What is being in a manic state? Why can’t they see it?
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It’s when your thoughts are racing and everything seems like a good idea because, to you, you’re just on a roll. It’s hard to notice because it seems like a completely normal progression to you. Like, in your mind, constantly escalating is justified by the circumstances and you’re just doing your best.
Additionally, they may in fact be aware they’re manic if confronted on it, but like, because we treat certain mental illnesses as personal failings or weaknesses, there’s an element of shame to being “caught.” Guilt for escalating so much that you need to be called out. Given the hyperactive confidence of a manic episode, someone feeling that guilt might blurt out, “No I’m not,” just to avoid being pulled into a conversation about their mental health in public when they already feel shaky from being confronted.
Speaking from experience here. Bipolar, type unspecified. :/
Humans are surprisingly bad at recognizing our own brain states. Sometimes people don’t even consciously recognize their emotions and how they modify their moment to moment behavior.
Mania tends to also come with impulsivity and racing thoughts that can make it very hard for the person to engage in things like self-examination as their mind can be going a mile a minute.
I see it, it’s just that mania is way better than depression, so I’ll take what I can get and just go with it.
Because your brain typically perceives is current state as normal.
Is a lot easier to process external sources and rationalize those. See tentacles coming out of the ceiling? That is Satan wanting your soul so start praying for God’s intervention to stop it because “that can’t be real” isn’t making it go away. Been staring at your monitor all day and are seeing random colors all day but you don’t notice them until it dark? Well the red dots are probably someone shining lasers into your room. Death writes on your wall you will die when you turn the lights off? Well that’s weird, probably isn’t real…. Sleep with the lights on for months because you don’t want to die.
You can’t think your way out of it and you don’t realize how flimsy your perception of reality is until you start perceiving it in other ways. And perception really is reality. You experience it.
Mania to the extent you will drive to a 5 star hotel and explain you’re a movie star and want the penthouse? Seems pretty normal at the time
Mania is a description of an elevated /heightened mood state. It often goes with feeling very high energy, powerful, not needing sleep, ambition etc. A lot of people have high mood but not all (sometimes it shows more as irritability, restlessness, excessively sexual behaviour).
This is a separate issue to knowing about the change in state. This is called insight, and varies a lot person to person. Someone that has insight knows that their mental state is abnormal – easy example is hallucinations – if you know the demon you are seeing is not real you have insight. Insight is complicated, and often partial (you might know some things are abnormal but not others). People during an episode of mania sometimes have insight, less likely the more extreme the symptoms.
Certain mental health conditions have higher rates of insight – most people with anxiety are aware its not rational to a fair extent.
There is a specific part of mania that relies on not having insight – delusions. A delusion is a fixed, false belief, and by definition you can’t really have insight into a delusion – once you know its not real its not a delusion. So if your manic symptom is a delusion of grandeur (eg believing you’re jesus), you can’t by definition have insight.
To give you an idea of what mania feels like, imagine yourself as a poor miner that has just discovered gold. “EUREKA!!!!” Imagine this feeling. You are so excited that you just found gold. You imagine yourself with all the money you’ll have and what you’ll spend it on. Everything you worried about before is now gone. You are absolutely convinced of this.
This feeling of elation is caused by your creative thinking skills going 100mph. It’s causing you to lose sleep, stay awake for days, which then causes hallucinations. When something happens, you immediately react emotionally before your mind has time to think things through. To yourself, you don’t realize it unless you “take a step back” and think about what you’re experiencing more critically. Others can see it more readily because your personality has changed.
Hi, therapist here. I think two factors play into this.
The first is that, like other symptoms, mania can come in a range of severity… Everything from feeling excited and “in the zone” all the way up to staying up for a week and rebuilding your car in the middle of the night. Indeed, even the underlying disorder (Bipolar Disorder) comes in two types, one of which is characterized, in part, by more severe mania (and consequences) than the other.
The other factor is that, unlike many other psychiatric symptoms, mania *feels good*. If you’re depressed, or anxious, or hearing menacing voices you’re very likely to seek treatment, or at least relief. Oh, the “problem” is that you’re at the top of your game, the life of the party, and up for a promotion at work (ie, a mild hypomanic episode)? Would you like to take this pill to make it go away? *No*???
The fact is that people seek treatment for illnesses that cause distress, or impair their functioning in important areas. Mania tends to be pretty severe before it stops feeling good.
You seen spot the difference between 2 pictures? What if you remove 1 picture and just tell them to spot the difference?
that’s what being in a manic state is like, everything makes sense to them, their high energy and euphoria feels “normal” to them, it doesn’t feel abnormal, because we as humans, cannot switch between the two state to feel the difference. They have no frame of reference.
But observers can, they can compare what the people is like yesterday and today to identity the difference.
Type 1 here, who fully blacked out in a spell before finally being properly diagnosed and put on the magic salt. (Been happily balanced since.)
Being in a manic state is believing that anything is possible and it can feel so good, especially when framed with depression. Sometimes you see it, but just love the feeling and ride it out wherever it takes you; other times, it just feels like things are going well, until you realize you can’t sleep and people aren’t able to follow your thoughts and overly complex speech. It’s still more frustrating than anything when that happens. People can’t follow your magic. Maybe it’s their fault. We underrate how strong our perspective is to our daily life, and overrate our self-awareness. This is just the biggest possible example of that.
Post-manic spell, you crash. All your big ideas no longer seem to have much air in them. The notes you’ve taken and creative projects you began sometimes have some possibility in them, but often don’t. Your candle is nothing but a wick burnt on both sides. Lo and behold, you’re not the greatest.
Nowadays, sleep is the most important drug for my balance. I’m more creative than I was when I zigged and zagged because I put things together, plan, and execute. I’d be lying if I didn’t miss that electric feeling, but I’ve also never forgotten the feeling of being electrocuted.
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