Hopefully this will be useful for people to get an inside view on bipolar disorder. For clarity purposes, I have Bipolar II, and am currently medicated with Lamictal (Lamotrigine) and Latuda (Lurasidone), to assist it, along with seeing a psychologist.
What is it like living with bipolar disorder?
Exhausting.
It wasn't until I was properly medicated did I realize how sick I was in hindsight, and how draining it was every day. It's kind of shocking. I didn't really have a genuine grasp on what it was like to be calm. It was very strange to me at first to sort of feel emotionally blank. A month or two ago when I stabalized I remember one day walking to lab and thinking to myself "...
wow is this what
calm feel like? This is WEIRD." I wasn't sure if I liked it because it was so new and oddly quiet. There was nothing in the back of my mind overlaying what I was experiencing, and I could just be calm, present, and feel what came up organically as I interacted with the world in an non overwhelming way.
Looking back, I have had this since I was a little kid, though it didn't get dangerously severe until I got to grad school. When I was little I was diagnosed with Aspergers, it was floated that I had a litany of other disorders that were never formally diagnosed: oppositional defiant disorder, obessive compulsive tendancies are the two I remember. I was extremely moody, I would turn on a dime if something went wrong, and my emotional reactions (positive or negative) were immensely strong. I was either the brightest light of the room, or the darkest corner. All of those diagnoses were wrong. I don't have aspergers after all. Children who are Bipolar often clearly have some sort of mental disorder, but it can never be labeled (I was explained this by my therapist). I had a brief quieting of it from the ages of 13-15, but it started to come back when I was 16. I spent nearly 80 to 90% of my waking time stressed in some manner, and for the last several years it was near 100%. At least once a year I'd have a period where seemingly out of nowhere I would bottom out and think to myself "something is really wrong". People would notice too. There was this constant oppressive force bearing down on me, and would at times become incapacitating. Even when I was happy there was something in the back of my mind making me feel either scared, stressed, worried, or generally preoccupied and removed from the present. It would sometimes be physically painful in a way I can't explain. I had periods where everything would be great, but it was largely a slave to my environment. Things had to be going perfectly for me to feel that way, and even that wasn't a garuntee of feeling good. It would last no longer than a few months, more commonly only a few weeks. I always expected that I'd eventually have a day where it'd fall apart and I'd randomly feel stressed about something.
In the past several years, it was to the point where I would have days where I could barely work or do anything. I'd be sitting at my computer almost hyperventilating. I was so keyed up, I felt like had all this energy I HAD to get out of me, but had no idea how. It was paradoxically paralyzing. I would spend hours almost motionless cycling between the same websites over and over and over hoping something around me would take me out of it. Even things I liked (video games, movies) couldn't scratch the itch and make me feel at ease. It was sheer dumb luck if it worked, and even then it was a cover. If I had to do something stressful, it was a disaster. I could barely do it. I'd be sitting there in physical pain trying to will myself to do something I couldn't do, and have to wait for random windows where I could somehow autopilot through it.
I'd pay for it though. I was constantly drained and tired. I could never get enough sleep. I'd sleep for 9-10 hours a night, sometimes upwards of 12, and I'd wake up exausted. I could never go to bed or wake up consistently at the same time. If I set an alarm and tried to pin it down, I'd become a zombie after a few days. It was often a dreamless sleep where I'd wake up and feel just as I did before I went to bed. I'd have to wait a solid 3-4 hours after waking to feel up and alert. Getting out of bed was a laborious task. If I didn't have something that required me to get up, it'd take hours, and even then it'd be a massive struggle. Forcing past it I'd pay for it throughout the day. At the same time, I never wanted to sleep. I wanted to just stay up all through the night. I would be constantly worn out searching and begging for something to relax with unable to find it, and didn't want to rest until I could. That's not to say I couldn't find it, sometimes I did, but it never lasted long enough.
