I think I’m bipolar! How do you know if you’re bipolar? In this post you’ll learn how a person with bipolar thinks.
What exactly does being bipolar mean? All in all, bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness that causes extreme shifts in mood, energy, thinking, behavior, and sleep.
Subsequently, people with bipolar disorder experience episodes of mania or hypomania. This can involve feeling energetic, joyful, aggressive, or delusional, alternating with episodes of depression.
All things considered, during these episodes, it can be difficult to complete daily tasks, go to school or work, and maintain relationships.
How a person with bipolar thinks. Basically, The four main types of bipolar disorder are bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymic disorder and mixed episode:
- Bipolar I. At length, this type is characterized by manic episodes that last at least a week, or by severe manic symptoms that require immediate medical care. Depressive episodes usually occur as well, and typically last at least two weeks. Consequently, bipolar I is the most common type of bipolar disorder.
- Bipolar II. This type is characterized by a pattern of depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes, which are less severe than manic episodes but still different from a person’s usual state. At any rate, hypomanic episodes must last at least four days to be considered bipolar II.
- Cyclothymic disorder. Comparatively, this type is characterized by recurring hypomanic and depressive symptoms that don’t last long enough or aren’t intense enough to qualify as episodes. These symptoms must occur over the course of two years or more.
- Mixed Episode. Henceforth, a mixed episode, sometimes called a mixed state, is when you feel both high and low. You may experience symptoms of depression, plus mania or hypomania at the same time . For example, you may feel very energized and impulsive, while feeling upset or tearful. Or you may feel very agitated or irritable. You may also experience highs and lows very quickly after the other, within the same day or hour.
How a person with bipolar thinks. Equally important, mental health conditions don’t just affect your emotions. They can affect the way you think.
Therefore, if you have bipolar disorder, you might notice that your thinking patterns change during manic (or hypomanic) and depressive episodes.
During a manic episode, you might experience high levels of mental energy and racing thoughts. On the other hand, during a depressive episode, your thinking might slow down.
Both types of bipolar disorder episodes can impair your ability to focus, recall facts, and make decisions.
- Firstly, experiencing heightened levels of euphoria and intense irritability
- Feeling jumpy or more energized than usual
- Insomnia
- Additionally, racing thoughts
- Wanting to do things all at once without feeling tired
- Feeling empowered, and confident
- Lastly, excessive appetite for food
- Firstly, feeling sad, and anxious
- Feeling restless
- Trouble falling asleep or sleeping too much
- Fourthly, Trouble concentrating
- Trouble remembering things
- Talking slowly
- Lastly, lack of interest
How a person with bipolar thinks. Important to realize, during a manic episode, you might feel highly energized, restless, and euphoric (that is, extremely happy). Manic episodes can last for a week or longer. They can also affect your thought patterns.
Manic episodes might cause you to experience:
- firstly, racing thoughts, where you think quickly and aren’t able to “shut off” your thoughts
- high mental energy, which means you might be able to think a great deal, possibly leading to more creativity and new ideas
- difficulty concentrating or remembering things
- lastly, impulsivity, where you make irrational decisions or act without thinking, possibly leading to harmful behaviors, like reckless driving, impulsive shopping, or condomless sex
How a person with bipolar thinks. Meanwhile, depressive episodes in bipolar disorder are characterized by more than just an extremely low mood. It can affect your thinking, too.
During a depressive episode, you might experience:
- firstly, low mental energy
- difficulty concentrating
- difficulty making decisions
- poor memory
- lastly, thoughts about death and suicide
In addition, many people experience cognitive distortions during depression. Cognitive distortions are errors in thinking or judgment.
For the most part, in depression, cognitive distortions may lead you to think more negatively, compounding feelings of hopelessness, sadness, or worthlessness.
How a person with bipolar thinks. Common cognitive distortions you may experience during a depressive episode include:
- All-or-nothing thinking: Also known as “black-and-white thinking,” you might feel that everything is terrible because it’s not perfect, or that you’re worthless because you made a mistake.
- Catastrophizing: In brief, this is where you assume the worst-case scenario will play out, even if there’s little chance it will. For example, you might think, “If I make a mistake at work, I’ll get fired immediately and become homeless.”
- Disqualifying the positives: Notwithstanding, this cognitive distortion involves ignoring the good and focusing exclusively on the bad.
- Emotional reasoning: This is where you draw conclusions based on your feelings, not facts. For example, “I feel unloved, so it must mean nobody loves me” or “I feel useless, so I must really be useless.”
- Mind reading: Overall, this involves assuming you know what people are thinking.
- Overgeneralization: This is where one experience dictates your beliefs about all similar experiences. For example, “I haven’t been happy lately, therefore I’ll never be happy again” or “My antidepressants don’t seem to work, therefore nothing will work. I’ll just give up trying to feel better.”
- Personalization: You assume you’re personally to blame for anything that goes wrong. For example, your friends argue and you feel guilty for not mediating, or your partner seems upset about something and you assume they’re angry at you.
Moreover, people with bipolar disorder, depression, and other mood disorders often have episodes when they feel extremely sad, hopeless, anxious, or confused.
When these emotions get too intense, the person may struggle with how to cope with overwhelming emotions. Thus, for some people, efforts at coping with distress may take the form of acts of self-injury.
Nonetheless, self-injury, often including cutting, self-mutilation, or self-harm, is an injurious attempt to cope with overpowering negative emotions, such as extreme anger, anxiety, and frustration.
