Mania 100

GoGoGoNowNowNowRunRunRun - Bipolar mania varies from person to person.  In sharing my personal experience, I will highlight the common symptoms of mania.

My experience began with a typically milder form of mania, called hypomania.  In hypomania, I was highly productive.  I also had excess energy and a great sense of wellness.  It was multitasking made easy.  I spoke faster and formed opinions and decisions quickly.  I was extremely confident.  On the downside, I was impatient and sometimes irritable.  My mind worked faster, but I could be obsessive about ideas and problem solving.  It could be difficult to relax.  At times I found myself speaking and acting impulsively as rude words sprang more easily to my lips.  I might say what I felt like saying without thinking first.  Usually, I regretted my rudeness, and sometimes I was shocked by it.

In mania, my symptoms were kicked up several notches.  I had severe trouble sleeping, beginning with 3 hours of sleep, then down to 1 hour a night.  I became hypersexual, which my husband liked at first.  When I kept waking him up in the middle of the night, he actually got tired of it.  I began talking extremely fast, and at the peak of my mania, I had pressured speech, which means, I couldn't keep from cutting others off and couldn't get the words out fast enough to keep up with my racing thoughts.  At one point, I felt like my thoughts were spinning so quickly, that I was about to lose my mind altogether.  I had a loss of inhibitions, meaning I would do what I felt like doing without thinking first.  For example, when driving a car, I felt like going first at all stop signs, so I did not wait my turn.  I feared I would start running stop signs and red lights, so I went for medical help.

They say that reckless behaviors are a symptom of bipolar mania.  Well, reckless behaviors were a symptom of my impulsiveness.  Manic behavior is ruled by feeling without careful reasoning or sometimes without any reasoning.  My thoughts were going so quickly that there wasn't enough time to think things through.  If I went shopping, I would charge what I thought was needed without much concern for the difficulty in paying for it later.  I did most things without considering the consequences, and I often had so much apathy that I didn't even care how inconsiderate I was.   I lost the ability to access my conscience, my sense of right and wrong, and within a short time, my belief system collapsed. 

People with hypomania can share some of the same symptoms as I did in my more manic phase.  The clinical difference between hypomania and mania is that in bipolar mania, psychosis can by a symptom.  I did not have hallucinations or delusions, per se.  However, I was not always able to be reasoned with, and had I not gotten treatment, I possibly could have become psychotic.  Doctors may not separate the levels of severity between mania and hypomania as I do, but for me, there was a distinct difference once I stopped sleeping and kicked into high gear.  Whereas hypomania can be productive thing to somewhat annoying, mania can become out of control to the point of terrifying. 

Click on the link below to read the clinical symptoms of mania: