What It Is Like to Live with a Bipolar 1 Diagnosis – From the Life of Someone Affected
To many people, “bipolar” sounds like a mere swing between good and bad moods. On paper, however, my diagnosis reads Bipolar 1 with psychotic symptoms – and when I am in full-blown mania, it has nothing whatsoever to do with “being in a good mood.” It often starts constructively: I have countless ideas, mostly driven by an honest desire to improve things fundamentally. Yet my head shifts into a speed that hardly anyone on the outside can follow anymore. There is no longer any filter between thinking and speaking – almost every thought has to come out the exact second it arises. At the same time, my short-term memory collapses: what I said days ago, or even just a few moments ago, is erased almost in the same instant. Only this hyper-accelerated Now exists. ...