bipolarbirdie wrote:I will write the obligatory disclaimer. I am wholly unqualified to make any kind of psychiatric diagnosis. If you are experiencing distress or concerns of any kind, please see your appropriately qualified professional.
I think it's ordinary for young people, when they start to develop 'metacognition' or awareness of their own thoughts, to analyse and question their behaviour. They start to realise that the ideal that society is holding them to, is not the reality of human existence. For example young women start to wonder if their normal bodies are fat, because of unrealistic images on the tv. I am married and my husband went through this thing of thinking there was something wrong with him because of his high sex drive. A high sex drive is typical and normal for many young men, even though it is not always convenient and may distract them from their goals and from behaving in the manner expected of them by society. High sex drive can be a symptom of hypomania, but it would typically fluctuate with mood.
I'm really glad that you took the time and shared your opinion.
I always believed that my high sex drive was a result of high testosterone but it turns out my test levels are barely average.
It certainly doesn't account for my obsession with it.
Right now I think I'm in normal state or going downhill or something very mild so I'm very aware of myself, at least I'd like to think that.
My obsession with sex is far greater than masturbating it also involves the risky behavior, brothels, and street hookers of highly questionable health, with the latter I always ended up very close to having sex with, but I did with brothel hookers, it wasn't the sex on itself that got me obsessed but the risk, I could/can get sex anytime with my GF or some other girl that are "available" to me on that department but there are periods that I prefer "lower quality and appearance women" high risk sex over anything available.
I do currently have a GF that really is in love with me and satisfies emotional and sexual need but this obsession with risky sex, pornography, etc doesn't get satiated by my GF or my ex or the ex before that.
Anyone I know with low, medium or high sex drive still doesn't compare to my level of intensity and obsession with sex and all that jazz.
And the latest years I was convinced that all this was a result of me having "high testosterone" (which isn't the case), ADHD and predisposition to schizophrenia (perhaps high levels of dopamine??), and all that in combination created this type of behavior that makes "me", but lately I've seen a bigger picture of the pattern and currently hypomania fits as a whole better than my previous theories.
Not even sure which one is better.
For example, number two, talkativeness or pressure of speech; when I get hypomanic or manic, I talk so much that my jaw hurts. The pain in my jaw is the first thing I notice, because I don't notice how inappropriately much I have been speaking. This pressure of speech is not typical of my communication style. Whereas what you seem to be describing the way you behave with friends. That could be normal for you. Again, does it fluctuate with mood.
As I said I talk only when comfortable with people but when I do speak it's another story.
In high moods, my jaw is usually fine but only because my throat gives in first, when we gather around or talk in skype I'm usually always only one to talk more and get a sore throat, only that stops me from continuing, there was a very high state that I spoke for 6,5 hours almost yelling for the whole duration, without a single pause it was late night and I was so immersed that, I wasn't even angry just excited. And the only reason I stopped was pain all over my head, body, exhaustion, dizziness (it was far after I should've have slept), sore throat etc, that has happened many times in my high moods.
Whenever I get the chance with my friends and high in mood I almost always end up with a sore throat and sound like a heavy smoker after that.
As I said I've been more alone in the last couple of years so I can concentrate on my goals, I have big ones, among the ones i mentioned in OP.
When in high mood and alone I usually end up in some forum arguing stuff, there were too many instances of 10 to 14 hour non-interrupted "debates" writing and replying non-stop with various people about various subjects, I had to respond to everyone and prove/disprove everything non-stop obsessively, even in matters that I wasn't interested in.
When I'm in a more normal state I do none of that, which is another which makes question my "normality".
You describe yourself as having some grandiosity, being very confident in your opinions and of having high expectations. Again, from the 24yo males I have known and socialised with when I was that age, they were all like that. It was kind of annoying when they thought they knew everything and wouldn't listen. But, that kind of confidence can be typical among young men. If you start thinking you are the reincarnation of Aristotle or Plato or Jesus, then I think you would have cause for concern. If you are approaching this level of grandiosity, if you honestly think that next week you will revolutionise your field, then perhaps you should be concerned. If you think that one day, after years of hard work, trying and failing different things, then you might do something important in a small way, then this would be more reasonable level of grandiosity.
Well i sort of believe that I can revolutionize in the coming years, fields of philosophy, arts, physics etc. when I'm in high mood I'm extremely certain of that.
I always was fearful that this type of thinking was the onset of schizophrenia, but it doesn't fit and explain the whole puzzle of my mood, action and thought patterns.
The pacing up and down thinking of insights and ideas: you are a uni student, you are learning. Again this could be normal, but it does suggest some psychomotor agitation. If it persists more than an hour or so at a time, perhaps you should be a little concerned. If you are doing it for days in a row, then it is clearly something is wrong.
It's definitely more than one hour, sometimes almost the entirety of the day can be consumed by these thoughts disregarding personal hygiene, food, responsibilities, duties etc. All that when I'm in high mood. And if the obsession really connects it can continue right after I wake up the next day until I get worn out again.
