What does Bipolar Mania/Hypomania actually look like?
Sometimes, reading lists of symptoms is hard to relate to in your personal life. Especially for mania. "grandiose and delusional," "may experience hallucinations," and "become life-impede-ingly fixated on a subject" are all terms that are difficult to recognize in your life as they happen. Thus, I figured that sharing a few excerpts of my experiences may help! Or at least contribute to destigmatizing bipolar people as insane maniacs who are all on cocaine, regularly threaten to commit sui and homicide, and are generally incomprehensible.
CW: depictions of dissociation, hallucinations, psychotic symptoms, and mentions of self harm
"Feeling much more active, energetic, or agitated than usual."
Almost every person experiences this symptom in both hypomania and mania, as it is a staple in being manic. One time, last year, while I was manic, I began doing 2 hours of at-home intensive exercising every single day at roughly 11pm. I was so much more fidgety, did really well at sports, and very, very irritable during this time. It seemed that I simply could not get all of the energy out of my body. When I would think about a specific experience that happened with my dad, I was filled with such unbridled rage that I couldn't look at him for a week in fear of tackling and punching him. The rage just wouldn't let up. At all. I was pissed in the morning till I went to sleep at 3am. For a month. I couldn't stop thinking about it, even when my thoughts were scattered and incomprehensible.
"Feeling a distorted sense of well-being or too self-confident."
This always edges towards psychosis for me. The grandiose thinking of "I'm on top of the world!" is not an express thought that everyone has, but many have thoughts along the lines of "I'm feeling so much hotter now than before," and/or "I could cut my hand to its tendons and not even feel it." The first is an example of well-being, while the second is self-confidence that leans towards psychosis. During the same manic episode last year, I believed that I was more than human. Genuinely. I thought I was actually a divine deity who was trapped in a human vessel and that I was banished from the place of 'my kind.' I believed that my friends were so much better than me that I could never hope to achieve their greatness, but I was doing perfectly well and could do anything I wanted. Most of my actual thought were small, almost subconscious thoughts like "I bet if I walked into oncoming traffic, those cars wouldn't even be able to touch me, let alone hurt me," "I think I could put this needle all the way though my palm and not even bleed," and "everyone around me is fucking stupid, such lowly humans should be fearing me, but yet they see me as an equal" in the more extreme events. I thought I could do things that were physically impossible, and that I was just... better in every capacity.
"Needing much less sleep than usual."
Most times, media depicts this symptom as not sleeping for 4-5 days until collapsing and sleeping for ~3 hours before doing another all-nighter. While I know that does happen to many people, my experience is a little less drastic. For someone who already sleeps 5-7 hours a night, more often 5 than 7, I never even thought I was affected by this. But just a couple weeks ago I had a hypomanic episode (I have experienced this symptom during ever manic episode, but this is the most recent and thus easiest to explain). Over the week, I suddenly started having to force myself to go to sleep at 4-5am after not being tired whatsoever, just to wake up at 8:00-8:30am every day feeling fully rested. The latest I will go to sleep normally is 2:30am, and only on days where I don't have to wake up until 9:00am or so. Thus, 3-4 hours of sleep for several consecutive nights was a drastic difference, about 40% less to be specific. So, for people who sleep a solid 8-10 hours every night, but suddenly need 5-6 hours? That would be a concern for mania if accompanied by other symptoms. My advice is there is any concern is to look at the percentage difference between a normal night's sleep and the period of sleep that is causing concern.
"Being unusually talkative and talking fast."
This is also something that is very obvious when portrayed in media, and is one of the few things that I can recognize during my manic episodes. For many people, this is also one of the most outwardly expressed symptoms of their mania/hypomania. For me, I am already a very talkative person who happens to yap a lot and relatively quickly. The difference is that I can't stop. I just keep rambling on and on and will make myself lightheaded because I don't breathe enough. My speed does pick up slightly, and I will say thing aloud that I would normally never share with others. Personal details of my life, bluntness about them and their lives, and excessive detail of whatever I am thinking about at the time. Since I happen to be Really Fucking Autistic, as my friends like to remind me, I do a lot of analysis on people's speech patterns, especially my own. Thus, I can confidently say that my speech quickens slightly, and my speech pattern consists of fragments and a lot of incredibly long run-on sentences that would normally wouldn't happen. For many who don't talk all the time, this symptom would be much more noticeable; in my case, no one noticed that I was talking too fast before my mind caught up, nor could I stop talking.
