Echoes, I hear you. I get that too, where it seems something is going on in the background and you can't concentrate on the here and now because all your energy is being "Kidnapped".

I was reading a tiny bit in Freuds "Mourning and Meloncholia" I'll try to put into my words what he says but it was something like back in the narcisstic stage, when a loss or abandoment occured, the ego was to imature or didnt get a chance to go through the proper mourning stage or get the chance to express the full range of love and hate to the "object" so the ego that is split off turns itself against the remaining ego and we attack ourselfs instead of the "love object" and the mourning becomes pathological, constant in the background. There are moments when we overcome the mourning and then mania sets in, which is what happens to me and I feel so elated, but really all it is, is the release of the "Kidnapped" energy.

Make sense? well it did as I read LOL!!