact and influence each other, but the clearest distinction for me between which of my symptoms/experiences are of the autistic variety and which are of the bipolar variety is that the sensory and language processing issues i have are always present. yes, they are more pronounced, more distracting, etc, when i am stressed, but basically they are constantly present. the symptoms of my bipolar disorder on the other hand are very much cyclical and intermittent--now that i've found medications that work for me, i don't experience the hypo-manias and their consequent crushing depressions like i used to when i was younger; but even before i was medicated the extreme swings in mood would come and go, sometimes with long "latent" periods in between in which i experienced less intense, more reasonable emotions and moods. those latent periods, however, got fewer and farther between into my teenage years, until i got diagnosed and started searching for the right pharmaceutical "cocktail" to curb my errant emotional self.

is that helpful?

actually what you are describing sure sounds like bipolar disorder to me, possibly what was called bipolar II in the last DSM (if you don't experience psychotic breaks during manias or depressions--i myself am bipolar type II) or maybe cyclothymia (sort of like bipolar "lite", i suppose).

Are you talking to Devilskiss or me? lol sorry i got confused. I myself was diagnosed with bipolar 2 as well. What is a psychotic break? Since I have been off meds the last two years I have not been depressed or had a hypomanic episode. I get the jitters when I know a special event is coming up or I get energy to leave the house for a few hours, but that takes days of planning. That is more of an AS symptom that I have read. So its not like I have energy or get hyper all of a sudden, its more like the timing is right and I have planned out my attack and now i am taking it into action. When I get hyper I never crash. I just slow down to normal and continue on with what I am excited about, I just space out the interest or find new ways to research/create with it. Now when I was ON medication my whole life, whenever they switched my medication or upped it, I noticed a swift change in my mood. I would be happy and then depressed, I would have energy and then be depressed, I had creativity and then be depressed. Reading back on my journals, it seems my medication was actually giving me symptoms of Bipolar. Whenever I felt really good on a medication, the psychiatrist thought I was having a manic episode so he would up it, then I would be depressed... and it happend over and over. The only time I never had bipolar mood swings was when I was pregnant, both times I went without meds, and after my second pregnancy I decided to see how long it would take for me to "need" my medication so I did not get on it after I had my Daughter. So in a year two months I have had no depression and no manic and I find that just a bit odd. You would think a bipolar women with two children would eventually have an episode of some sort by now.

Maybe. I read the criteria for both of those disorders and I don't really fit them. Part of the criteria says that the episodes can't be caused by environmental causes. All of my hypomania episodes have been caused by panic attacks and all the panic attacks have environmental causes. My hypomania episodes lasted a few days and the crash lasted a few days as well. I think bipolar episodes are longer.

they do have rapid cycling as well its like on and off then on and off etc multiple times in a year and the episodes are shorter.