@cocoabeans:

ok, so i can so completely identify with so much of what you said... so i'm just going to make everything i experience (almost identically) bold.. as kind of an echo that you're not alone in what you feel...

"Anyone ever feel detached and far away like you're watching yourself when manicky? Like it feels so good and courses through you like an electric charge but, you're not really there, maybe so impulsive you're saying things or doing things before thinking it, can't even finish a thought haha. It feels good though like an amazing dream.

It is fun when I'm up and I can just open my mouth and say the darndest things! I'm normally witty but, damn I get good.

Sometimes physical sensations are amazing like sex! Other times, it is so irritating. Like touch is just impeeding on my sense of self and bright lights and sounds get so annoying I get all tense and want to scream! I usually do or end up shaking swaying not wanting to stop moving from too much tension.

Sometimes it just feels like that pit of your stomach. When you're on a roller coaster and just started the drop after reaching the high point, it is fun, a tickle in my bones.

Depression is crap, a load of bricks in all my body. Like gravity got stronger and sometimes can't even keep my eyes open while moving. I can get sore and just so weak. It sometimes feels good though, not good but, hmm I dunno it draws you in to a place where all you need is a blanket and a bowl of spagetti. I crave pasta when depressed. I can eat until my stomach hurts and eat again 20 mins later. I devour it like wanting a cigarette, it satisfies and then, I sleep and sleep. Sometimes though, it hurts so bad, I can feel a vacuum in me, like I'm being ripped away and I just cry and cry. It is emotional pain that hurts like a severe migraine.

Then there are the times which might be mixed? Eh, where it is like your depression has speeded up. Like you're being pulled in two directions and sometimes so so happy and then so angry, depressed wanting to die. That's when I would definitely hallucinate or start thinking weird thoughts... And physically if I stop moving or shaking it is torture but, painful to move like I'm the center of an elastic being stretched to it's limits. God, it is hell. It can't be described properly.

Descriptions like these I start and my psychiatrists have given me weird looks so, I give up and downplay it all. Maybe bipolar 2 isn't the right diagnosis lol."

ok, so yeah, i get it... ALL of it... first read through i recognized things you said as if they could have been coming from my own mouth or as if they were typed by my own fingers.. then second read through, i realized... all of it... we might not use the exact same wording.. but i go through all of it too... sometimes i feel like i could deal with the mental stuff so much more effectively if i wasn't so overwhelmed by the physical manifestations of the various episodes & cycling...

again, i have to say, God, i am most thankful to have found pc & be made conscious of the fact that i am NOT alone in this illness ... that there are people who truly "GET IT" .. and that talking to each other CAN help ...



if you're a reader, check out "An Unquiet Mind" by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison... even if you're not a reader, you may still find this book worthwhile.. if you're like me, you will feel like you're reading your own journal at times... it's a very well written autobiographical book by a professionally trained psychiatrist who has bipolar disorder... it's an amazingly good book & really helped me with identifying what i was experiencing & recognizing what behaviors were manifestations of the illness itself...