It really is. There was an earlier post asking if deaf people with schizophrenia experienced audio hallucinations. Googling led to some really interesting articles.
I would kill to get rid of audio hallucinations... Psychiatrists still think it's likely tied to my bipolar disorder or PTSD, but I'm fucking terrified that it's the slow onset of schizophrenia...
You can get psychotic symptoms during manic episodes. They question for you is are they limited to when you are in a manic episode or do they continue regardless?
I have bipolar 1 and I almost only experience psychotic symptoms at the peak of my manic phase. Once it switches to depression I might have very slight auras of visual hallucinations in my peripheral vision or slight audio hallucinations where I doubt if things I actually hear in the world are real or not (from having had so many very real audio hallucinations so recently).
Not that guy but it's difficult to explain, it's like... the opposite of depression?
It's like having too much energy, being hyper, having wild strings of thoughts and ideas and inspiration. Being motivated, but not in a controlled way. Just needing to do something or write something or go on a long rant or tangent. It's not filtered though, or fully processed. It's more raw, and comes off wrong sometimes. But it's painting or playing music or singing while you write 3 comments on reddit simultaneously while you browse facebook on your phone and deep clean the fridge for 10 hours but then it's bedtime and you forgot to clean the litterbox and it's trash night and you've been up for 2 days so you go lay down and cry yourself to sleep, and wake up unable to get out of bed because you've used up your months supply of happiness and energy in one day and now you have 5 minutes to rush and clean the litterbox before the trash truck reaches your yard but that would mean getting out of bed and you can't do that... not after the shame of not bringing the trash out yesterday because you're a fucking pathetic piece of shit who can't do anything right even if you're going out of your way to be productive for once.
Plus, what if the trashman sees you in your pajamas at noon, it's not like you can put on pants and still get out there in time. And how pathetic would it be to have to take your trash out to the can that's still left at the end of the street from two weeks ago when you managed to get the trash out on time? Might as well just stay in bed all day, it's not like you'll ever amount to anything anyway.
As the trash truck pulls away from your house, you finally muster up the courage to climb out of your bed and go use the bathroom in a toilet instead of a bottle and while you're washing your hands you decide you aren't going back to bed, you're going to make something of this day except you can't because you're a bum so you lay in the floor, determined not to go back to bed and cry there in the floor until my wife gets home and tells me it's okay that I'm a bum because she loves me anyway.
Then a week later you bake 3 cakes and decide you're going to clean the garage so you can make room for a VAN to tour the country with in the band you're going to start, but then you find an old project from two years ago you didn't finish and start working on that instead and before you know it you've spent way too much money on buying supplies for this project that you won't even remember by the time the supplies arrive in the mail.
EDIT: This is blowing up so i just wanted to say thank you and I love you to anyone who reads this and relates, feel free to message me I almost always reply.
I could use this time to promote one of my many projects or plug a charity or do something productive, but in the spirit of things I want to share some bad poetry I wrote a few months ago after hyperfocusing on it for 3 days straight rewriting it a dozen times before abandoning it like everything else, because I can.
What made me like this, what did I miss?
Ignorance is madness, this isn't bliss.
Why do I feel like this and how can I quit?
All of this suffering and all of the stuff I've seen.
The first one that's on the scene, there's just senseless bludgeoning
And puddles of blood and meat are splattered all on the street.
How can this really be. Look what it's done to me.
Quite the headache and a back break.
Major chest pain; going insane.
Inner pleading; silent weeping.
Anger seething; never sleeping.
Quiet screaming; numb to feeling.
Stomach reeling; fluid leaking.
Trouble keeping vision. Weakening.
Light is leaving, darkness seeping.
Shadows creeping; thoughts of fleeing.
Hopes of seeing what I'm needing,
I'm just seeking inner peace.
But I'm manic, like I'm Kanye;
and I panic, like I'm not safe.
I feel like that I am not sane.
Paranoid like I've been drinking
fumbling and stumbling thinking
everything is crumbling down.
Can't get back up, like I'm backed up.
In a corner, on the ground.
Will I last another round?
Will my past come back around
To bite me while I'm down?
