Mistaking Mania for Personality....

One of my high school teachers described me as "taking awhile to warm up."

That's because I started off being quiet and they came across as being outgoing later in the year.  Or so my teacher thought.

Looking back on it, I wonder, perhaps she had observed me in a depressed mood and then in a manic mood?

Mania isn't easily recognized.  I talked to someone who was manic once (her speech was rapid and she quickly switched from one thought to the next and it didn't make much sense), but there are other shades of mania that seem to present themselves as personality (hyper, outgoing) perhaps accompanied with risky behavior.  Since society often equates adolescence with risky behavior, people don't see it as mania.

On Psychic Pain, and Ruining Your Life

Psychic pain is the pain that occurs from memories, thoughts, and feelings.  Psychic pain can eat you up inside.  Make you feel stressed all of the time. It can make mood episodes escalate into full blown mania or suicidal depression.  Psychic pain is hard to get away from because it is inside.  It is the thoughts that reoccur over and over that make you hate life.  They make you think that this is a bad world to be living in.  And that there is no escape.

People drink to escape their psychic pain.  Many people do it, all over America, every Friday night and all weekend long. Some people have more pain than others.  Some people have to do it every day, all day long.  When the pain in strong, anything to make it go away is worth it.

Having fights, saying bad things to the people you love, doing bad things, hurting others, all cause more psychic pain.  More memories to have to live with once you've gotten out of that mania.

If you do something that is really bad, or just have the bad luck of getting caught, then there is time in the hospital or jail, which may even add to the psychic pain.  The pain from the memories of being forced to take medication that you don't want.  The pain from the bad experiences of being in jail. And then even after you get out, there is the pain of having to explain your criminal record when trying to get a job.

I know that there are many people without Bipolar disorder that have the pain I am talking about.  It could be from childhood abuse, or from some other traumatic event.  Or maybe they were born with a predisposition to have more bad feelings, or not be able to deal with them as well.

We are all just one decision away from changing our lives.  In mania, or some other extreme mood, that decision may not be under our complete control, and yet it may change our lives forever.

And that is a good reason to work on finding a solution to prevent the episodes from happening.