How do you tell when you're in an episode?

I'm really bad at it until someone else says something.

Well, we all have tell-tale symptoms when we are starting to slip away into mania. How is your sleep?

I don't really remember how many hours but I do sleep every night. It's less but that's to be expected when I go from sleeping 12+ hours a day on Clozaril and significantly reduce my dose.

Yes it isn't healthy for most people to be sleeping that much. It's good you are aware you have limited insight sometimes. My symptoms include starting to have grandiose thoughts of my own importance or to start thinking that other people are following me, or I am being watched, or I put tremendous energy into obscure undertakings, start to hear things, stop sleeping. Mostly I keep good track of my sleep and irritability and add olanzapine if I am starting to slip away. Once I get to a certain point I will not believe anythign is wrong with me and then it is only a matter of time until the people are at my door to take me away to a hospital again.

Of course sleep is the top heads up for most everyone.

I go from feeling good for a short while ( at most 2 days) then I’m annoyed with every... single... thing. The sun is too loud.

When the mania comes I usually acknowledge it, but I have very poor insight. I tend to ride it out full blast and turn into a completely different person.

It's funny, I can usually see depression barreling toward me like a freight train, but hypo/mania tends to sneak up on me. I'm pretty self-aware most of the time, though. It's just that I don't see the subtler signs of imminent hypomania until I'm fully into the episode and I think, "Oh wait, I'm not sleeping, I'm cleaning all the time, and it's too noisy in my head---I must be going a little high." Mania, on the other hand, slams into me with the force of a tornado and then it's out of control and I need quick intervention to put an end to it. Thankfully I haven't had any full-blown manic episodes in several years now, but I'm always aware that they can come back at any time and ruin my life again.

To answer the OP, my sleep is a dead giveaway, suddenly sleeping just a couple hours or so, or alternately sleeping 12+. Textbook simple.

That's a great way of putting that feeling.

^^ I can relate to this. ^^


WC

I think sleep can be a good indication of this. Sending many hugs to anyone who is struggling with this

I track my mood, sleep, anxiety/irritability levels every day on a chart. I can't always see it coming and I still find myself wondering how the heck I got into whatever episode it is but there's a huge relationship between my sleep and mood. My mood is lower when I'm sleeping 12 or more hours a day, then it starts getting high if my sleep starts decreasing to only a couple hours a night. It's interesting to see.

A lot of you said changes in sleep. What if you drug yourself up to sleep? Could you still be manic if you took, say, Seroquel and sleep a decent amount every night but during the day you're having other symptoms?

Yes, decreased need for sleep is only one of several criteria for manic episodes, but not all criteria need to be met. Lack of sleep is just a common thing you see in manic episodes, but it by no means determines if you're manic or not.

I keep track of sleep as an early warning of upcoming mania rather than when I am manic. Another early warning is irritability. Then I might start to get preoccupied with strange, conspiratorial thoughts. Those are all warning signs for me. Maybe I am answering a different question than the one asked by the OP. I lose insight when I am manic.

My signs and symptoms have changed over time (I wonder how common that is?). It used to be, that going into hypo/mania I would initially be overly sensitive to light and noise (that's the irritability part), talk non-stop, with my eyes wildly wide open, and as if I were a genius, feel hypersexual and engage in risk taking behaviors, not sleep much...

Now my signs are different. Lack of sleep first (though sleeping more than in the past) and then seeing and hearing things. It seems that, over time, the psychotic features of BP have come to the fore, while other things have receded.

I think keeping a daily of your symptoms, however small or insignificant they may seem, could help a lot. I think this could be beneficial in gaining insight into the beginnings of your episodes, so you can head them off. Best of luck. It can be so hard to be insightful about ourselves once things have gotten to a certain point, which is why it's so important to catch things early so that medication can be increased or changed to head it off from becoming worse.

This is such an insightful post. I've also had the same symptoms and watched them change in a similar way... pointing more to psychosis and less to mood to the point that my pdoc of many years thinks I may have sza rather than bipolar. Since I lose insight once over the 'tipping point' if I don't head it off beforehand with upping AP's then it will end up with me being committed again. The edge of an episode is a slippery slope and it requires a lot of vigilance to stay stable sometimes. Other times I am far away from the edge, sleeping well and not preoccupied with anxious or agitated thoughts.

Mine usually start with going overboard on a hobby or interest, as in spending a lot of money, staying up all hours researching, ignoring everything and everyone, and becoming impatient and irritable if anyone disturbs me. My mind races trying to figure things out and sometimes I’m not reacting to things like I used to. For example, any meds that are sedating have no effect on me when I’m manic. When I start getting tunnel vision and I can’t back out, I know I’m in trouble. Lack of sleep affects me too.

I don’t sleep for a couple of nights and the hypomania grabs me usually before I can grab it.