Hypomania. Here's How To Manage It.

Hypomania. 

What is hypomania?

If you are not bipolar, "hypomania" may be a normal, pleasant part of your personalty. Some people are naturally high-energy and don't need much sleep. Hypomania won't make you have problems in your life. You won't fall into depressive episodes in your life either. And yes, you are very, very lucky. 

If you are bipolar, hypomania is a low-grade mania. If you are Bipolar, Type II, this is the worst your mania will get. It can cause problems for you with making poor, impulsive decisions. It can "crash" into a deep depression that could be morbidly deep. So, yes, you do need to manage your hypomania, because it can do a lot of damage in your life.

But, unless you are Bipolar, Type I,  it won't grow and exacerbate to the point where it can make you psychotic or need to be hospitalized. Hypomania, for Bipolar I, is a sign that you are not stable and you are in danger of attaining great heights of instability. Sadly, I am a Bipolar I. Happily, I now know what to do about this problem.

Experienced sufferers of Bipolar I may go into terror when they hear their doctor tell them they are "hypomanic." Will the mania grow to an all-consuming point where you will be unable to contain your behavior? Truthfully, you don't know. Even with the best hypomania management techniques, there are no guarantees. Yet, if you don't try, it's likely your hypomania will escalate.

So, here is a very simple guide of what to do.

(1) Stop Freaking Out About It: "Freaking out" and worrying about it and feeling powerless and helpless will ramp hypomania up.

(2) Let the people you are closest to and see most often know the symptoms of hypomania and ask them to point them out to you when they see them. 

Common Early Symptom List:
*Intense, high-anxiety.
*Unusually strong irritability.
*Behavior out of the ordinary for you (You might hear people say, "You're not acting like yourself.")
*Ability to do much more work than usual, more efficiently.
*Something traumatic happens and you feel no reaction. "I must be dealing with this really well!" Um, no. (Caveat: Yes, you may be learning to cope better- Yet numbness followed by euphoria may indicate that you have been blindsided by something.)
*Intensely happy, out of the blue, for absolutely no reason. "Wow. What happened? Was I just enlightened?" Um, no.

Full List: http://psychcentral.com/disorders/hypomanic-episode-symptoms/

(3) Follow your doctor's instructions to the letter even when that is the last thing in the world you want to do- and it will be. (If you are laughing hysterically alone in your apartment like you are naturally blissfully high, do you really want to take that pill your doctor said to take right away to make it stop?) I can answer that easily for you. NO, you will certainly NOT want to do that.

SO.. Poster time. Post, somewhere in your home, what can happen if you do not follow your doctor's instructions.

Sample Poster Contents:
*Mania feels good but mania will not be good if I let it control me.
*Mania can land me in the hospital.
*Mania can quickly lead to bankruptcy.
*Mania leads me to do things I'm ashamed of later.
*Mania scares my family.
*Mania can crash into severe depression.
Stop. Do all you can to make it stop. (Personalize this more based on your experience.)

(4) Do Things You Really Should Be Doing Anyway:

Go intentionally slowly about your life. LOTS of pauses. LOTS of breaks. REST. Take a "thought vacation." Very little about what you think about while you are manic is meaningful and that often feels overwhelming and frustrating. So, don't even bother trying to figure some things out. Accept confusion for now. Remember- You are not well. So, treat yourself like it. Relax.

DO correct errors in logic. Practice mindfulness more conscientiously. Take almost nothing you are worried about or fixated on seriously. Live your life in little "bites," even though you want to woof it all down at once! Breathe more. Walk more. The storms can pass instead of escalate. But, monitor, monitor, monitor and take care, care, care. Make relaxation a primary goal.

(5) Ride it out, and as long as you are doing what your doctor said, enjoy the creative flood you may be having. Sometimes, hypomania gives you ideas for new projects and the impetus to start to carry them out. As it grows toward increased mania, however, your thoughts will get so scattered and overwhelming, your work will lose focus completely. Watch the process. Monitor and tell your doctor when you start to see this.

Crisis Plan: How To Nip It In The Bud Early

Stressful events and trauma can immediately trigger bipolar disorder, creating a mess of misfired neurotransmitters and chemical flooding. So, make a list in advance of what you will do, step by step, as soon as you have the awareness that something traumatic or stressful has happened to you, even if you don't feel a thing. Follow this list very carefully. 

