Bipolar disorder and giftedness

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What is the differential 'diagnosis' between Bipolar Disorder and characteristics of giftedness?

Apparently emotional intensity and sensitivity are characteristics of gifted people. What is your opinion about the expansive mood of mania and intensity of depression in bipolar disorder, vs the emotional range of a gifted person?

Well first of all you can have both and that's even very common.

Second of all a person with Bipolar has "cycles". Especially in Bipolar II they might not be very obvious, but if a person with that disorder makes a mood chart every day then it'll very obvious.
I don't really think the difference would be hard to diagnose if a person just has one of them, I see it more that way that many gifted people have Bipolar.

Just one sample, but worked with someone who had bipolar and it was very obvious. When he was up it was like a runaway freight train--no stopping him!

Thanks for the replies. I'm trying to rewrite my list of early warning signs, just after a manic episode which I failed to predict. It really did feel like the other people were just stupid, and frustrating, and needed to be told to pick up their act. The only symptoms I picked up in myself were a few depressive ones (I tend to get mixed moods). The hospital intake team thought I was hypomanic approaching manic, due to the rate of speech and ideas, my expansive emotions, and irritability. Fair enough, it seems. The mania got worse before treatment kicked in.

I am generally emotionally sensitive anyway, it's hard to tell one from the other, especially from the inside! I do mood-track, on and off, but this time noticeably I missed the manic symptoms. I suppose when I work out these early warning signs they will be written for someone else to monitor me.

I suggest that anyone read Dr.Kay Redfield Jamison's book, Touched with Fire, it goes into great detail on the creativity that sometimes comes with bi-polar disorder.
Dr.Jamison also is bi-polar.
It is a good read and most libraries have it.

Heard of that book. I've always been sceptical about crediting psychological conditions with creativity, but I will say that you are gifted, Misslizard.

I do want to read that book but I am sceptical, I have always been creative but I have only been bipolar for a relatively short period. I do come up with lots of ideas when hypomanic but most of them are crap.

Thank you puddingmouse.
And Sarah81, your ideas are most likely better than you think,self-defeating thoughts can be an issue.And you have always been bi-polar,you just were undiagnosed.I had sleep issues as a child,at one time they thought that children could not be bi- polar,NAMI has really good free literature on the subject and they have good support groups.

I totally think that there's a connection between bipolar disorder and creativity. Obviously, not everybody who is bipolar is a creative artist (and vice versa), but the statistical significance of Jamison's data speaks for itself. Not only does she delve into family pedigrees of mental illness, she also shows how certain famous creative artists' productivity waxed and waned with phases of (hypo)mania and depression.

I find that my creativity waxes and wanes with my mood. When I'm down or up I write poetry, compose music, paint artworks, create videos, etc. I've written hundreds of poems and I used to win prizes for them. I also used to top nearly all my art classes in school. I was well paid for performing my music. Generally speaking I suppose I would have above average intelligence; I consistently score in the top 1-3% for all academic subjects, and have almost straight 7's for my uni subjects (they give you a grade between 1 to 7 where 7 is the highest and 1 is the lowest, 4 is a pass. 7 is usually 85%-90%+. Having a 7.0 average here is like having a 4.0 average in America I think.) I have never gotten lower than a 6 in all my time at uni. At school my exit score was equivalent to 97-99%.

I have read through the book, better than expected, although it is hard to conclusively prove the link. If bipolar disorder has anything to do with circadian rhythms then that may explain why artists are more prone to bipolar disorder than lawyers, since the former keep very erratic timetables for their work. The other thing is that I can see now that hypomania would be very useful for poetry for example, since the mind makes extra links between and among things that others don't see... very easy to come up with good metaphors, and link visual images to words. And I guess any kind of creativity is the same.

Was I always bipolar? I'm going for my first manic/psychosis six years ago, which was undiagnosed and untreated. Before that, the emotional problems I had were consistent with those of gifted children, for example, feeling isolated because I took a stand against the older girls in my class bullying an outcast, then the girl I was protecting left and all there was was little 8yo me against a bunch of hormonal 11yo resentment. Naturally I was somewhat depressed, but I don't remember it being like the depressive crash after the first manic episode of 6 years ago. 6 years ago, I was under a lot of stress under every facet of life, for the first time being without a support network or a salary or friends. As a child, I had consistently good school results and consistently good musical performance, it was not cyclical at all. I guess I always consider that being bipolar started six years ago, that I always had the potential for it perhaps but it only triggered because of stress. If I had not had that level of stress in my life, by choosing a less tumultuous career path and more sensible choices of friends, then arguably I would not have developed bipolar at all. So, I guess whether or not I was always bipolar depends on your definition.

