Bipolar II/Hypomania

Can someone please explain to me what hypomania is like?

Thanks!

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It depends. For me, I usually get really irritable, stop sleeping very much and become ultra productive and do things like clean the entire apartment. I tend to be more animated and talk faster as well. Usually, I hate it, and think it's just as bad as being depressed. On occasion though, it's enjoyable. It's like living the high life. You feel like everything is great and you own the world.

I don't sleep much, pretty much run on air due to lack of sleep and forgetting (or not wanting) to eat. Lots more talking, consistently out doing social activities but complain of being bored, a desire to be drunk a lot more often, more likely to want to make impulse buys, can get obsessive about some activitiy/subject/hobby, more likely to respond to a guy hitting on me, thinking a million miles a minute, faster talking (am fast normally), I jump from topic to topic, basically I am on the GO nonstop. Tend to go on cleaning sprees, less likely to follow my own rules for my own behaviour, etc.

It usually works out in a good way, but sometimes it's just plain annoying.

I get really confused with the difference between normal, hypo, and mania.

Yeah, unless I get really bad, I have a hard time telling the difference between normal and hypo, too.

Does this sound hypomanic:

becoming obsessed with a new hobby and reading or putting every free minute you have into it and making plans to spend as much money as you can on it cuz you need this and this
Or deciding to clean the house like top to bottom & becoming super irritable during the process
being unable to sleep because youre so excited for payday and you are thinking of a thousand different ways to try to spend your money. You write up a grocery list and look through all the flyers to get the best deals and fill your house up
Or maybe you think up plans to renovate your house & get new furniture & paint & new decor
Or maybe you plan out a tropical or disney vacation that you want to take and research all the different things you can do and see and write out your itinerary and figure out how you are going to pay for it and start talking to your significant other about how amazing this trip is going to be and they look at you like you have two heads because you still owe rent to your landlord.
Then snapping all the time at everyone and being angry all the time and suddenly you spent all of your money on your new fish tank or your new video game system and your mood suddenly begins going down.
You can hardly get off the couch and you are eating everything in site and you just feel so depressed and numb and like a melonchaly feeling comes over you and you feel stressed because you are trying to figure out how you are now going to pay your utility bill. You dont shower for days and even brushing your teeth is exhausting. You sleep through the weekends and can barely make it through work. You just want to escape and you are overwhelmed with all of life's responsibilities and you go into a deep depression for months.

You feel like your moods are so out of control. You go through substance abuse and then eating problems because its a way to escape. You have poor self esteem. You sometimes want to die.

Does this sound like a bipolar 2 type of problem or more like a hormonal or depression problem? Is it possible for hypomania to cycle multiple times a day? Is it possible to cycle from hypo to depressed within an hour or so? Or doed it have to last days at a time?

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It sounds a lot like what I go through. Some of those are in my ups and some of that is in my downs - like exhausting? haha. If I'm hypo I'm not exhausted. And if I don't shower when hypo? It's not from being tired - it's from being so busy that I don't keep track of time and totally forgot taht I really should have showered.

I think you should go and talk to someone who is a professional about it if you are wondering whether or not you have bipolar - we can't diagnose you here at all.

Something I wrote when hypomanic, describes what it's like for me fairly well...

I feel like I know a secret that the rest of the world is missing, and that secret spreads over my face until my cheeks hurt from smiling.

I step out the door and for a moment I pause, suspended in mid-motion, awed by the beauty that I see. The beautiful blue sky, the warmth of the sun on my face, the clouds floating behind the trees, the dark underside of storm clouds, the feel of cold air on my face as stars twinkle about me, the most perfect crescent moon, the detailed full moon, the wind moving through me and around me. Every time I step out the door I am struck anew at the beauty of the world, no matter what it is I see. This, for me, is part of what it means to be manic, hypomanic, high, on top of the world. Whatever you call it, this is what I live for.

