Math and Bipolar = no wonder I failed

I loved maths when I was younger and did well at it, but in my twenties with meds and bipolar, my brain has seriously turned to mush.... don't think I could do it now... struggle with science and that doesn't require nearly the same flexibility of thinking that maths does.

Rob, I'm a girl and I love maths (and can read maps)!!!! (I am a bit of a tomboy!)

I am very sensitive to music. I listen to it most of the time; but I also need to be aware of my emotions, as the wrong music can trigger depression or hypomania in me

I too listen to music just about 99% of my day. I have certain music for certain situations, which I have set up "radio stations" for on my slacker.com account. I have relaxing music (Kitaro, Enya, etc) for sleeping, when I am normal/hypo I enjoy listening to harder rock, and when I'm down I listen to 'alternative rock' music.

@RobW - I'm the same, when I'm depressed I listen to Enya - it actually just makes me even more depressed though. Spoke to my T about this, and she suggested allowing myself 1 hour to feel the depression, and then change over to some other music that will help to slowly get me out of the depression. Hypomania means I enjoy listening to alternative/rave music - I drive like a maniac, am very irritable...

can you handle trance music? For me it's the beats that can calm me or uplift me... I just go my BPM... lower = calmer, higher = stimulating.

And of course my Eurovision collection will always put smile on my face, even if it's smiling through tears.

Well, I'm not quite sure what the genre would be called - but the kind of music played in clubs - even 80s Music that has been remixed. I guess it may be a bit of trance too?!!?

When I'm down I listen to calm music, and when I'm hypo I listen to music with a beat; I guess it should be the other way round. But music with a beat when I'm feeling down... that'll drive me crazy!

Right now I'm trying to stick to being in the middle..

wiki:

Psychedelic trance or psytrance is a form of electronic music characterized by hypnotic arrangements of synthetic rhythms and complex layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. It first broke out into the mainstream in 1995 as the UK music press began to report on the trend of Goa trance. Since then the genre has grown immensely and now offers much variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full on, dark, progressive, suomi, psybreaks and psybient.

I think I'd only be able to know what genre it was if I maybe knew an artist.

I like David Guetta, Mika, Novaspace, Dizzee Rascal, Basement Jaxx, Sean Kingston, Cascada, Black Eye'd Peas - that's my more beaty type of music.

When I'm down, it's Enya, Gregorian Monks, Coldplay, The Killers, Rod Stewart, Spiritual music (I like those CDs that mixed according to various moods), Christian Music, Owl City, Phil Collins

Yes, I am quite unique, lol!

Ironically for me my bi-polar aided me in being very intelligent as a younger man. I was a math whiz and had amazing recall of facts and tidbits.

Around 36 years old I had a nervous breakdown and I cannot remember for crap and I do not recall even simple algebra.

I was also very creative and a gifted musician. Now my motor functions are messed up and I am just okay at guitar and I do not write as prolific and imaginative as I once did!

GO figure....................

I have trouble with these kinds of studies because they don't differentiate between BP I and PB II which are fairly different disorders. I liked science and math, doing well in physics, algebra and calculus. But oddly, I never mastered arithmetic. I still have to figure out 6 x 8 in my head. What's with that?

How do you see them as that different?

I realize they are, but just wonder why you said that.

While both I and II involve disorders of mood, they have different symptomatology, different brain chemistry, and different treatment. So, I would suspect the two diagnoses have differing effects on math ability Moose.

I thought BP2 was BP1 w/o psychosis.

That is one major difference. Yes. The degree of clinical depression is typically another. Rapid cycling another. While the severity of episodes is greater for BP I, I like that, for me at least, on medication I can be symptom free for years.

This is totally my own theory but I also have found in my limited exposure to other sufferers that the origin or contributing factors to our illness also effects the symptoms and manifestations both positive and negative.

For me I have been told that a big part of my problem is I was born with a brain malformation. It has been seen on head scans I have had done. When I was younger I was being looked at for being schizophrenia which is also often linked to a brain abnormality.

As I grew older and had some epic manic phases it led to amazing sleep deprivation which I have been told has done more physical damage and likely enhanced my condition to worse stages.

Anyhow I find that I am very different than sufferers who seem to have come upon their disorder from some sort of trauma like severe physical/sexual abuse or drug and alcohol abuse. Or I have a friend that had problems after being in a severe accident and suffering from major head trauma.

While there is probably differing factors, I thought the DSM did state that if there is 1 example of auditory or visual halu., that it will rule out BD2 automatically.

I am a lefty,; that makes for the brain to be somewhat different, also. My brother and I are both lefties, but he is fine with math and everything else. Must be those male hormones or something.

I've wondered if bipolar and left-handedness have anything in common?

I'm right-handed.

with BP 2 you can still have psychotic symptoms during depressive episodes...

Though t is all meaningless where you draw the line cos there are so many differences within BP that to divide it into 2 is fairly meaningless.... just my thoughts...

You also have to consider there are more categories of Bi-polar than ever before which makes the whole #1 and #2 more diverse or perhaps irrelevant in some cases.

I'm BipolarII and suffer psychosis during severe depressions...

Just to mix it up a bit further: I was actually diagnosed late with dyscalcululia (hate that word and I know I have it wrong) when i was playing guinea pig for another psych student. I ended up with that little gem AND a brain damage profile, seems one usually goes with the other.

Now, a number of studies have shown that Bipolar I and Schizophrenia can mimic cognitive damage that happens with organic brain damage, or at least, reading it as a psychologist and not a MD that's what it looks like. So what does that mean for us? Is this progressive? Does this include all of us, the hereditary Beepers, or the ones who AREN'T? No dif? the math problems are interesting. I was usually very good at theory, i could spit our very good pictoral ideas of how to get the areas of things like the isudes of curves when I was quite young, but if I were asked to transform that into a mathematic expression - dead silence. My little voice would go dead. Hmmm.

It's sad and kind of the whole "blessing and a curse syndrome" for me.

I mean when I was a young lad I often was in a manic cycle and exploded with focus and energy. All the focus was a bit on the edge. But I was an outstanding athlete, very smart(mostly due to amazing memory), and very engaging.

But on the other end the focus was not enough to make me carry it all the way. I passed on a baseball scholarship to pursue a experimental development program for the Eastern League of Double A baseball which basically put me on the field with Double A players with the premise that I would learn what it took to take it another level. You had to be chosen and invited for this but it really wasn't all I perceived it too be. But I convinced myself it would be a faster route to success.

Anyhow I failed at that. Of course a severe injury to my ankle did not help. I had no interest in academic pursuits although my intelligence would have made one think I should. But really my intelligence was more just the ability to retain information and recall it whenever I needed too. So again while it was helpful it was not all it seemed to be.

Then I became a musician. I also became very good at this. At one point I was in a band that opened up for Ace Frehley, Marshall Tucker Band, and The Outlaws. I am a prolific song writer and a pretty good singer. But once again it was not enough to parlay into a career.

The bigger issue is on one hand I feel my unique mind has given me strong creative properties and some capacity for intellect but on the other hand it has been a hindrance to me putting in the work and building a network that would get me with people who could help me turn it into something.

Or perhaps while I may be more gifted than those in my "realm" of associates and people I have met but in the big picture it really was nothing special?