#1 should be, "Call your doctor." Yes, your doctor. Call him before you call your family, your therapist or your minister. Doctor. He needs to know you need more monitoring. #2 and the rest are up to you, but "choice options" are best. For example: "I will sit and say certain prayers OR I will call my Aunt Mary." You don't know what you'll be in the mood for, but you will need simple choices, so don't give yourself more than two to choose from for each line. Write down your own personalized steps for crisis time. Add your crisis plan to your poster of why you need to do what your doctor says. That's the best idea.

Possible Other Helps:

* Intensely emotional music. Some recommend not listening to intense music, because it could make you more emotional, but intense music contains my hypomania. Unsure why. I have really strong feelings, get tired and let go of them when the song is over. So, give me Imogen Heap or Regina Spektor, Rachmaninoff, or Andrea Bocelli. I don't care the style. Just give me intense. For others, soothing music might be better, but I am just not a "Yanni person."

*Take your mind off worry with art, poetry or musical composition. 

*Meditation and prayer.

Open Letter to You, A Bipolar

Dear Fellow Bipolar,

Just the other day, I was talking to a friend about all the various projects I love to do, such as creative writing, graphic design, web design, book cover design and app development. She said to me, "Of course, you do all that, you're bipolar. Bipolars are tremendously creative!" 

Suddenly, it occurred to me how I used to believe that going on medication would stifle my creativity, which seems to be the consensus in most of the bipolar community. But, I thought it would be helpful to tell people that the opposite has been the case for me. I'm more focused and so I'm more capable and I am more free to be creative.

No one wants to be on medications. I fought them. A doctor told me and my parents when I was sixteen that I would have to be on medications my entire life. After feeling the absolute numbing effects, the weight gain, the stomach problems and many other issues, I said, "Absolutely not." I believe that over the span of age 16-36, I was on medications about six years, and that was not consecutively. My life during those years was a casualty. It did not turn out the way I wanted, either in career or family life.

You see, what I did not understand was that it takes time to adjust to medications- like several months, or even years sometimes. You need to be patient and bipolars aren't good at that. You will probably need a cocktail of medications. It is extremely rare that only one medication will work on its own. And you will have side effects. And you will hate them. And you will NOT feel creative. Yet, I promise you that this will pass.

I also promise you that your creativeness will come back and your artistic freedom and ability will amaze you.

Staying on medications is better than frequent hospitalizations. It's better than a series of shallow, failed relationships, or blowing money and going into bankruptcy over and over again. It's better than suicide, and the frequency of bipolars killing themselves without medications is about one in five.

Do you want to stay alive? Do you want a life worth living? Then persevere with medications until they work for you.

Over time, I've learned not to take on too many projects or life ceases to be fun and my creative ability becomes too constricted. You see, I'm not in the creative arts business for the money. As much as I love new things sometimes, I've learned that money isn't going to make me happy and it actually adds nothing to my overall quality of life. I want to support myself and have money for the things I need, but I'm mostly in it for the fun and I try to use my abilities to be of service to God at the same time. That is greatly freeing.

I couldn't do that as an unmedicated bipolar. No, as an unmedicated bipolar, I always took on way too much, to the point of nervous breakdown later. I was too pulled and stretched in too many directions to really do anything well. And I was drawn to quick and flashy things that usually involved spending money and taking ridiculous risks.

As a bipolar, you have immense potential. Unfortunately, all of that potential is usually wasted because most people do not stay on medications.  Don't let that happen to you.

Nine years now of staying steadily on meds and five years stable. Four years of knowing it was worth it and waiting patiently through the process of getting it right, even though it seemed to take forever. Even during those first four years of shakiness, waiting for the right drug combo to be discovered, the quality of my life was better. And for the past five, it's gotten immeasurably better.

It's worth it. You are worth it.

The depth of high and low is still inside me, believe it or not. I can still sense and draw from the extremes. Yet they don't define my life experience or who I am and they do not control me. That's how medications have helped me. I am more content. I am happier. I have huge fun creating things and my creativeness does not overwhelm or control me. 

Right now, at this very moment, I have exactly the life I want. I am content. And I am still growing. 

I am writing this now because I want that for you, too.

Sincerely,
Laura Paxton