Math and Bipolar = no wonder I failed

I found this online. From about Geometry/10th grade on, my dad and I would sit and he would try to explain my math homework to me and I wouldn't get it. It was really like he was speaking English but none of it made sense. Now I know why!

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/...full/160/1/100

I wasn't diagnosed until I was 34!

Some people just don't get math. Me personally, I am a math major and I am bipolar. I love math, it is one of the few things in the universe that makes sense to me. My step-daughter however, is just like you were. I try to explain it to her and she asks me if I'm speaking Chinese. I just try to use terms and examples that she can relate to to make her understand it.

Another thing, it is proven that women tend to do worse in math than men (the whole left side right side brain patterns thing).

Yes but oddly I can do HTML and counterpoint!

lol, which I cannot. I hate programming so much, not my cup of tea at all. Give me a calculus problem any day of the week over some HTML or any version of 'C' coding.

Coding is little phrases of "this does this". It has an end and yes if you make a mistake you don't get the result you want. But in math, there are no immediate consequences! If I mess up the problem, the paper I wrote it on doesn't cease to exist! Lol

It all makes sense now! Stupid math!

no offense, robw

@laur88 Lol, none taken. I understand that math is not for everyone. I am actually just about finished with my degreen in Math Education. For some reason I want to throw myself to the wolves by becoming a High School Math teacher.

@Moose72 Yep, you are right. It takes a while to realize that you have made a mistake on a math problem. And even us math 'geeks' do it too. For example, in my latest math class (Trig), we were working on Matrices (ugh!). I was about 3 pages in to this same problem when I finally came up with a solution. Looked at the answer that it was supposed to be, only to find out I had it wrong. So now the hunt begins as to where I messed up. Come to find out, I had missed a smiple arithmetic problem about 3/4 the way down page 1.

Yes it can be frustrating, but anything that comes easy is typically not worth doing (in my opinion ofc)

That sounds like a game of Sudoku!

lol, actually if you have ever seen a matrix (we were only doing 4 x 4 and 5 x 5's) they kind of even look like a game of sudoku. Different principles though . But, matrices are about the only thing in math that I really do not enjoy doing. I do them because I have to, and when (if) I have to teach them then I will do them as well, but other than that I will never do them .

I'm listening to the end of a requiem "In paradisum". Oddly soothing.

I think bipolars like music as it soothes the nuanced emotions- and more than that soothes the out-of-whack ones. I'm feeling depressed and cry for no reason. Antipsychotics all give me side effects. Seroquel worked but then I felt likelittle bugs were on me.

Hrmm... interesting thought. I cannot seem to do anything, school work or work in particular, without music playing. For me, the music calms the thoughts in my head and helps me hone in and focus on the task at hand.



This is one I like to play atleast 3-5 times a day. To me it is a highly motivational song.

*warning it is rock and pretty sure has a few explicit lyrics*

I like that song, very relaxing. Somewhat similar to my 'sleepy' music that I play at night so that I can go to sleep.

Something like this:

Artist is Kitaro, he is very good. I highly reccomend any of his work for anyone who needs help getting relaxed.

Well, now I feel better; I am very much mathmatically challenged to the point of having "math phobia".

As an adult I actually bought a book called "Conquering math phobia." I find that I am better at math now than when I was taking it in school. I think I need the practical application of it rather than the abstract of an algebra problem.

I despised it in school.

I am right there with you BNLs. I did have a math phobia, and that mad things worse. I also need practical appliation. I don't think as good in abstract terms. But, I can do math, just have to work harder at it than the average person.

I always told my maths teacher that I don't problems with math, but that math has problems with me. I passed my final grade in HS because of my pretty eyes, basically.

I am a humanist through and through. I can understand abstract concepts (as long as they don't involve numbers). Or I can pretend quite well I am knowledgable about a subject... but maths is still my nightmare. Really, I sometimes dream I am back in high school and have to do maths and I wake up crying.

Thank you that explains alot my first and only failing grade was in algebra and to this day I still don't understand it. I never took geometry it wasn"t a requirement when I was in high school.

Math and anything that had math in it...Geometry...Chemistry... I was not good at. I am a graphic designer and I do have to deal with measurements and when I work on websites I have to deal with code which reminds me of math - although I can handle that. I can not help my kids with their math now and they are in 5th and 6th grade - they are in GT and Pre-AP classes... 5th grade is when I stopped being able to handle math as a child. I HATE MATH. Now, I am left-handed and right brained. My son is great at math and he is ambidextrous and is in 5th grade GT, has Tourettes Syndrome and ADD. My daughter is awesome at math and is in 6th grade PRE-AP. She is right handed, has Tourettes Syndrome and ADD. I hope they both continue to love math. I have two other children one is so-so at math and the other is only 2 so there is still hope!

3rd grade is wheni offialy told my mom and teachers i quit learning! i had enough i couldn't get anything right, so i stopped. when it came to math i said anything i need to know i can do on a calculator! not the best way to look at things but it was my way. i became good at debating/arguments/manipulation instead, that is how i got my wat through school. Math for some reason could never do right and they tried putting me in algebra i would always do the formula wrong get the wrong answer but i was good with my words and argued my point in the formula and would get a passing grade...i did that with most subjects and ther teachers would always pass me. so hear i am having my partner teach me math because i can't even multiply,do decimals, percentages and fraction i can't do and i still use my hands to count and i don't know the difference between a verb,noun, adjective and so forth. i don't know much about school subjects but i do know about life.

Now, I like math too. It doesnt really matter HOW you get to the right answer, as long as you get there. (Never good at writing out my work)

But to have a Math problem that you were "3 pages in"

Thank goodness I didnt go further into math...