"Having racing thoughts or jumping quickly from one topic to another."
Again, another very depicted trait in media. I find that most everyone experiences this symptom to a degree in both mania and hypomania. For me, this symptom is very intimately related to quickened speech. In every manic and hypomanic episode, there are times where I am so heavily dissociated that I can barely think at all, but every single episode comes with a period of intense brain activity too. These thoughts all overlap each other, are very fragmented, and feel like they're moving so fast that I can't even comprehend what it is I am thinking. This background noise normally includes static, music of some sort, conscious thought fragments (2-4 at a time), and what I am actually trying to focus on. All at once. This ensues all day and night, leaving me fairly overstimulated and accentuates all of my other symptoms. In addition to the overlapping thoughts, I find myself being stuck in these "thought loops" as I have coined them. I can only consciously think about one thing over and over again for hours or days. Usually it incites the rage mentioned earlier, but other times I will be stuck thinking one word over and over. For me, it is "running" and "and over," which I find to be ironic. When this happens, I will have a lot of the thought fragments muddled with words like "run," and then I will get stuck thinking "runrunrunrunningrunningrunningrunrunrunningrunningrunning" for several seconds to about 10 minutes until I snap out of it and can continue my stream of words. The severity of the background noise and thought loops fully depend on how severe my manic and hypomanic episodes are.
"Being easy to distract."
This, too, is intimately related to the previous symptom. Since mania and hypomania cause incredibly fast, discombobulated thinking that is overlapping and generally considered incomprehensible, people are particularly prone to distractibility. One time, during a manic episode a couple years ago, I tried to clean my room, but ended up walked around in circles for 3 hours, ending up with a more cluttered room than what I began with. I kept rediscovering items previously forgotten about, tinkering with them, and as I tried to put them back or find a new space for it, I found another forgotten trinket to tinker with. This happens every single day, where assignments and chores and projects would be left half-completed only to be rediscovered 30 minutes later and left again because another forgotten item was within my vision as soon as I tried to work on it. Since people's heads are practically spinning off their spines, it's incredibly hard to finish a single task when there is too much going on in their head to even fully think about the task in the first place.
"Making poor decisions."
I find this symptom to be even more vague than normal. Usually, poor decision making is caused by a lack of impulse-control, excessive susceptibility to peer-pressure, and over-confidence that allows such bad ideas in the first place. All of such causes have been addressed in previous symptoms through number 2 and 6 specifically. But, the poor decisions are not necessarily the most defined. For me, a particularly long manic episode when I was in 9th grade caused me to be bored and want to write some horrendous, mind-boggling fanfics. My friends thought that was hilarious and gave me like 3 words of encouragement, so I ended up writing an r-rated Hitler/My friend omegaverse, among others, that would have never happened under normal circumstances. There was a google doc of all the fics that was shared amongst my friend groups and eventually found its way to some people in Hawaii who opened the doc with their school account and caused the principal to voice memo every parent whose child had read the doc with express concern, and caused me to be blacklisted from that school. That, I would say, was an objectively poor decision. But other examples of poor decision making is spending money on things you would never have otherwise, going back to substances that were previously abstained from, starting addictive substances (your friendly reminder that any addictive substance is extremely harmful to people with bipolar precisely because this situation is not uncommon, where someone will try vaping or drinking or smoking a blunt while manic because a friend said to try it, or out of their own accord, and then very quickly become drastically addicted and unable to stop for any meaningful length of time since future manic episodes reduce impulse control and thus the cycle continues. If you're bipolar, or wondering if you do, that would be an excellent sign to not do addictive substances.), gambling (again, don't do this), unsafe sex, reverting to selfharm, destroying expensive items 'just to feel something,' and more. Not every bad decision is manic-caused, any it really goes by a case-by-case basis. But, if there is a particularly strong urge to go back to something, then that should cause concern.
All of these symptoms come from Mayo Clinic: Bipolar Disorder
In addition to the listed symptoms, I find that these attributes almost always accompany my manic and hypomanic episodes:
Anxiety.
I am not a particularly anxious person, but when I have an episode, I find that panic attacks and anxiety attacks happen fairly regularly. A couple notable points was an anxiety attack when I was 12 that lasted 18 hours, and another anxiety attack following a panic attack that lasted 3 full days. There is underlying anxiety that makes my resting heartbeat raise 20-30 bpm, and leads to certain delusions and irrational fears.
