Quote:
Originally Posted by BethRags
I experience extreme anxiety and if something gets stuck in my mind I will ruminate on it endlessly. Like a hamster on a wheel that never stops. Even while I'm asleep I'm aware of turning whatever it happens to be that I'm ruminating about over and over in my mind. After a day and night of it I'm beside myself.
I've been told by providers, and I believe, that such excessive anxiety is an aspect of dysphoric mania, and that it's not at all unusual for people with BD.
I've tried so many anti-anxiety meds I lost count long ago. Not one made a dent in my anxiety/rumination. Then one day my pdoc suggested perphenazine (Trilafon). Finally, a med that lowered my anxiety and helped me not to ruminate as much.
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I have the same experience. Anger and anxiety keep circling around in my head and building up for days, weeks, sometimes even months, until I can't think of anything else. It will often latch on to one topic and I just become completely obsessed. I can't turn it off when I sleep either. It's almost like racing thoughts or just being "unable to shut my mind off."
I, too, have experienced it in the context of what I think was dysphoric mania. I don't know of any way to let it out, except maybe smashing my house up with a crowbar or something, which I don't want to do. It just makes me go crazy. I feel like those scenes in movies where they have the guy in a straightjacket in a padded room just going haywire. That's kind of how it feels, minus the padded room and the straightjacket.
FWIW I think I'm also prone to obsessions with "positive" things. As a stupid example, in the past at some point I became obsessed with this art site that I liked back then, and spent the entire week, every day and night, just downloading every single picture from that site (there must have been thousands or tens of thousands). Stuff like that has happened to me in lots of different ways, I don't know why. And then, after it "clears up," I don't even really know why I cared so much about it.