Question 6 covers risk taking or impulsive behaviour. You have listed a high sex drive here, which might be relevant overall but it is not the answer to point 6. If you are engaging in promiscuous behaviour because of it, then it is relevant to this item. Also other risk taking behaviours like business ventures and shopping sprees are relevant here. In mania and hypomania there is a lack of insight, a lack of judgement that goes along with the high energy.
Funny thing, my biggest anxiety and concern in my normal mood is how will I keep up with my decisions, I've made some heavy decisions about Uni and my future jobs and havent' told anyone, literally no one.
I'll be dropping out everything in the coming months and getting a new source of income, a risky one but legal one. When I'm in my low moods it's one of the things that hits me hard, that it's a bad choice and will cost me and the consequences how will my family will react upon hearing my course of actions etc. I don't think any of that when high mood.
You speak of depressions. Feeling low for a couple of weeks and crying at a movie doesn't really warrant a diagnosis of depression. However, suicidal thoughts are something to be concerned about, something to take seriously, and in the context of prolonged sadness might indicate a greater degree of depression then first appears on the surface. I think it's important to have a safety plan. Find out in advance the suicide hotline number, the hospital number, friends numbers, and carry them around with you in case of emergency.
If you re-read my OP you' noticed that I don't *cry* by being moved or anything within a movie, I meant that before putting a movie(because being passive was the only thing i could handle) or doing ANY kind of activity I'd cried from frustration for no apparent, for me, reason.
Not sure how to describe it, you know the feeling right before crying from frustration, that feeling is a constant big portion of my day when in low mood.
Which brings me to the next point: I have never seen such a careful analysis of behaviour as you have done here, on a forum, and a lot of people try to self-diagnose on forums. This tells me you have a lot of consideration and insight into your own behaviour which is something often lacking during hypomania and mania.
I don't know about that, as far as i can tell the past week has been quite normal, with everyday being increasingly slightly lower in mood, but nowhere near my depression state, i feel now very "ok", no particular energy or particular sadness.
Despite what I said I still consider myself objective and always try to be and not being it is one of my biggest fears because it implies disconnection from reality and thus not thinking in relation to reality, which as I said is part of my goals (solving problems on variety of fields).
One may think that being objective and reasonable can't coexist with having emotions of grandeur, I can't currently put my hands on that but I generally think they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, depends on what we're talking and in what level and the person etc.
The main reason for you to see a doctor would be if you are experiencing distress, if your life is being disrupted by these symptoms. A diagnosis is really a working assumption needed to inform the best treatment approach.
This is my main concern, my choices really are high in distress-potential, I may have destroyed my future opportunities with overestimating my strength, I was many times near-danger from my sexual pursuits, STDS being only a part of the dangers. I haven' done anything harmful to others.
I do think you should see a psychiatrist if suicidal thoughts are worrying you. A general practitioner might not assess for hypomania and you may react badly to anti-depressants if you are prone to hypomania. The psychiatrist will assess you in a much more comprehensive way than just against these items; he or she will take a full case history to confirm their diagnosis. My ramblings here are fairly meaningless, since even though i know all about bipolar disorder I am not trained to make any kind of diagnosis. And neither are you. It is really worth it if you have these concerns, to get them attended to. If you are normal then there is nothing to fear, and if you have a mental health condition then early treatment is very important to prevent deterioration.
Generally i "trained" myself to be overly optimistic, more than anyone I know. But it seems in times of depression no matter how hard I try, I view depression not with despair but with a logical and reasonable option, prior to these latest few years I never really had much to do with death or preoccupation with suicide, at least as far as I can remember almost none and if there was it was due to a direct external reason.
Despite all, that my substance abuse is non-existent, I know that people with bipolar disorder do engage in such activities.
But then again I was never predisposed to them, I think I directed all my possible obsessions to sexual and intellectual "fields".
Perhaps that's not the case, I don't know, hopefully within this month or the next month I'll get a professional opinion.
Prior knowing anything about hypomania I thought everything stemmed from ADHD(and the grandeur from Schizho), I thought that I probably had ADHD because I was the least likely to concentrate on anything imposed by others, good-willed or not. Almost never pay attention in school or anything that wasn't appealing to me intrinsically, I tried hard but never managed getting around the severe procrastination(if i wasn't obsessed i would just waste my time with anything that grabbed my attention) and attention issues.
And problem with sleeping as I said I could never sleep unless I was completely worn out, I always had broken sleeping patterns, meaning I stayed awake more hours everyday continually, this interfered alot with my duties, GF, friends, work (when i working I slept only 4 hours a day and was always irritated, coudln't sleep more and it was intellectually draining job that also need social skills).
Perhaps I want to have hypomania because that would explain all those things that I was having all my life along with other things I didn't consider up to now, so many things that were in the far extreme compared to people I know, family, friends etc.
Having so many abnormal behaviors and tendencies I sort of felt that I was born with "bad" genes or some kind of birth defect, if you consider everything at once hypomania explains the whole pattern.
Unless I actually have insomnia, hypersexuality, low depressions, attention deficit etc etc all at once and separately , which is probably but not likely.
But regardless, I'm not fabricating anything or exaggerating, everything I said indeed happens to me.