What Bipolar Disorder Feels Like
An intimate and in depth look at the symptoms of bipolar disorder
7 min readMar 23, 2020
Examples of what each episode can look like
Knowing the definitions of each bipolar episode can be helpful, but unless you’ve experienced them they can seem abstract. Everyone experiences these serious and potentially dangerous symptoms differently, but here are my experiences of bipolar 1 episodes to give you an idea what each episode might be like.
Note: This article contains mentions of self-harm and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with either of these contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the U.S. or in your local area or go to the nearest emergency room.
What it feels like
- Depression — Of all the episodes, depression is the episode that I’ve spent the most time in my life. Depression followed me from Elementary school into my young adulthood. I was lucky enough to have a good family that seldom struggled and always did well in school, but I can remember the feeling that I was a bad person and a failure and unlovable from a young age. I had an inability to believe that anyone was my friend or why anyone would want to be my friend and was angry and negative all the time which only drove people away.
Besides the negative thoughts, I wasn’t able to take care of myself. I alternated between barely eating and eating constantly. I’d sleep all the time and then go months with severe insomnia. When my depression was really bad I felt like I was drowning and incapable of making decisions or doing anything to distract myself. I wouldn’t even want to do my favorite coping mechanisms including writing, reading, and horseback riding. Instead I would spend my time laying there lost in my thoughts and crying.
In high school, I started a new coping mechanism. I felt numb and angry at myself. I started self-harming. First I thought I was punishing myself, but later I realized that I’d feel somewhat better and more in control . I hid my new habit until my mom found out and made sure my treatment team knew so that I could learn better coping mechanisms, but I continued to cut on and off for a few years before finally stopping.
Although I was in treatment, recovery was still a struggle. Sometimes the depression slowly drained away week by week and month by month. Othertimes it switched into a different episode. Mostly I felt like I was living hell where I could see everyone else around me seemingly happy and unable to understand why I couldn’t be happy, too. - Hypomania — Through most of high school I felt depression to some degree or another, so when I hit my final year of high school and I started to suddenly feel better I thought things were great. I had all this energy and motivation that I hadn’t had. I resumed all of my hobbies and took on even more, starting one and then quickly abandoning it for another. I’d stay up long into the night writing and trying to keep up with my thoughts and still feel energy the next day. I’d never been interested in fish, but suddenly I was spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars of money to create this elaborate fish tank. I became more out going and went to parties when I wasn’t normally a partying type person. I talked fast and constantly.
At first everything felt great. Then the happy feelings switched to irritability. People couldn’t keep up with my speaking or the thoughts that drove me which made me frustrated. I was angry and yelled often. I was writing constantly, but looking back not all of it was as profound as I thought it was at the time. Sometimes what I wrote barely made any sense. Insomnia stayed, but my body began to get tired even if my mind wasn’t. I was spending money I didn’t have. Instead of being the life of the party, I was biting the heads off of the people around me. My girlfriend couldn’t keep up with my increased sexual appetite and I made some questionable decisions with a friend of hers that I never would have done before. I wasn’t in the grips of full mania, but hypomania definitely had an impact on my life.
Most of the time when I get hypomania it’s a lot short and almost feels “fun”. I like the increased productivity, the faster thoughts, and the increase in energy. I get so much writing done and start new projects. Most of the time it’s the “happy” version. But it’s a mirage. The feeling never lasts. It can quickly escalate to the irritable version at best or worse, warp into a full manic or mixed episode. When hypomania comes on, it’s a sign that I need to start working with my treatment team to stop the wheel of episodes from turning.
Because hypomania has different ways to present, there have been times when I missed it (and been in denial). For an extended period of time during my last semester of college I went through months where I was sleeping only a few hours a night. I was alternately happy and more outgoing and irritable and lashing out at those around me. Money was going through my accounts like water. I talked a lot and always had a lot of thoughts running through my head. Looking back, I was hypomanic for most of that time. It took my new psychiatrist after I moved back home to help me break the cycle. - Mixed episodes — That first episode of hypomania in high school was recognized only looking back. The first real episode that made me and my doctors recognize that I had bipolar disorder and not major depression by itself was actually something called a mixed episode. The hypomanic episode turned into depression again as I graduated high school then changed again as I entered my first semester of college.
Once again I wasn’t sleeping. I stayed up all night playing video games obsessively and played the Savage Garden cd over and over (it was a long time before I could listen to it again afterwards). My thoughts never stopped, but they were all negative. I was a bad person in my head again and I knew I was going to fail even though I’d always done well in school. I both wanted to make friends and wanted to avoid people entirely. I stopped eating even though the school was small so the dining hall was literally downstairs. The washing machine was down the hall, but I couldn’t bring myself to clean my clothes. I wanted nothing to do with the horses I was going to school to learn about, but I had energy I couldn’t get rid of. I paced and moved fast sometimes. Other times I could barely make myself move. Everything felt activated at the same time that I was drowning again.
The combination of extra energy and racing thoughts of the hypomania along with the crushing feelings of depression culminated in suicidal thoughts. Mixed episodes are the most dangerous episodes for me. Although I sometimes get suicidal thoughts when I’m depressed, they’re more obsessions in the back of my mind that I have no energy to do anything about. The times that I’ve had mixed episodes are the times I end up needing the help of a mental hospital due to suicidal thoughts. - Mania — Some people have bipolar 2 and only have hypomanic episodes. People with bipolar 1 get mania, but may also have hypomania. Everyone’s different in how often they get into a particular episode and how long they spend their time in that episode. For me, I more often get hypomania or mixed episodes but I have had episodes of mania.
The most vivid time I had full mania was just a couple of years ago. I had been stable for many years, then a number of stressful life events hit at once. I stopped sleeping and taking care of myself. I made the mistake of not taking my medications appropriately. I skipped over hypomania and went right to irritable mania. I lost all concentration at work and struggled to work through my racing thoughts. I decided to take a class to learn a new career that I knew nothing about and would normally never be interested in. I was writing constantly. The mania was not a happy one and I began self-harming again for the first time in over a decade. It wasn’t until I started plans for buying a new car that me and my family realized what was going on. A few days later I moved into a mixed episode and was hospitalized again. - Stability — A discussion of bipolar episodes wouldn’t be complete without talking about stability (those times when life is normal and without major mental illness symptoms). Few people with bipolar disorder spend their entire lives experiencing depression, hypomania, mania, or mixed episodes without any relief of stability. Most people have at least some periods of time where life is normal, but these times can be hard to recognize to those who have had protracted time suffering from bipolar disorder as I did and the fear of the next episode is always there. It took a long time for me to be able to have a bad couple of days without thinking that I was getting depressed or thinking that I’m on the way to a major episode after getting hypomania after a couple of days of not sleeping. But I’ve worked with my treatment team to determine when I need to react and get extra treatment and when I just need to wait out normal reactions to life.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that everybody, whether they have bipolar disorder or not, has ups and downs. And even when an episode occurs, it doesn’t have to escalate or last. Stability for me can include the occasional short episode. By accepting this, I can react without panicking and be prepared whether a bigger episode comes or not.
The experience of what it’s like to have bipolar disorder is hard to translate when you just read the symptoms on the page. Reading or hearing the descriptions of what each episode is really like can make it easier to understand. Everyone’s experience is different, though there are overarching themes you’ll likely hear. These experiences are mine, but there are plenty of other people with their own stories if you’d like to know more.