Ok well some ideas I have while hypomanic are good. I was in hospital recently and told the psychiatrists that mania is simply the body's reaction to depression. It tries to maintain homeostasis of mood by starting off a chemical cycle in the brain, cancelling out the effects of depression, at least for a while. It needs a little work - anyone? but the skeleton is there. A lot of my ideas really are crap though. Once I thought I had the secrets to the universe worked out, and wrote them down. When I settled down they made no sense at all. Well that could have been because I wasn't manic enough to understand them, but I tend to think I was in a delusionary state.

I am pretty sure that at least in my case I first developed Bipolar symptoms in puberty.
Befor that I was never depressiv and also never (hypo)manic.

I just write down all my symptoms I can think of I ever had for my psychiatrist and it looks like a "schizotypal/autistic mix" since early childhood, with moodsymptoms starting in puberty.

My Bipolar symtpoms started around 14 years of age.

-Jamison's data being significant means that it is very unlikely that the link between bipolar disorder and creativity is merely due to chance.
-Bipolar disorder almost certainly has a circadian rhythm component to it, and this is a leading area of research, particularly with mania.
-The explanation for poetry and hypomania seems to be the fact that associative thinking has been found to greatly increase during (hypo)mania.
-Mania isn't necessarily "the body's reaction to depression." This doesn't explain unipolar depression, nor does it explain individuals whose first bipolar episode was a manic one rather than a depressive one.

Differences between the high sensivitie of giftedness and bipolar disorder, is propably one of intensitie (Peoples in manic phase can, for example, spend a lot of money on useless things because of their unbrided pathological enthousiasm), and also of triggers. (Highly sensitives peoples would be happy or sad for obvious reasons, less so a bipolar.)

Do you think I'm gifted too?

Show me some of your creative work

-The data is not strong enough to prove there is a causal link one way or the other. There may be a common factor which produces both.
-PDoc wants me to start rhythm therapy. Keeping to a strict schedule. Isn't that common in ASD? The need to keep to a program?
-Associative thinking - that's what I would have said if I could access my full vocabulary, which I can't. It was really hard to read Dr Jamison's book, the page kept spinning. I think the seroquel recently started is causing some processing problems.
-That was one of the better hypomanic ideas. Not nearly as brilliant as it seemed to me at the time, but then at the time, I just really GOT the connectivity, and everything just fell together. What can I salvage from this sinking ship? Firstly, I wasn't trying to explain depression, I was trying to explain mania. At the moment we have many theories to explain depression, but fewer for mania. Secondly the body may react to developing depression, before it becomes an episode, hence why mania can strike first.

Most people have read "The Highly Sensitive Person" by Dr Elaine Aron. (I think that's how you spell it). I want to extrapolate. Let's say, that back in tribal days, you have your 85% of the tribe who are warriors and workers, and 15 % who are too sensitive to do that kind of thing, but the trait is useful to the tribe because sensitive people make good teachers and healers and mystics and so forth. However, the 15% who hold most of the knowledge of the tribe are periodically beaten up on by the savages in the rest of the tribe. Therefore, they are more prone to rejection from the tribe. Under such a stressful situation, a sensitive person might develop depression, and run away and hide in a cave to die. This would be the best thing for the tribe in that case (no chance the 85% are going to change their mind), because it fixes the conflict, and stops predators from coming around. Depression also stops the rejected one from going to the enemy tribe and getting sanctuary in exchange for secrets.

The other option that the sensitive person has on rejection from the tribe is do develop mania. (I'm saying that... The manic state is started by the body in response to the depression, which has started due to the circumstances. I suppose it seems equally likely that the manic state starts from the circumstances). This reaction first gives the person a boost of energy and competence (hypomania) to deal with the situation. If that doesn't work, mania kicks in which allows the person to be considered some kind of powerful mystic due to their energy and their visions. Alternately, it boosts libido allowing the person on the verge of rejection to reproduce ( a lot) before they die. When the body runs out of energy to sustain the mania, then there is the crash into depression, which I am saying was there all along, only hidden by the mania. This may explain mixed episodes.

In conclusion, I will probably have to change my medications, again.