Quote:
Originally Posted by *Laurie*
I appreciate the replies very much.
I'm asking this question because I am, have always been, an intensely passionate person. I mean, intense, electric, extremely emotional, hyper-sensitive, I feel anything and everything very deeply. I'm highly empathetic. My therapist keeps encouraging me to accept my "passionate nature", that it's such an asset, etc.
Okay. Sooo, what I don't understand is, why am I being diagnosed as having BD and taking 5 meds? My "passionate nature" doesn't come and go; it's the way I am all of the time, and the way I have been from childhood. My emotional intensity does get really extreme, much of the time. For example, I'll be watching a movie and cannot stop crying. Or I read a quote from a great novel and I cry and can't stop for a while. Or I get tremendously angry at some injustice I witness.
I've been confused about this for years, and I remain confused. (I do not, btw, have BPD.) I've asked my pdoc and she's said stuff such as, "When you first came to see me you spoke of having music playing in your mind and it wouldn't stop". Well, okay. But ask any musician and most of them will say they have music playing in their mind that doesn't stop. If I was a famous musician, would a pdoc want to medicate me for hearing music in my mind?
I appreciate any insight into my original question. I will speak with my therapist about this, but I'd like to go into my appointment with info from other people who are dx'ed with BD.
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But to answer your reply:
Do you like your passionate nature? I know your therapist wants you to accept/embrace it, but I'm just curious about your POV.
I also wonder: did your doctors diagnose you with bipolar
because of your passionate ways, or at least partially because? If so, I can see why you are so cautious about accepting the Dx, and I don't blame you for feeling that way. Such a reason would make me question the Dx, too.
As far as passion itself goes, do you hav PTSD? I feel that hyperarousal can (but not always) affect passion. I do not have medical proof for this concept and I do not have medical research papers to back it up, so this "concept" is simply my
opinion. I just feel that PTSD/hyperarousal can make someone more sensitive to things, and that sensitivity can translate to passion. But again, IDK if you have PTSD. It's just something I've noticed, especially in my Iraq war vet cousin. I have hyperarousal, too, but not PSTD. (I'm not sure how that works out, but psychologists have said it relates to OCD and anxiety for me.) Things just make me more scared than usual because I'm afraid of past experiences recurring. Same with sadness. So I have heightened emotions/passion.
I also think of sensitivity/passion in terms of BP too. I feel that people with BP *typically* have more empathy/passion than the average person because we experience all sorts of emotions and mood states.
And just because we have extreme mood states that last seemingly ages doesn't mean we don't have mood lability involved with BP, too. I'm not saying mood lability should be criteria for BP, but I've seen research papers suggesting that BP people are more prone to minor, quick mood shifts than the average person. And this would make sense because a lot of us have severe anger and concentration issues that exist independent of mood states and independent of medication (i.e., we have concentration issues even without Lamictal, Tegretol, AP's, etc). So I think mood lability and passion are linked, too. Basically, when we have a "mini mood swing," we become more passionate, and "mini mood swings" can (in my personal opinion) be triggered by an event like watching a sad movie. So I think sometimes that "passion" is just a mini triggered mood swing. But again, just my personal (non-professional) opinion.
But when it comes to music? I'm sort of the same way. I get songs "stuck in my head," sometimes stupid ones like Rebecca Black's Friday (LOL). Lots of people get songs "stuck in their head too." It's a completely normal thing IMO. At the same time, I've
physically heard music playing in my ears when the music didn't exist. My pdoc and therapist say
that's a hallucination, because it's like hearing music through headphones or at a concert when you're doing neither. It's basically no different than voices for me.
I do think some people get voices in their head, though. Like, I think they have voices talking to them but they don't
physically hear the voices in their ears like I do. So it IS possible that your non-stop music IS a hallucination even if you're not physically hearing it. I do think that non-hallucinatory music can be stopped, though, whereas hallucinatory music can't. Plus, in my experience, my "physical" voices and music do not last very long. If I listen to music or YouTube to drown out the voices/music, they both eventually go away and never come back for the rest of the day. Even if I DON'T listen to music/YouTube/whatever, the voices/music goes away fairly quickly and never comes back for the rest of the day. Plus, the voices/music are different every time for me. It's never the same song. Some people who have music "stuck" in their head hear the same song for a long time, and that same song lasts in their head for days, non-stop. I don't have that if it's a hallucination. I've never had a single hallucination (voices, music, phones ringing, visuals, psychic visions, warps to other galaxies, etc) last very long. And my therapist has said it's "completely normal" for hallucinations to last a brief period of time before going away. (I'm talking about maybe 2 minutes up to an hour.)