![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynApparently this is what I'm doing today. Trying to drill down into my mental health and pin it to the wall with numbers. This is my attempt at categorizing my highs. And it's really difficult, mostly because my highs are so much more variable than my lows.
I mean, they are all about energy, but I've got a messy history of that energy sometimes being pretty bleak and terrible and mixed up, which makes it hard. But it seems worth trying anyway.
For what it's worth, I think hypomania runs up to about 7. 8-10 are mania. Maybe. Perhaps. It's the same thing anyway. My CPN always says that if I have insight, it's hypomania, if I don't, it's mania. But we'll discuss that later. Again, this is a totally personal 1-10 scale and bears no real resemblance to any kind of proper medical set up.
1) Very mild hypomania. Probably not particularly noticeable.
The euphoric version - I think this is the stage that feels to me mostly like New Relationship Energy - that buzz you get when falling in love. Everything feels awesome, you're in a good mood, you've got your life sorted, and you feel everything that tiny bit more - sunshine on your skin, rain in your hair. You want to run down the street in joy at it being an awesome day.
The dysphoric version - I fidget more. I am more irritable. Sometimes I want to run down the street to burn off some irrational rage. I do have very funny comedic rants, however, on stupid things. I can sometimes flare up over nonsense. Sometimes there's a bit of heightened anxiety in here too.
There's also a middle version where everything means more and I'm a bit more agitated and seem to swing between anger and joy and anxiety. But it's all the same fidgety sense.
2) Still pretty mild. Like the stage 1, but my brain is getting a bit creative. Only the creative stuff feels very literal. I might read a fairy story and wonder if the Wild Hunt is real. My sex drive seems to be going up at this point - I might meet someone new and suddenly I pretty much have zero sexual boundaries and it seems like a great idea to write filthy emails from my work e mail. I definitely need less sleep at this point. The less sleep is the first warning sign. By now, I think 6 hours is well enough and anything more seems lazy and slack.
I might describe myself as a morning person when explaining why I wanted to get up at 6 am for no real reason except that staying in bed has become really hard.
3) This is beginning to get noticeable. I'm doing a LOAD of stuff now. Sometimes it's pretty good stuff. Sometimes it's slightly mad. I always have mild issues finding a middle gear between 'obsessive' and 'totally distracted' and now that is massively exaggerated. Some of the obsessions are a bit out of the blue - not stuff I'd normally be quite so into. Often it's people - I might decide to be best friends with someone new. I vanish into role play games and decide that it's totally legitimate to run some kind of really graphic online sex scene with a load of deeply inappropriate and problematic content.
The dysphoric stuff tends to be more anger. I might develop an obsessive loathing of someone for some random reason and be a heinous bitch, erupting into screaming virago rages if anyone calls me on it. I might develop an obsession for a night with being an NPC and run out of the room, leaping a table as I go, when said NPC dies, because the feeling is overwhelming. I can get paranoid at this stage too - I've had days when it feels like I have bugs crawling around beneath my skin, and I can't breathe for waiting for the awful thing that Jez is going to do and I just want to break up with him so it's over and done with. It's not depression. If it wasn't depression I wouldn't need to run it off so often.
I'm not very good at recognizing this stage either.
4) I feel like this is the last stage at which it's plausible that I'm not mad. When this stage goes well, this is where a lot of the old stories of 'mad spontaneous exciting' Sally come from. Honestly, I've had some great times - when I decide to fare dodge on trains across the country to see someone, or when I wander around the streets of Reading in my pajamas, randomly talking to people, or get my dole money through after a long backlog and instead of paying bills, blow it all on flights somewhere.
I have mad affairs where I tell people I love them. Or I have screaming melt downs and rant about how I want to impale some bitch on a spike. I mean, either way. It's not delusional exactly, and these days if you point it out, I might recognize this isn't normal. I think at this stage, though, everything I'm feeling or doing is still an exaggeration of a lot of stuff that I might be thinking or feeling or doing normally. It's 'Sally goes to 11' and not anything totally out of place. I think. This is really hard working all this through, you know.
5) This is the point, I think, where I start parting company from reality. The energy is bubbling over in weird ways. I think it was a 5 when I decided to run off into the woods at Empire, laughing and crying and singing at points as I went. I wound up in some fields where I lay down amongst the crops and suddenly realized that I was not human and never had been human and needed to turn into sky.