I move from my state of suspended animation and the world starts turning again, and I don’t stop. I dance down the street, because walking is too slow, sedentary. I’m home, but still I don’t, can’t, won’t stop. I take ideas that flow incessantly through my mind, catch hold of one of many and take it for a ride. Travel takes over and I plan holidays, buy hundreds of dollars worth of guidebooks, book tours and flights with no consideration of the cost. In a stroke of genius I see how much better the house would look if that wall was not there. So with sledgehammer, saw and brute force I remove the offending wall - all whilst my husband sleeps on unawares. Sleep is for others, for myself it is an optional extra. There are drugs I take to assist me to unconsciousness and in deference to that rational brain that knows my body requires the rest I take them. Before I down the dreaded tablets I feel as if I have just woken from an amazing slumber full of energy, enthusiasm and plans for the day. There is inspiration in every sentence, and wherever I look ideas flow as to what could be done. The bank account runs down to empty as the fruits of my enthusiasm arrive at my door.

I start a business, so far removed from my day job as can be. I’m convinced that with just a little effort my photography skills will become world renown, that I will be able to fund my travel habit through selling photos to an ever appreciative audience. I enter a photo into an international photography competition. Just one photo, in one competition but I know that this will start my meteoric rise to fame. All the while I dance, run, laugh with unadulterated joy. I dance on picnic tables in the park, I dance unashamedly in the sun in my lunch break, I dance in front of our uncurtained windows for all the world to see.

Then I see my psychiatrist who wants to ‘treat’ me, fix me, give me medication to return me to stability. But this is not a condition that requires treatment, it does not need fixing. This is what I live for, and though I see that my behaviour is not quite what it was, it does not need treating. She says ‘impaired judgement’ where I see ‘inspired genius’. She tells me it’s exhausting for those around me, but I know that they love to be with me to catch the edge of this euphoria. She questions my irritability, but although I am impatient and intolerant of fools this is no cause for concern. I ask my husband and he tells me quite how irritable I am. I snap, I yell, I swear. But I don’t quite believe it and I certainly don’t think it is cause enough to want to end the high. My thoughts don’t always connect, distracted by each intervening image, sight and sound. But everything is so clear to me. Because I know the secret that the rest of you just wish you knew and the smile spreads over my face once more.

Everything that you listed out I could pretty much go one by one and give you examples of how I relate to each of those things. Obviously I can't say if you are or are not bipolar, but I will say that I relate to it quite a bit.

It is SO rare for me to go from true hypo to depression within the same day. Actually, I think I can only recall maybe once or twice where I remember this happening. If it's within the same day (for me) it's more likely a mixed episode.

Me, too.

Me, too.

I only get confused between what's hypomania and full-blown mania---for me. Like now, when I feel like I'm only a little hypo and everyone but EVERYONE is telling me I'm a LOT hypo, and my pdoc just doubled my antipsychotic dose to bring me down off the high. I don't think my judgment is all that great right now though so I gotta listen to other people....which probably makes me only hypomanic. When I'm manic I don't listen to ANYONE.

Is it possible for hypomania to cycle multiple times a day? Is it possible to cycle from hypo to depressed within an hour or so?

I think this is very unlikely, but if I were you I would get evaluated by a psychiatrist if you feel that bipolar is a possibility.

I feel that bipolar is a possibility because my father has it. My brother has schizophrenia but i feel like he definitely is bipolar as well. Both of these would be type 1. Also my grandmother on my moms side could possibly have had it but during a time when diagnosis wasnt really availablr. She was dx'd schizophrenic...but this was the 70s.

I know that i wasnt depressed for about a year and it has now reared its ugly head again. I know i get depressed as all heck. Just wonder if the obsessing and planning is part of a hypomania. I had been diagnosed bipolar a few times from the age of 17-21 but im now 30 & havent had that diagnosis again after the age of 21 despite several inpatient stays for my major depressive disorder. I am going to the doctor in a few weeks and starting mental health treatment again. I guess i am more looking for a starting place of how to bring it up and what might be useful as evidence of hypomania.
Thank you!

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