What It Is Like to Live with a Bipolar 1 Diagnosis – From the Life of Someone Affected

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0100

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.

A Hard Boundary Kills the Inner Life

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0200

One of the rules by which I build software is: constraints outside, freedom inside.

The conditions belong at the edge. What happens inside can then be direct. No function has to defend itself against its own callers, because at the edge it has already been decided what comes in. The boundary is there so that the inside becomes free.

With human beings, that flips.

What the Boundary Does in Code

It says what passes through. Nothing more.

Self-Discovery on jochum.dev

What It Is Like to Live with a Bipolar 1 Diagnosis – From the Life of Someone Affected

A Hard Boundary Kills the Inner Life

What the Boundary Does in Code