Another time I had a screaming fit at a housemate and ran off until my legs gave way. I think it's at this stage that I start to see The Dance or feel the urge to touch the fairy tale. Things are important that weren't before. At this stage, the key, I think, is to keep me in quiet environments with low stimuli and get me to think things through carefully before I do them. When I'm talking it through, I can register that this isn't necessarily sensible and maybe I shouldn't do the thing. This, by the way, is the start of the stage that actually annoys me, as I tend to sound very rational when I report this stuff to a mental health professional, who then say things like 'but you have insight, and you know it's not real. So you're fine' and don't seem to register that I know it's not real because I've had Jez or someone talk me down for half an hour and actually, a bit of my brain is STILL not convinced because that moment of insight felt perfectly real to me. I don't think there is always a clear line between insight/not insight for me.
6) I am beginning to make really bad judgement calls. I might have a stupid affair with a married man I don't even normally fancy, but I am convinced I am drawn to by fate and the gods. I get angry and throw plates at the wall beside Jez's head, because that seems normal.
I think this is the stage where I start to think odd things. Like...could I summon the Wild Hunt? Like...really? Am I really me when I look in the mirror? Or was that always someone else? Am I even a real person, or am I just a mask that thinks she's real?
I mean, most of the time I know they are stray thoughts. But they are starting to feel real. I can intellectually say that I'm just being a bit funny, but I feel as if I'm lying when I say that. I'm told I have insight. I feel like I'm faking it, to keep the medical types happy. In the back of my brain, I cackle as I say that I know I can't summon the Wild Hunt and a tiny voice whispers "that's it. You've got them all fooled. They'll never see it coming".
My sleep is getting proper fucked now. Four hours seems reasonable.
7) I'm not doing too well at all. Jez is muttering things about hospitals but my CPN says I'm fine as I seem so rational. The afternoon after he's said this, I make an anonymous phone call to the crisis team where I scream and cry into the phone because I've got an evil spirit living in my chest who is trying to make me cut my chest open and cut him free. It feels very real in the moment. A few hours later, I'm pretty sure that wasn't real. Pretty sure. But when I look in the mirror, I think I can see him.
I am sure that my friends want to kill me. I know it. They are sending me messages via the posters in the tube station and I'm scared. I don't want to die. So I call the Samaritans and they calm me down. I sort of know it isn't real. But it feels real. I can fake insight, but at this point I wobble, over the course of a day, from being 20% to 70% sure that the weird stuff is real. I just know to keep claiming it isn't.
I fake pretty well.
8) I can see the god I believe in standing in a field watching me. Just out of the corner of my eye. But I'm sure he's there. I have a name for him and I know his place. He's there to protect me and watch over me. He feels good to have around. I feel special.
I could say he isn't real, but I'd be 100% lying at this point. I can feel commands in my brain and they hurt. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm evil. I am the reason my friend died. I am wicked to the very core and when I get into a bad argument on Facebook, it triggers this giant revelation of all the evil I have done and I can hear commands, like psychic messages beamed into my brain, telling me to kill myself.
I drive around looking for the right bridge to jump off. Thankfully my psychic masters are shit at geography and I can't find one so I go home and take an overdose of sleeping pills to make the noise go away. Poor Jez has to drag me to hospital.
9) Like 8, but it lasts for longer. An 8 might be a brief peak in a generally 7 episode. 9 is when this keeps going for more than a week or so.
10) I'm not actually sure I've had a 10. I think I keep this here because I remember the people I used to chat to in the psych ward. I think a 10 will happen when I stop listening to the nurses, when I stop taking my meds, when I stop trying to distract myself with something simple, something physical.
I don't know exactly. I just have this sense that the stage 9 is not my maximum. But as long as I keep taking the meds, as long as I'm careful, and as long as I stick to the routines and the healthy living, I think it might hold off.
I sound quite mad in this entry. I'm not properly mad this often, by the way. I'm really not. 90% of the time I'm not even at a 1. But this is where I've been to. For reference, though, I've been hospitalized at 7 and at 8.
