Normal people THINK they know what we go though. And, in a way the do. They may have the same emotions, racing thoughts, anxiety, and what they call depression, but the difference is the extremities, and the intensities that we have, the lack of control, and normal people have "normal" reactions to things, where our reactions can sometimes be triggered by irrational or unexplainable causes. Like, when I get anxiety, I don't just become worried or scared about something. My throat starts to feel like it's closing off, I get numb, short of breath, chest pains, light headed and such. When I'm manic, I don't have so many things on my mind that I can't keep track of all my "racing thoughts", I have a series of random thoughts that aren't relevant to whatever is going on or to the conversation I'm having, and I get what I call a "two second memory". I can't remember what I just said, did, or thought two seconds ago. (Norms don't do that.) And our depression isn't that we're sad, hurt, mad, bored or worried about something that has happened to us (although those things CAN be a trigger) , because if that were the case, we could do something to make ourselves feel better. With clinical depression, you can't just go to a party, or do your favourite things and make it go away. It's a chemical imbalance, not just a bad mood brought on by bad circumstances. We can be triggered by things that wouldn't bother normal people, we can have anxiety over things that aren't even real, or for unknown reasons. Things go to extremes with us.