For the most part, it is usually repetitive, not a one-time act. Often, people who deliberately injure themselves are survivors of traumatic events during childhood or early developmental periods in life.
In short, self-injuring behaviors that occur because of difficulty coping with stress are not a symptom of bipolar disorder. They may happen when someone’s emotional coping strategies are not well-developed.
Also, when certain other mental health problems co-exist with bipolar disorder.
How a person with bipolar thinks. In particular, some people with bipolar disorder experience psychosis, particularly during severe manic episodes. Episodes of psychosis can lead to auditory or visual hallucinations, delusions, and paranoid thinking.
During an episode of psychosis, you might think or act irrationally. Specifically, your ability to reason is compromised. You might believe in things despite all evidence to the contrary. Therefore, you may also have difficulty caring for your basic needs, like eating or showering.
Psychosis also impairs memory because it involves parts of the brain involved in storing and recalling information.
Subsequently, after an episode of psychosis, you might find it challenging to remember what happened during the episode. You may also remember things that didn’t actually happen, according to research.
How a person with bipolar thinks. In sum, people with bipolar disorder can experience dramatic alterations in mood and activity levels. The disorder may also affect the way a person thinks, and possibly their memory.
For some people with bipolar disorder, poor memory and difficulty concentrating can make it hard to function in everyday life, including at work and when studying.
However, this is not true for everyone.
In contrast, some people with bipolar disorder may find it harder to think, to reason, and to remember things.
Changes in thinking that can occur as people go through the different phases include:
- firstly, changes in attention span and focus
- racing thoughts during a high, or manic, phase
- anxiety
- difficulty remembering things
- lastly, in some cases, psychosis, including delusions and hallucinations
As a person’s mood shifts, they may report changes in their memory, too. As the mood becomes more extreme, memory problems can increase.
How a person with bipolar thinks. At length, mood stabilizers are a type of psychiatric drug. Some of the individual drugs we call mood stabilizers are actually very different chemical substances from each other.
But healthcare professionals often group them together, because they can all help to stabilize your mood if you experience problems with extreme highs or extreme lows.
Lithium, anticonvulsants and antipsychotics are the three main types of drug which are used as mood stabilisers. There are several types of individual drug within each of these groups.
Being that, Lithium is a mood stabilizing medication commonly used to treat bipolar disorder. It can be prescribed as:
- lithium carbonate (Camcolit, Priadel, Liskonum)
- lithium citrate (Li-liquid, Priadel).
Anticonvulsants
Furthermore, some anticonvulsant medication can be used to help stabilize mood. You may also hear these drugs referred to as anti-epileptic medication.
Hence, anticonvulsants which are used as mood stabilizers include:
- carbamazepine (Tegretol)
- lamotrigine (Lamictal)
- valproate (Depakote, Epilim).
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). By all means, CBT for bipolar disorder may involve learning to identify triggers for mood episodes, developing coping strategies, and strengthening emotional regulation skills.
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). Forthwith, the goal of DBT is to help people with bipolar disorder learn new skills for regulating emotions, improving relationships, and reducing impulsive behaviors.
Family-focused therapy (FFT).
The goals of FFT are to:
- firstly, teach your family to recognize the signs of an episode
- educate your family about how best to support you
- improve conflict management
- improve communication within your family
- lastly, create a plan for preventing relapse
Interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT). By and large, interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT) focuses on helping people with bipolar disorder regulate their daily routines. The routines can include your sleep-wake cycles, social interactions, work, hobbies, and eating patterns.
Psychoeducation. This involves learning about your condition. Often, psychoeducation for bipolar disorder involves treating both the person with bipolar disorder and their family.
Psychoeducation can help you:
- firstly, identify your triggers
- feel less isolated, as you learn that other people face similar challenges
- additionally, identify signs of a depressive or manic episode
- find healthy, effective coping mechanisms
- lastly, learn about treatment and self-care strategies
- firstly, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)Provides support and information about community resources for people with bipolar disorder and their families. You can contact NAMI’s HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)Offers an Information Resource Center that can be reached by phone at 1-866-615-6464, by email at nimhinfo@nih.gov, or by live online chat Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM–5 PM ET.
- lastly, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)Offers in-person and online support groups for people with bipolar disorder, as well as tools to help people identify their support needs. You can also text DBSA to 741-741.
How a person with bipolar thinks. Understanding bipolar disorder is essential in living with it. You have to know your high’s and low’s to be able to co-exist with it.
People with bipolar disorder are also over-represented among highly successful entrepreneurs. The symptoms and traits of bipolar have been associated with high IQ and perseverance on difficult tasks.
Other positive attributes exhibited during a hypomanic state, which may favor entrepreneurial activities, include high energy levels, extroversion, self-esteem and optimism.
Ultimately, bipolar disorder is complex. It is not easy to treat, nor is it easy to live with. In fact, it may take many years to learn how to manage it.
-Spotting the Early Warning Signs of a Bipolar Mood Episode
-Supporting someone with bipolar disorder
-Bipolar Relationships: What to Expect
Have a Good One,
Cindee Murphy, One Voice In The Vastness Of Emotions
“Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough.” – Unknown
“Mania starts off fun—not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after a while.” – Carrie Fisher
The Many Faces of Depression: Types and Symptoms(Opens in a new browser tab)
Bipolar With Psychotic Features(Opens in a new browser tab)
Therapuetic Treatment For Bipolar Disorder(Opens in a new browser tab)
DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance)(Opens in a new browser tab)
From Bad To Worse: A Story Of Anxiety And Bipolar(Opens in a new browser tab)
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