Delusions.
My manic episodes always come with delusions, while my hypomanic episodes aren't guaranteed delusions. Usually, these are anxiety induced, but they are also induced by an extremely elevated sense of self (see: when I was convinced that I was a higher being than humans, and thought I wasn't meant to be among the mortal). Most delusions I have are caused by my racing thoughts. I'll text my friends excessively throughout the day from such racing thoughts and increased talkativeness, then when they don't respond that day, I will be convinced that I must have done something offensive and wrong on accident, and that the people around me all hate me and are out to get me. This leads to me sending long, heartfelt apologies for vague, "anything I could have done to make you mad," reasons. This exact scenario has happened at least 3 times to me.
Hallucinations.
Hallucinations are a fairly uncommon symptom of mania, usually accompanying psychosis. I have had one (1) instance of hallucinating when I was 11. I was dissociating heavily while manic and decided to lay down to sleep, my conscious ended up watching myself try to sleep while an all-black entity that I considered to have been God, or at least a higher deity than I, spoke to me about the fragility of mortality, and that it was too soon to leave my mortal body. That shit scared me for 4 years. I was genuinely convinced I had met God for 3 years. Now, because I do not have a lot of experience with hallucinations, I cannot conclude anything from this experience or offer advice. But, I am positive that it was mania-induced and likely caused by my bordering-psychosis symptoms.
Grandiose sense of self and ideas.
I was surprised to not see this specific symptom listed on Mayo Clinic, but every single hypomanic and manic episode has always included an abundance of "I am truly so much more than I was meant to be." Where I think I am better than everyone else. It is kind of included in number 2, but not exactly. Manic people generally think that they are an elevated being above regular people. In addition, all of my episodes cause me to start several new, large projects that I am convinced that I will finish. One time, I started 3 short stories (planned for them to be around 15-20k words each), 4 very detailed art projects, began learning Finnish, and begun learning how to code in C++ so that I could create my own website. All within a week. The art got completed, but the rest of my aspirations were a little too far out of my league.
Brain Fog.
The most characteristic aspect of my manic and hypomanic episodes has always been the brain fog that accompanies it. During the first couple days of an oncoming episode, I will depersonalize heavily and have this brain fog that inhibits my thinking, it makes me feel like the way I imagine eating 3x the serving size of edibles makes someone feel. I am literally running on autopilot, and when the rest of my symptoms begin making their appearance, the brain fog simply covers the background noise and causes me to be heavily under-stimulated and over-stimulated at the same time (i.e. the hyperpop music is being blasted into my ears but there isn't enough music and yet the feeling of my arm skin is too much for my nerves and I am going to rip my skin off). This brain fog makes me uncharacteristic and just... not myself. Many times, I do not feel that my gender fits me anymore and will request that people do not use pronouns for me (I literally dissociate so hard that I lose my gender lmao). The closest thing to compare it to is when I am pretending to be myself because the brain fog is inhibiting any attempt at actually being myself.
Memory Loss.
Finally, after my manic episodes, I always forget everything that happened during a manic episode. Which is how I know it's over. The brain fog lifts, and I have a brief realization of "what the fuck did I just do," before forgetting everything in the past 2-4 months (or however long my manic episode lasted. One time it was 8 months, another time it was 10 days). I will only remember details that I am consciously thinking about during my brief period between the brain fog being lifted, my realization, and The Forgetting. Now, it's not like I forget that I met x and started working at y. But things I did at home, the art and language learning, the things I told my friends, my hallucination and delusions, my panic attacks, and my psychotic tendencies are all virtually forgotten. To me, this is terrifying, because of what I do remember, I know that my mania truly did affect my relations with people and caused at least a few irreversible consequences. Losing months of my life is a very Not Fun experience.
Bipolar Mania is something that is heavily under researched, and I find that there are not a lot of resources for people outside of dealing with substance abuse and unsafe sex that was induced by mania. Since my symptoms started at least when I was 11 (to when I remember exhibiting symptoms), I find that these resources are greatly unhelpful to my situation. In addition, the listed symptoms are always targeting adults in their mid 20s-30s. Thus, examples of what mania actually looks like is a very important tool in order to assist research into Bipolar Disorder.
*if there are any other CWs that I should add, please let me know! I tried to add all of them, but sometimes I don't realize that something could warrant a warning*