I mean, they are all about energy, but I've got a messy history of that energy sometimes being pretty bleak and terrible and mixed up, which makes it hard. But it seems worth trying anyway.
For what it's worth, I think hypomania runs up to about 7. 8-10 are mania. Maybe. Perhaps. It's the same thing anyway. My CPN always says that if I have insight, it's hypomania, if I don't, it's mania. But we'll discuss that later. Again, this is a totally personal 1-10 scale and bears no real resemblance to any kind of proper medical set up.
1) Very mild hypomania. Probably not particularly noticeable.
The euphoric version - I think this is the stage that feels to me mostly like New Relationship Energy - that buzz you get when falling in love. Everything feels awesome, you're in a good mood, you've got your life sorted, and you feel everything that tiny bit more - sunshine on your skin, rain in your hair. You want to run down the street in joy at it being an awesome day.
The dysphoric version - I fidget more. I am more irritable. Sometimes I want to run down the street to burn off some irrational rage. I do have very funny comedic rants, however, on stupid things. I can sometimes flare up over nonsense. Sometimes there's a bit of heightened anxiety in here too.
There's also a middle version where everything means more and I'm a bit more agitated and seem to swing between anger and joy and anxiety. But it's all the same fidgety sense.
2) Still pretty mild. Like the stage 1, but my brain is getting a bit creative. Only the creative stuff feels very literal. I might read a fairy story and wonder if the Wild Hunt is real. My sex drive seems to be going up at this point - I might meet someone new and suddenly I pretty much have zero sexual boundaries and it seems like a great idea to write filthy emails from my work e mail. I definitely need less sleep at this point. The less sleep is the first warning sign. By now, I think 6 hours is well enough and anything more seems lazy and slack.
I might describe myself as a morning person when explaining why I wanted to get up at 6 am for no real reason except that staying in bed has become really hard.
3) This is beginning to get noticeable. I'm doing a LOAD of stuff now. Sometimes it's pretty good stuff. Sometimes it's slightly mad. I always have mild issues finding a middle gear between 'obsessive' and 'totally distracted' and now that is massively exaggerated. Some of the obsessions are a bit out of the blue - not stuff I'd normally be quite so into. Often it's people - I might decide to be best friends with someone new. I vanish into role play games and decide that it's totally legitimate to run some kind of really graphic online sex scene with a load of deeply inappropriate and problematic content.
The dysphoric stuff tends to be more anger. I might develop an obsessive loathing of someone for some random reason and be a heinous bitch, erupting into screaming virago rages if anyone calls me on it. I might develop an obsession for a night with being an NPC and run out of the room, leaping a table as I go, when said NPC dies, because the feeling is overwhelming. I can get paranoid at this stage too - I've had days when it feels like I have bugs crawling around beneath my skin, and I can't breathe for waiting for the awful thing that Jez is going to do and I just want to break up with him so it's over and done with. It's not depression. If it wasn't depression I wouldn't need to run it off so often.
I'm not very good at recognizing this stage either.
4) I feel like this is the last stage at which it's plausible that I'm not mad. When this stage goes well, this is where a lot of the old stories of 'mad spontaneous exciting' Sally come from. Honestly, I've had some great times - when I decide to fare dodge on trains across the country to see someone, or when I wander around the streets of Reading in my pajamas, randomly talking to people, or get my dole money through after a long backlog and instead of paying bills, blow it all on flights somewhere.
I have mad affairs where I tell people I love them. Or I have screaming melt downs and rant about how I want to impale some bitch on a spike. I mean, either way. It's not delusional exactly, and these days if you point it out, I might recognize this isn't normal. I think at this stage, though, everything I'm feeling or doing is still an exaggeration of a lot of stuff that I might be thinking or feeling or doing normally. It's 'Sally goes to 11' and not anything totally out of place. I think. This is really hard working all this through, you know.
5) This is the point, I think, where I start parting company from reality. The energy is bubbling over in weird ways. I think it was a 5 when I decided to run off into the woods at Empire, laughing and crying and singing at points as I went. I wound up in some fields where I lay down amongst the crops and suddenly realized that I was not human and never had been human and needed to turn into sky.
