High Speed Devastation

What is it like to experience Mania?  Mania often begins pleasantly.  It seems harmless...

For me, mania begins with Clarity.   I have this unbelievable Clarity, like a new part of my brain just opened up and I can understand everything.   I often feel energetic and full of creative ideas and plans.    Sometimes, I will begin projects.   I have ceaseless ideas and boundless energy. 

I feel vibrant and alive.  Colors seem richer, the world seems sharper, I feel better, sexier, happier.  
Then my thoughts begin to come faster and faster.  They will race sometimes, like little ideas on little rollercoasters just surging through my head.   They go past before I can catch them.    I have a hard time concentrating on my plans, and projects, and on conversations.   I will interrupt people more, I will lose the flow of the sentence I am uttering while it is still on my lips.    I begin to feel rattled.   My thoughts and energy will keep me awake at night.

At this point, my body will feel tired, but I feel awake and alive at the same time, almost like every cell in my body is just surging with energy.  At this point, even with medication, sleep gets more difficult.    My medication makes me very tired.   It makes me sleep.   I can always tell if I am getting manic when it no longer makes me tired.   I usually sleep ten hours a night when not manic.  I require a lot of sleep.   When my thoughts begin to race, I will sleep sometimes only four hours.  At this point, I usually adjust my medication.

But in the days before I knew I was Bipolar and that this was mania, I did not have medication.   I also did not know what was going on with me.   I knew that I would have times where I could not get out of bed and that I wanted to die.   I knew that these periods were sometimes followed by energetic moods.    These bursts of energy got me through my college years.   I would understand everything and I would write wonderful papers, and I could go and go and then go some more.    It helped me to be able to make up for the times when I would miss class and not get my homework done.

But gradually, these energetic moods began to become longer and to get bigger.  Soon they got ugly and scary.  

They left me with devastation.

 

 

 

Mania is more than an elevated mood, or a feeling of euphoria.

For me, mania began to get ugly really fast.   Mania also can mean surges of anger.  I would wake  up angry.   Just seething with anger.   I did not know why.   I couldn't make sense of things.   I felt confused.   I would yell at my family.

 

I also began to experience a disconnect with reality.    I often believed that I was being followed.  That people were taping me and filming me.   Plotting against me.   I heard noises that were not there.  I believed things that were not true.    In my current life, I often have to share stories of my experience with mental illness. I am used to talking about it.   I only want to cry when I remember the mania.   It caused so much destruction in my life.   It terrified me.   I did not know what was wrong.  

 

I remember thinking I was evil.   I wrote in my check book ledger in code.   I spent every dime I had.   I bought a lot of statues and saint cards and rosaries from a Catholic bookstore.   I was hoping they would protect me from myself.   My evil nature.

 

I felt betrayed by my mind.   I had always been a book nerd.    A good student.   I excelled at school.   I loved knowledge.    I loved taking classes.    My mind betrayed me.   It lied to me.   My mind was the one thing I had counted on.    My mind was my only worth.   I hated myself at that time in my life.   In high school and in my university and law school years, I only drew any self worth from my mind.   When I lost my mind, I lost my identity.

 

I lost my footing.   I lost everything.

 

After that experience, I never wanted to have that happen to me again.

 

It did, but it was less intense.   With time and medication, I began to have smaller and smaller manias.    I had a very good medication provider who taught me how to spot the signs of mania very early.    I learned to catch these signs, so that I could prevent this destruction.

 

I still experience mania.    I still experience depression.    It's just that now, they are like tiny speed bumps in my road of life.    They are not bottomless holes of destruction.

 

 

These are the tools I use to catch and contain my mania:

 

Sleep-  I cannot overemphasize the importance of sleep.   I have to adjust my medication so that I will sleep.   I can't go without.   I may sleep less than my normal ten hours a night.   But I have to make certain that I get six hours of uninterrupted sleep to be well. 

 

 

 

 Make a list and stick to it-  If I do not make a list of things to do and stick to it, I can easily amp up my mania.   An example might be: do the dishes, sweep the floor, change the cat litter.  That is it.   I do not allow myself to do more.   It is very difficult to fight the urge to rearrange the entire house, move and vacuum under all of the furniture, reorganize the pantry, and begin a massive scrapbooking project - all in one night.   If I am not careful, I will be up until 3 or 4 am and then just sleep until 7 or 8 am.   I cannot do this and stay well.   So, I make a list of chores or activities, and I stick to that list.

 

 

Have structured down time - When I am manic, I do not allow myself or need any down time.   I am all go, go, go.    I have to force myself to sit down and try to breathe.   I like to do counted breaths up to ten, and then back down again to one, just to give myself some present moment time.    I cannot do regular meditation when I am going up to mania.   I have to have the numbers to focus on.     I also turn the lights down low, and try to sip some relaxing tea, or just have time with no music or noise.   I try to reduce the stimulation in my home.

 

Be mindful of music and exercise-  I need to try and listen to quiet music, and I also try to do more yoga.   If I listen to energetic music, or try to do a really energizing physical activity, I will just go up and up.   I try to hold myself back from these activities, and I am careful to select music and exercise that will calm me.

 

 

By using these tools, I can hold my mania back.   This helps me to have the life I want to have.   I can stay employed.   I can set and attain my goals.   I can keep devastation and destruction out of my life.

 

 

And now a message from our life coach cats:

 

 

When life speeds up, sometimes it is good to slow yourself down.

Get some sleep.

 

 



 

Stretch things out.   Slow things down.

Be Cool.