Even the positive states could be bad. I've never mentioned it before, but I'll mention it now (partly because there'd be a cross reference). During the meetup last summer where I met @
EJCC, Showbread, and BadOctopus, I was hypomanic (though I did not realize it at the time). Things were great, I felt more of my natural self which I hadn't felt in a very long time. Even then, during the entire trip I felt really keyed up and stressed. Pressured. My mind was racing with "what do they think of me? Am I doing this right? Oh do they think this is ok? Ok now I need to do this, no we need to do that, we must keep doing things!" I couldn't quite shake the oppressive feeling bearing down on me either, but I tried and would manage to push it out for periods here and there, but it'd always snap back. It felt like this weight in my chest that if I kept moving I could excape it. I felt sort of "forced" to be excessively on the entire time, and that pressure was really tiring. Those nights when I went to bed I was really worried over what happened which was completely unjustifed and unfounded, but also worried about abstract things that to this day I could not articulate. I did not sleep well at all, but woke up ready to take things on. It was a great time, but even though it was great it felt unhealthy on the inside. That meetup, and the month or so following that was one of the most "up" I ever had, but even then it felt overlayed with a lot of stress that I could somehow bounce out of. I was massively productive and positive. I had a day where I worked in lab for a solid 24.5 hours with no break because I got angry at one of my reactions for not working. Stayed up for 37 hours and thought it was the best thing ever. It lead to a pretty bad crash in the fall that eventually TOTALLY bottomed out this winter.
The lows were the problem, and were WAY more common. This past winter I had severe issues. When I went home for christmas my entire family noticed something was off with me, and were gossiping with each other going "what on earth is wrong with Hard?". Of course, none of them said anything to me directly, and I only found out about this after the fact. I eventually bottomed out so much that I was going to bed at night for several weeks with a razor blade in my hand fighting with myself not to cut myself. I felt I had to justify and prove that I had a problem, but if I went to justify it, it meant I didn't have a problem, which meant I had to prove it and do it meaning I did have a problem. I looped on those thoughts for hours upon hours. I couldn't work. The only reprieve I had was smoking weed in the evening where I'd have a few hours of feeling "normal". Yet it made me feel even more insane, and in a strange way I liked it. It felt like my entire life was falling apart. I had semi-delusional thoughts that all of my friends were against me, and wanted to get rid of it (I say semi, because it turned out they WERE trying to get rid of me, but I blew it out of preportion and it felt like I was dying). I was lurching from feeling furious, snapping at anything that had a pulse, and was so resolute in being "right" that I would not yield one inch to pushback I disagreed with. It made me nearly impossible to be around. My problems even spilled over onto the forums. Not to mention when I was still I felt so horrible that I wanted to writhe around on the floor and scream or cry, yet all my emotions felt locked in place tearing me apart from the inside out. I would wind up hyperventilating but struggling to hide it, which made me feel even worse.
I could go into much more detail but it really was a tortured existence. I still can't believe I had gone so long feeling like that and having no clue that it was legtimately abnormal to the degree that it was. I really thought everyone felt like that, and I was just really shitty at managing it. Since I started taking my meds, things have been worlds better. I still get hiccups in the evening occasionally but I am "reset" each night. My sleep has stabalized significantly, which is what made me realize I had a gazillion sleep problems to begin with all connected to this.
Whats your experience been? Have you come across many stigmas and misconceptions/judgement?
If people give me shit about having Bipolar disorder? Oh ho, they are going to be on the receiving end of none so pleasent things
. I haven't encountered any. However, I am aware there are stigmas so I am mindful of who I speak about it though. Truth be told though, I really don't care what people think about it, because I wouldn't care what a person things about me at all if they judged me for something like that.
I have noticed though, that few people know what entails Bipolar II. When people think of bipolar disorder, they think of type I because of the mania. Bipolar II doesn't get mania, but has a much more chronic course and the depression tends to be very low and much more persistent. With me it was near constant and good periods would simply layer on top of it.
What is it like- what has living with it meant for you?
I haven't really thought about this. It sort of is what it is? I honestly have to strangely credit it with some of my success, because it has forced me to learn how to manage a lot of internal things that people don't often learn. I feel like I had to learn how to be self aware very early in life in order to manage the things my brain through at me, and this internal processing has lead to me meeting a lot of friends and making connections with others.
It means I have been given the short end of the stick in this area of life, and I have to spend more time fixing something that others don't have to. It's fixable and managable though, and pretty much everyone has a problem they have to mitigate. This is simply the one I have to deal with.
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I wasn't going to reply even after being tagged. However, now that Fetus replied, I feel I should as well in respect for her not being the only one. Since I have though, I am going to speak my mind: Frosty, IMO you do not have bipolar disorder, and you spending time focused on it isn't going to help you. You do not show signs of it, and your experiences do not line up with it. I am not a doctor, but my suggestion would be to discuss borderline personality disorder (which does look similar to bipolar on the surface) with your doctor, as that is much more likely towards you feeling better, and to stop relying on the forum for affirmation, attention, and escapism because it clearly is not helping.
