2261 Manic Panic.

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Well, here we are. A new year. I know that deep down everyone understads that the problems that made 2020 hard aren’t tied to our arbitrary counting of time. Those same problems will persist until we fix them. At the moment we can’t even agree on what will fix most of them. I don’t have the power or influence to do anything about them. All I can do is what I’ve been doing. Being here for anyone who wants to step away for a few moments, three days a week, every week. I hope I make your next year more bearable.

33 Comments

As someone who has been diagnosed Bipolar (even if the diagnosis is a bit more complicated than just that), I definitely feel on the motivation issue. I will start so many projects, and never finish them…and I start to really hate myself for being so useless as getting anything done…

The imbalance description is apt for the depression part at least.
Speaking as someone who has both hereditary depression and bipolar in their family (I just got the depression.)

What I usually do is wait for the next upswing to resume work. I’ve got a lot of projects that I finish up in that manner…

I try that for the larger projects, for the smaller projects I try to ‘encourage’ myself to make a small contribution each day.

I can understand part of what he’s saying, if he’s talking about obsessions-

Sometimes I like to study military uniforms + related stuff.
I found one nation’s uniform I liked, + then I stayed up most of the night, writing down- [all] of the uniforms from that nation, when that nation was in WWI.
I don’t know why I did that.
I guess I was really excited about the subject,… or I wanted to get information-drunk about a subject, in order to soothe a bad day that I had had.

In my view- obsessions, + not knowing your feelings at times, can make you feel [really] unhappy. :(

A bearable one to you, as well. The comic is more than that I think. The warm atmosphere, tact and persistence in tough matters, open mindedness, cordiality, deep social and psychological insight, the hearty laughs, taken together – as a place – are the equivalent of a good friend’s kitchen. .. As such it also lends itself to a closer embodied experience, it could be on stage … Reliability of producing it every week is superhuman. As a reader I shall try to make you feel seen (literally). The mutual reassurance also helps reconfirm to each other we’re less crazy or at least not alone in it.

Sounds like my ADHD.

Same, ADHD and depressed… I can have an argument in my head over if I should bother brushing my teeth and lose, but hyperfocus on my interests. And then get interrupted and lose half an hour of working.

I’m more classical ADD than ADHD with a bit of anxiety based depression but in times that it is hard to focus, I usually use music and earbuds. It may sound weird but music drowns out the distractions, allowing me to focus.

I’m in this image, and I don’t like it…

That last paragraph is me to a T on any projects!

On a smaller scale, his description is eerily familiar. Is it good to have a name for a condition, when you didn’t know you had a condition? ….or at least not that condition….

Sometimes it’s helpful to have a name for the condition you didn’t know you had. Other times, it’s harmful to have a name for a condition you don’t actually have.

I think the best thing you can do with a self-diagnosis from the Internet is to see a qualified person and talk to them about it. They can help you work out whether you actually have that thing or something else.

To be clear, when I say a qualified person, I probably mean a psychologist or maybe a social worker. Psychologists push drugs. The drugs might help or they might not, but I think it’s really important to know what you have before you start trying to treat it. Not all psychologists will follow that priority list. There’s also a lot of non-pharmacological treatment for things that most psychiatrists won’t attempt because they’re not trained in them.

Jackie, you’re making the year bearable already.

I can relate to both Thomas and Carol here; my experience with manic depression (as it was called then) was via my mother, and much later I’ve been confirmed as having depression & some more myself.

I work with the severely mentally ill. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a client tell me about the things they regret doing during a manic episode. Additionally I struggle with my own trauma. Just because it’s been better for a while doesn’t mean it wil always be this way.

I’m not bipolar, but that “get excited about a thing and then lose motivation to continue” sure sounds familiar.
I have A.D.D. I mostly blamed that.

Me also. I have ADHD, autism, and depression. I’ve also known people with bipolar. One of them would start about as many things in one manic episode as I’d start all year. I’m not sure they’re all that prolific, but when a bipolar person says they start a lot of projects at least some of them they really mean it.

Not sure why Mania gets associated with “excessive happy” at times. It’s more like excessive energy like…you can’t sleep and at 2:30 am you suddenly feel like its a great idea to clean your house. Or build that bookshelf you’ve been putting off. Or go google and go on a shopping spree. “Or” sometimes becoming “And”.

Manic periods manifest differently in different people. The outward look of it can seem like happiness to an observer, even though it’s not the same inside.

With me it comes in the form of extremely positive thinking which causes me to try and do things I would normally be wary of attempting. Which leads to me getting into situations I can’t get out of once it’s over.

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