I am terrible at math, i am wonderfully talented at a lot of things but...math scares the crap out of me. here you only have to take 2 math courses to get a pass for your diploma and so of course i took the "dumb person" math. it's actually a little bit better because while in the other math class they were doing..i have no idea what..we did i guess everyday math or business math...so...it actually had a purpose in everyday life. With that being said....i finished the class with a 51%......to be honest i feel like it may have even been a pitty pass...because i tried soooooo hard and i know my teacher knew it.

I found this to be interesting.

I did okay with math up to about sixth grade. Then I had geometry one semester and my math just declined all the way to adulthood. I found geometry to be like trying to think in mud. The cylinders in my head just wouldn't hit. It was profoundly different than rote fact memorization or creative writing or spelling. I had not run into a weakness in my scholastic aptitude, until geometry. I watched almost everyone in my class perform better than me. It was one of the most frustrating classes I have ever taken.

Then I got diagnosed with schizoaffective a few years later, at the beginning of my freshman year in HS. We had chemistry math. At the time, I was on massive, hugely sedating doses of neuroleptics and lithium and I practically slept through class all day due to the psych meds. By the end of the semester I had flunked the entire course. All I can remember about it was something about ionic bonding and covalent relationships. That's it.

Nobody in my treatment team at the time realized that my slide was due to being asleep on psych meds half the time. They weren't there in class with me, so how would they? Later that year, I discontinued the drugs myself during a remission and I got put back in remedial math where, with my cognitive faculties unchained, I smoked through basic and advanced algebra effortlessly.

Here is an interesting thing, algebra is partly about symbols and variables and their relationships. In that, algebra resembles a foreign language, which also has symbols and variables with defined meanings and relationships. I have always done extremely well in any language class I have ever taken, no matter romance language, Slavic or Asian.

Language to me is just a kind of algebra. Everyone has a word for hello, you just have to learn what it is in their tongue. Computer programming is also a language with variables and for my remedial class finals project, I wrote programs by hand in BASIC, which I taught myself out of books and by reverse engineering other programs using hexadecimal editing software. So my teachers didn't know what to make of my math skills. On the one hand, algebra was cake, on the other, I couldn't prove an isosceles triangle to save myself and had just failed an entire of semester of the college prep math at the beginning of the year.

What I do find a little disturbing about the study is the wording used, such as 'cognitive deficient' in regards to teens with bipolar who weren't doing so well in math.
The authors of the article make it sound like we are organically defective or something. What the study does not reveal, is the gifts we mathematically challenged people received as compensation for not having math aptitude.

In my case, I am an artist and musician, like my mother. I also do movement arts, like martial arts and Feldenkrais. I taught myself how to read music (another language) as a child, and I played flute in the school band. I wrecked the other kids in spelling bees back then. When I was in school, I had such a natural ear for languages, that when I took first year Spanish, the teacher who was from Spain told me I had a natural Catalan accent. It happened again later when I studied Russian. The teacher, who grew up in the former Soviet Union, asked me how I had picked up a Ukrainian accent.

It's great if you are good at math. It's also okay to not be good at math. It's okay if your brain was not genetically and neuroanatomically wired for math proficiency. If so, it's likely your brain was neuroanatomically wired for other abilities. You just have to find what they are, and realize them to be so.

I am just a heavily right-brained person who is high on the creative expressive, language, and emotional intelligence scales. I am very intuitive, always have been. I can reliably spot an unhappy or angry or anxious face out of a crowd of people at a distance, almost instantly. I found the solution to being so right-brained was to marry someone who is a math genius and extremely left-brained who does all my math (from taxes to restaurant tipping) for me.

i can do maths. I enjoy it. I am generally the type of person, that once i learn a concept, enjoys putting that concept into practice; but i could never learn pages of information e.g. History.

I found your post interesting, Jane999!!! I was reading soooo much of this thinking, holy cow! Me too! Our brains are clearly related. (Btw, welcome to the forums ye whose brain is much more closely related than my own sister!) Have never studied an Asian language, but after English (naturally...), it was Russian, Spanish (3 years done in 2), and French, with a touch of Hebrew and Latin thrown in for fun. Same with the spelling, though preferred to write, as was very shy. Do you also enjoy uncommon words and find yourself naturally altering syntax?

Artist as well, in many mediums, going intensely back to earliest memory (which, as it happens was grabbing paints out of a closet, by 3 years old, lol. Oils, my Dad's.) In recent years, studied metal arts, with an intructor saying I was the most creative person ever to come through the program... <not a guy btw, so it wasn't, you know...>) I don't really consider myself a musician, though I love to sing. Like you, also taught myself to read music -- playing it on the organ, as it happened to be the only instrument in the house -- later taking violin, guitar and drums, but only so so on those, taking each only briefly. Taught myself to write in script before kindergarten, surely a visual thing). As far as movement arts, I grew up figure skating.

In recent years have had trouble recognizing people, which is embarrasing, but reading people in a crowd? Yeah. Especially shy people, which makes sense.

But back to math, geometry was also first scholastic challenge. Straight A's, but almost failed that. Later, had to take accounting (cannot balance checkbook, and got hysterical one time trying, thinking, this should be so simple, omg, why can I NOT do this?!) and calculus. Never had the slightest clue what was going on in either. No exaggeration... I was TRULY, TRULY clueless. Managed grades though (???!!!), which made no sense whatsoever.

Haha, was just thinking, after writing this, might as well have posted name and address, eh? Being a privacy freak , it was only because of the level of resonance with your post. Had to let you know...