I think here you might be using mania more generally to describe all of the emotions that might "come" from bipolar disorder (correct me if I am wrong). Of course full blown mania is scary but there are also all of these little things that we might do because we're bipolar and it's easy to take a reaction we have and call it wrong or something we do, etc, or just view ourselves as wrong because we have a label (self-stigmatization).If that's the case, what you describe is exactly how I felt maybe not even more than a month ago. It's still a struggle but it's starting to alleviate for me a little.

There are a lot of words that other people use for how to start to move on from those feelings: self-compassion, learning what is the "bipolar emotion" and separating it from the real you. None of that really clicked until it started to for me more in my own words and understanding. My phrase for it is: I've focused on learning to see the choice in how I experience an emotion, finding my triggers and minimizing the ones I can, and not feeling guilty my needs are different than other people's needs. Some things are easier for people who don't have bipolar, but that doesn't mean I should force myself to do meaningless hard things and then beat myself up over it (i.e. give yourself a break).

Listen, my p-doc calls me smart at meetings constantly and I bristle at it. The only times I think I am smart I am (hypo)manic and it feels like a symptom. Rather than dwell on that, I'd say "that's how other people can see me. I don't have a euthymic setting where I see myself as smart" - but I can try not to see myself as dumb and beat myself up constantly.

Hope some of that sounds like what you were asking. Not a great/prolific poster.