Hi, I'm new here, but here are my two cents on the issue...

What I'm gonna say is controversial and some people might disagree with me, but I definitely think that high highs and low lows ARE real. Reality is only what we perceive, and if we're looking at the world through that lens at that time, that is what we're experiencing and thus that is what is real to *us*. I think a better way of putting it is this: extreme mania and extreme depression are not *rational*. Our perceptions are real, just not rational...if that makes any sense. Extremes in either directions make us have thoughts and feelings that are outside the scope of probability and reason, such as paranoia or grandiosity, etc.

How do I cope with a funky mood? One thing that I do is literally force myself to do all the things that I don't want to when I'm depressed. For example, if my friends want to go out and if I'm depressed, in the past I wouldn't have gone out with them. But now, to get myself out of a mood, I'd make myself go because I'd probably feel better if I did. I guess what I'm saying is that you have to act like you're not in that mood, because frequently our mood follows our actions. Depression and mania are vicious cycles -- we start feeling a certain way and then we start acting in ways that perpetuate the mood, turning it into an episode.