Trying to understand time why bipolar

Hi. I've been trying to understand experience of time in bipolar. I think there is something fundamental here - especially since mania is so often precipitated by travel across time zone.. something with our clocks... Seems like depression is easy to grasp - there is no future, the future is blocked, all there is is the agony of what happened/is happening and brought me here. Mania seems more complicated, though. On the one hand, the future is now.... What I might hope for, dream about, long for -- has already happened... It is here! Now! So in this way I am living in the future - my dreams and hopes are achieved. But on the other hand, there is a constant shadow - that same old depression - that I am running away from. So in a way I am on the running -- running into the future - so I achieve it now, already - so I can stay ahead of the present - make the present past...
The problem with this is that if you read the real classics – for ex Binswanger – he says: “these patients live almost entirely in the present and to some degree still in the past, but no longer into the future. Where everything and everyone is “handy” and “present” where distance is missing, there is no future either, but everything is played off ‘in the present’ in the mere here and now. This also throws light upon the self of such patients. A self that does not live into the future moving around in a merely playful way, in the here and now and, at best, still lives only from the past, is nothing but momentarily “attuned”; it is not steadily advancing, developing or maturing, is not, to borrow a word, an existential self” So this seems very difference from what I am experiencing myself… Is the good old doctor Binswanger right?? Have I got it wrong??

Welcome to the Psych Central community. HeyHowyaFeelin! You raise an interesting question. When I'm hypomanic I'm always making grandiose plans for the future, and when I'm depressed I can't bear to think about the future. So I'd say bipolar definitely affects my perception of time.

I tend to make plans when I'm hypomanic. A lot of them but then I'm easily distracted so I don't follow through. And when I get depressed I don't see the point in anything. Either way, I can easily lose track of time.

I'm not sure I understand your post, but I have tremendous difficulty with dates. with time in the past and present. For example I have no idea when I fell down the stairs, was it a week ago, a month, or did it even happen. My wife just told me it happened on Sept. 7, but my sense of time tells me not to believe her. It is very confusing.

I don't know if this is caused by bipolar, my meds or brain damage from all the seizures I have had.

This post is fascinating to me. I feel like I need to read it a couple more times to know what to say.....

but there is something beautiful about it...

I've had jetlag-induced hypo/manias. Not fun. The way that time sometimes seems artificial or arbitrary during a mania is [in my experience] mirrored in many ways by how off-putting it is to be 8 hours out of sync after a hop across the pond. 8AM doesn't feel 'real' when your body wants dinner.

The quote from Binswanger sounds just about right to me. Mania brings paradoxical views about the future:

On one hand, I'd be writing down the titles of dozens of books that I want to read and mountains of things that I'd want to do, etc. I wrote down enough plans to keep me busy for years.

On the other hand, I had a sharp awareness that just because I was alive now didn't mean I would be tomorrow, or next week, or next year. Not that I was suicidal or thought that something bad was going to happen. It's just that in a baseline mental state I don't think much about impermanence/death, and kind of take for granted that my existence will continue. During mania the "live every day as though it's your last" cliché actually became internalized. I would move on my goals and passions instantly since I might never get the chance otherwise - the normally-natural act of 'putting something off for tomorrow' felt inconceivable.

I think there's probably a happy medium between being blasé about life (and taking for granted its continuation) and literally living every day in the absolute moment because it could be the last. I think every person on the planet has to find a spot somewhere on that scale, it's just that bipolar gives me an extra push and shove around it sometimes.

please take this with a grain of salt ... maybe you just think too much ... all I know is I got completely lost in there ....

I kind of understand the bit about living in the future. When I'm hypo/manic I want everything now, Now, NOW. And I do it now, Now, NOW. But I disagree with the not living in the past. When I am not hypomanic you can't get me out of the past. I rue the days so to speak.