Aggitation and Bi Polar ......

That's the 2nd post you wrote that I could have wrote myself lol! Long lost Bipolar twin?

Sensitivity to stimuli affects me when I'm in a normal mood. But it gets worse the more psychotic I become. Or put another way, I am more likely to feel paranoid and have extreme startle responses to small sudden noises, flashes of light, and hear or see things that aren't there when my sensitivity to stimuli is more pronounced.
At those times, it becomes extremely difficult or impossible to filter out various sounds and comprehend what someone is saying. Reading becomes impossible. I then need to get away from all stimuli, such as hide in a dark room with a pillow over my head until my head stops swimming with pain.

Agitation is something I associate more with emotional and bodily behaviour - such as restless legs, inability to sit still, feeling extremely wound up that I don't know what to do with myself, intense frustration, highly impulsive behaviour and difficulty controlling aggression. This I associate with a mixed mood episode.
The stimulus overload issue above isn't always part of a mixed episode for me, but can occur when I'm feeling quite normal mood wise.

Hunh. This is interesting. Thinking of agitation as a mixed episode, that is. (a few others have mentioned this, I just plucked yours for being close at hand, Tsunami ) I've never felt that what mommyof2girls described as a mixed episode. Two reasons. First, that she says she's not feeling hypo or manic. If no mood state is present, let alone 2, I just don't see how it could be, simply by definition. Second, if a mood state were going on, this is how I would see it:
As hypomania taking an irritable form. Definitely not saying all agitation is hypomania, because it isn't, just that sometimes this is a feature. Being a negative feature doesn't make it depression.

I want to be totally clear on something that might be misconstrued here: I am not saying anyone who mentioned mixed isn't having them. Just that I don't see what is described as a mixed episode.

I have had mixed episodes. Not a ton, TG. But they were soooo different from what is described here, that I just don't get it. It wasn't just being ragingly irritable and agitated (mentally +/or physically). It was both extremes happening simultaneously. (Which is why people talking about swinging from one to the other in succession and calling it mixed perplexes me too, but that is not the topic here.) It was hell far beyond and markedly different from simply aggitation. And I don't mean simply as "mild", but to denote that it's pretty straightforward, no matter how intense and horrible it is. And holy canoli has it ever been!

It's been awhile since this thread started. How are you doing on the aggitation front, mommyof2girls? (I know you've had some other stuff going on recently, and on that, just wondering if you had an update on this.)

Innerzone, I just went off looking for a clear description of agitation, man, hard to find a good one.

There is a difference between irritability and agitation. Can I find the right words, uh no. I can only relay my experience. When I am agitated, I am physically and mentally agitated at the same time (psychomotor agitation). I will pace for hours, I cannot think, my thoughts are nothing but incomplete fractions. I feel like I am going to explode out of my skin, but this is not caused by outside sources, it's caused by internal distress. I deal with this alot, usually while in a mixed dysphoric manic state ( simultaneously manic + depressed )

Agitation is a state of emotional or mental distress. Irritability is an excessive response to stimuli, pathological, and physiological, usually used to refer to anger or frustration, by definition. Agitation would fall more along the lines of delirium. To add to the confusion, irritability is a symptom of agitation. Agitation is commonly seen in Bipolar patients, as well as Schizophrenia, Depression, Dementia ( Alzheimer's disease).

So there is a big difference between the two, but hard to find a clear concise description of agitation. I think people misunderstand agitation, we hear it used to describe things that would fall more into the irritability realm. We learn the names for emotions and states of being when we are young, agitation usually isn't on that list, and when it is I think it is usually being misinterpreted.

Thanks Anika, that is an excellent point. Agitation and irritability are not the same thing. Totally agree.
Which is why I put "and" with irritable and agitation.) But I realize in rereading what I wrote that I talked about extremes, but forgot the actually put the word "depression" too(!) Ooops. Sorry if it caused any confusion!

Iz, I was just trying to help you finish that thought, I think we were on the same thought track.

I hope I didn't annoy or offend anyone with my post on agitation. I never really understood agitation until I was hospitalized last year with severe agitation and mania, and my marathon pacing that would last up to 17 hours on end. Just trying to share a bit of what I learned.

No worries! Didn't take it any other way. It's an important distinction. (And in re-reading my other post, realized I jumbled them up a bit though I should know better. Got a little too focused on how to explain my main point and didn't even catch it. Ooops! )

Hope the end of my previous post didn't come off harshly. BF was standing by the door, all antsy about getting to the dentist, and I wrote in a rush. Not a forte. (Heheh, and he's always thinking I spend too much time on the computer anyway, so his annoyance wasn't helping. Lol.)