What is it like to have mixed bipolar?

Just wondering what you have to go through on a daily basis.

For me its suicidal, self loathing while having tons of options of how to's racing through my head.

Mixed episodes are hell. Imagine sitting on your bathroom floor at 2 AM, scrubbing the baseboards with an old toothbrush and bawling your eyes out, and that will give you an idea of what it's like. I've done this. It made me feel like I was crazy for real.

Irritable, restless, wishing I was dead, wanting to run away, not sleeping, brain won't shut up, having the energy to clean and knowing that I should but not wanting to and thus avoiding it, drinking just to try and knock myself out basically....

Its the daily ups and downs. I will be feeling just fine then out of the blue I will be crying my head off. Hubby is not that supportive either. (grrrr) I feel like Im on a pendulum.

I guess thats the big thing, thanks to my medication. Before meds, I was a mess.

Here's a good thread: http://forums.psychcentral.com/bipol...tate-like.html

It's absolute and utter hell. My moods have been cycling daily from normal to depressed, anxious, irritable, suicidal and social, sometimes all in one day.

I can't even make plans anymore because I just don't know where I'll be.

It's terrifying, confusing and extremely lonely

for me, its like being on a rollercoaster, only its emotionally painful to hit bottom, and emotionally overwhleming to hit a peak, so most of life is spent in emotional discomfort of some kind.

I can really relate to this but I just am not sure what to say to the doctors to make them take me seriously and listen. I need this sorted.

"Mixed episodes are hell. Imagine sitting on your bathroom floor at 2 AM, scrubbing the baseboards with an old toothbrush and bawling your eyes out, and that will give you an idea of what it's like. I've done this. It made me feel like I was crazy for real."


That's it exactly Bipolar Nurse! Stuck doing some small task that is bugging you becuase you just cant let it go and balling your eyes out. Its having your coping ability shrink so much that you end up doing something so small, because you just need something to be right and clean and correct in order to be able to feel good and function.

I find the worse my mixed moods the louder I want to play music, the more I micro manage everything, the more I spin in circles (trying to do two things at once and doing none successfully), and the more I need everyone to be quiet while I get louder and louder.

For me, I know its happening, but am unable to stop the cycle until it runs to its end. And that end usually comes with the realization that I have upset and hurt every other person in the house. Usually it is only then that I can cry it all out and start to calm down.

And not being sure you have to will to stop yourself should the opportunity present itself.

I think a good example is what happened to our daughter one night several months before she was diagnosed. At 8:30 PM she was singing her little heart out in the shower and when she came out told me she wanted to get back on a softball team. At 10 PM the police were at our house because she had called 911 and told them she wanted to kill herself!

Nancy