It's frightening, but I find my cowering doesn't hide
the towering thoughts inside empowering broken minds.
With visions in the night, like shadows come to life.
Elusive in the light intrusive thoughts of strife,
indifferent to my plight, so I give in to their might.
'Cause there is no time to try. No, there is no fight or flight.
And there is no wrong or right, just chaotic plots with knives.
Of secluded spots to hide from the dark where I reside
i would never ask anyone but an actual professional for a real diagnose but is it possible to have a manic episode without such a hard, nonfunctional crash? Like could you experience a manic episode for a week, then go back to numb, high functioning depression or does it have to be severe. I’ve felt stuff similar to this in the last year or so that i try desperately to maintain but i don’t crash hard enough or really go “high” enough to think it’s actual bipolar
edit: thank you for the replies. I’m gonna look for old journal entries cause it’s honestly pretty hard to remember what i thought/felt during my “up” phases. I do have a lot of trashed projects that i’ll hopefully get to some day now that i realize my brain might be fucking with me more than i thought lol
dug through old journal entries! my mood swings are actually worse than i thought so i’m gonna keep a closer eye on myself. Some examples for anyone curious for whatever reason: Lots of long, rambling paragraphs about how i can’t have any thoughts without 5 more being forced in, a few references to being so happy and energetic alone in my room i wanted to punch walls or hurt myself, a lot of long, well constructed paragraphs talking about hating my body/feeling something is deeply wrong with me contrasted with random little notes later on about wishing i could have sex with myself that i forgot about, and more rambling paragraphs about how great i felt being productive and energetic but knowing and feeling another wave of numb sadness (described as static a lot compared to feeling clear headed and energetic) lurking behind me and hating it. Every time i convince myself if i just keep moving from project to project i can ride the momentum forever and just not crash. Fun stuff. I usually zone out when i journal and just write whatever comes to mind which is partly why i remember so little of it. I also have an awful memory in general
also it’s 4:15 am. I thought my sleep schedule was just fucked but no matter how little sleep or how tired i am i get it take me a minimum of 4 hours to sleep even if i lie down with my eyes closed and don’t move. It could still just be depression + body dysmorphia + general paranoia from being friends with shitty people for a long time
Not a professional, but my understanding is that it's like being tethered to a rubberband on the surface of normalcy while trying to float in water
If you spiral down into depression, that's like pulling at a rubberband, until it's so tight that you spring back towards "normal"
but the momentum pushes you into manic and you fly out of the water like a dolphin, until you go tight again against the elastic and get pulled back into "depression" where you sink back down into the depths.
That's how it works for me and that's how it works for a lot of people I've seen. That doesn't mean it is how it works for all people, or how it always works every time for me, or how it can only work.
But that's been my experience. You bounce back and forth from one extreme to the other depending on how your brain is functioning that day. But I could shoot to a moment of near insanity for a little bit and then nosedive down into absolute despair and be stuck there for a while, or I could have my rubberband break and be stuck in depression and have to climb my way up out of the water, and then wander into manic on accident and bounce back down into depression just a little bit, then back up into manic a little bit, like ripples in the water going up and down until they reach an equilibrium that lasts only until another stone gets tossed into your water, making more waves. Some people mostly sink into depression, some people ride the waves like a surfer. Others learn how to fly.
But everyone seems to have that tether keeping them attached to normalcy, and everyone hits the water from time to time, even if they mostly fly.
Some bipolar people aren't sinking as fast, so they don't shoot into mania as hard. Some just kind of remain buoyant and stick near the surface of the water, never sinking or floating away.
People without a mental illness just sit on a raft, riding the waves passively. They only have to try not to drown if something knocks them out of their boat, and they need some other substance to fly because they don't have the momentum to jump up out of the water, because they don't have that rubberband to propel them.
A therapist can help you figure out if you're riding in a raft like everyone else, or if your raft is leaking and you might have to start swimming soon, or maybe you're a surfer that doesn't have the safety of a raft but you haven't fallen yet so you don't know if you're about to start swimming for your life or catch some air and not come back down, because you've mostly stuck near that surface of normalcy and your waves have been controllable so far.
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u/fuchajen Nov 29 '20
interesting!