I know it’s one that both villainized and sensationalized by media, I want to know what it’s really like and not some fear-mongering missinformation a lot of people spread. Thanks
In: Biology
Everyone here gave great answers. I’ll just add some things about moods and mood swings.
Moods and emotions are different. A mood is like a season, and emotions are like the weather during a certain day. Out might warm up for a few days in winter, but it’s still winter.
Let’s say a healthy, neurotypical person’s mood can range from -5 to 5. 0 is neutral, -5 is the saddest they could feel, and 5 the happiest. Those are the upper and lower limits of the intensity of their moods.
Someone with a mood disorder, like bipolar disorder, experiences moods that go beyond what a healthy, neurotypical person experiences. Someone with bipolar disorder might experience a low mood of -8. Or a high mood of 8.
The exact numbers don’t matter. The point is the moods are outside what healthy neurotypical people experience. I have bipolar disorder. When I talk about being depressed, I mean, at minimum, having a mood of a -6. But if I’m talking to a neurotypical person, they often think I mean a -3 or -4.
Often friction that develops between someone who has a mood disorder, and those they are close too. They don’t understand what’s going on because it’s outside their experience.
As for what it’s like….
Depression was exhausting. I was tired all the time. I slept all the time. I felt like I was wearing a heavy suit of armor. Personal hygiene was terrible because I felt too exhausted to do it. My inner voice was just a constant stream of insults, put downs, name calling, and attacks on my insecurities aimed at myself. I would frequently interpret events in my life in the worst possible way. I would still go out with my friends. Sometimes I would stop going to work for a week.
I never experienced mania; I experienced hypomania. It’s a state of agitation. It was like I had ants in my pants. I felt invincible. I could do no wrong. Every idea I had, every joke I told, everything I did was perfect – or so I thought. I became very sociable and very productive. Everything was exciting. I sometimes would shoplift while I was hypomanic.
As for the mood *swings*… Often people with bipolar will have a couple mood episodes a year, maybe a depressive episode that lasts a couple months, and then maybe a (hypo)manic episode that last a couple months. I have a “rapid cycling” diagnosis. When the bipolar disorder started to present, I was having major mood episodes every two weeks. Two weeks of depression followed by two weeks of hypomania. I think I was 18 when this started, my first year in college, and I had no idea what was going on. After I was diagnosed, I put on my calendar my expected mood swings to help prepare for them. It was eerie how consistent they were.
This post has gotten really long, so I’ll just say one last thing. A lot of people with bipolar disorder, and neuroatypical people in general, develop a lot of issues related to their diagnosis. For example, the first time I shoplifted something, it caused an existential Identity crisis that last 5 or 6 years. It was so out of character for me that I struggled to reconcile my behavior with my conception of self (it was also so out of character for me that it was what caused me to get diagnosed). But it means that on top of all the symptoms of bipolar disorder I had to manage, I also was generating and having to deal with new emotional baggage.
I’ll stop here. Hope this was helpful.
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