Another time I had a screaming fit at a housemate and ran off until my legs gave way. I think it's at this stage that I start to see The Dance or feel the urge to touch the fairy tale. Things are important that weren't before. At this stage, the key, I think, is to keep me in quiet environments with low stimuli and get me to think things through carefully before I do them. When I'm talking it through, I can register that this isn't necessarily sensible and maybe I shouldn't do the thing. This, by the way, is the start of the stage that actually annoys me, as I tend to sound very rational when I report this stuff to a mental health professional, who then say things like 'but you have insight, and you know it's not real. So you're fine' and don't seem to register that I know it's not real because I've had Jez or someone talk me down for half an hour and actually, a bit of my brain is STILL not convinced because that moment of insight felt perfectly real to me. I don't think there is always a clear line between insight/not insight for me.
6) I am beginning to make really bad judgement calls. I might have a stupid affair with a married man I don't even normally fancy, but I am convinced I am drawn to by fate and the gods. I get angry and throw plates at the wall beside Jez's head, because that seems normal.
I think this is the stage where I start to think odd things. Like...could I summon the Wild Hunt? Like...really? Am I really me when I look in the mirror? Or was that always someone else? Am I even a real person, or am I just a mask that thinks she's real?
I mean, most of the time I know they are stray thoughts. But they are starting to feel real. I can intellectually say that I'm just being a bit funny, but I feel as if I'm lying when I say that. I'm told I have insight. I feel like I'm faking it, to keep the medical types happy. In the back of my brain, I cackle as I say that I know I can't summon the Wild Hunt and a tiny voice whispers "that's it. You've got them all fooled. They'll never see it coming".
My sleep is getting proper fucked now. Four hours seems reasonable.
7) I'm not doing too well at all. Jez is muttering things about hospitals but my CPN says I'm fine as I seem so rational. The afternoon after he's said this, I make an anonymous phone call to the crisis team where I scream and cry into the phone because I've got an evil spirit living in my chest who is trying to make me cut my chest open and cut him free. It feels very real in the moment. A few hours later, I'm pretty sure that wasn't real. Pretty sure. But when I look in the mirror, I think I can see him.
I am sure that my friends want to kill me. I know it. They are sending me messages via the posters in the tube station and I'm scared. I don't want to die. So I call the Samaritans and they calm me down. I sort of know it isn't real. But it feels real. I can fake insight, but at this point I wobble, over the course of a day, from being 20% to 70% sure that the weird stuff is real. I just know to keep claiming it isn't.
I fake pretty well.
8) I can see the god I believe in standing in a field watching me. Just out of the corner of my eye. But I'm sure he's there. I have a name for him and I know his place. He's there to protect me and watch over me. He feels good to have around. I feel special.
I could say he isn't real, but I'd be 100% lying at this point. I can feel commands in my brain and they hurt. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm evil. I am the reason my friend died. I am wicked to the very core and when I get into a bad argument on Facebook, it triggers this giant revelation of all the evil I have done and I can hear commands, like psychic messages beamed into my brain, telling me to kill myself.
I drive around looking for the right bridge to jump off. Thankfully my psychic masters are shit at geography and I can't find one so I go home and take an overdose of sleeping pills to make the noise go away. Poor Jez has to drag me to hospital.
9) Like 8, but it lasts for longer. An 8 might be a brief peak in a generally 7 episode. 9 is when this keeps going for more than a week or so.
10) I'm not actually sure I've had a 10. I think I keep this here because I remember the people I used to chat to in the psych ward. I think a 10 will happen when I stop listening to the nurses, when I stop taking my meds, when I stop trying to distract myself with something simple, something physical.
I don't know exactly. I just have this sense that the stage 9 is not my maximum. But as long as I keep taking the meds, as long as I'm careful, and as long as I stick to the routines and the healthy living, I think it might hold off.
I sound quite mad in this entry. I'm not properly mad this often, by the way. I'm really not. 90% of the time I'm not even at a 1. But this is where I've been to. For reference, though, I've been hospitalized at 7 and at 8.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-13 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-20 03:01 pm (UTC)I'm glad I've had dreamdwidth to write it on as well. I don't like writing for no audience at all, but I think I'd have been far too self conscious to post it up on FB or something - this feels a bit like I'm shouting into a much safer void.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-25 11:11 pm (UTC)