Bipolar/Aspergers support and chat thread

Post Reply New Topic

I am in an aspie/bi-polar relationship (and have been for 12 years). I think it can be quite a common pairing, I've come across a couple of others. I am the aspie of the partnership.

Unlike myself though, Carol doesn't want to go online to meet other bi-polars.

I suppose I use it too.

But, what most people would mean by meeting is more intense, usually involving rapid response to literal or even metaphorical use of speech.

Anyway mostly I have been drawn here by not wanting to be anywhere else.

My definition of what is preferable is that two people find something to do or say that they would be doing even if alone. A sort of parallel almost virtual "meeting".

Yeah, I think I am too sick to work right now. I get my children for the summer on May 1st, so hopefully by then I'll have this sorted.

I watched a movie yesterday about schizo-affective bipolar disorder and I started getting paranoid and auditory hallucinations started a li'l after that. but wow it is really bad when an episode happens. I've finally been diagnosed with bp II after being suspected bp I. Today I am thinking I'll be depressed since I haven't been sleeping properly. My thought processes is blurry.

Also I have a question. How many of you get violent during your episodes?

I've not been sleeping well. I've never slept well, really. I should probably document my sleeping habits, mania episodes, and when these hallucinations take place so I can get the help I need.

Fortunately, the episodes seem to have subsided for now and I've not seen anything for a couple of weeks. The voices... about a week.

That's great. . .I'm glad things are looking up. I hope you can get some help while you're feeling better because it's pretty overwhelming to take care of during a crisis.

I've been pondering this for a while now. Having suffered from depression, anxiety and extreme mood swings for most of my life, I've often wondered if these could be attributed to another condition (e.g. bipolar disorder or BPD) or if they are better explained by my asperger's diagnosis. What do you guys think?

My symptoms include:
* cycles of extreme optimism/pessimism, ranging from periods of about 6 months to (more recently) days/hours, or even all states simultaneously
* persistant symptoms of moderate/severe depression
* little or no "neutral" mood
* risk-taking and over-spending, or just taking on way more than I can handle
* tendancy to fly off the handle at minor provocation
* chronically messed-up sleep cycle, defaulting to nocturnal, usually sleeping 12-15 hours unless disturbed
* delusions of impending death (usually lasting several weeks) or grandiosity (believing I am the most beautiful, most intelligent, most talented, etc.)
* severely impaired functioning due to incorrect mood state (e.g. taking six hours to do a 20 minute task because I have to get my energy levels "just right" to concentrate)

My family all have asperger traits, and my mother and sister show occasional signs of depression (when they do make their emotional states obvious, that is). To my knowledge, there is no bipolar disorder diagnosed in the family.

-It's also worth noting that, as an adolescent I was put on prozac (for the OCD elements of my AS I think) and suffered no manic effects, that I can recall anyway. In fact, it improved a lot of my symptoms. Does this rule out bipolar disorder?

^ You sound very, I would even say, extremely similar to me a few years back (before sudden worsening of symptoms, seeing psyc, going on meds, etc).

I also had all the same symptoms you listen, I particularly relate to:

* delusions of impending death (usually lasting several weeks) or grandiosity (believing I am the most beautiful, most intelligent, most talented, etc.)

I never actually heard anyone else mention the impending death delusions before, I always thought that was something only I had (didn't even understand they were delusions until after reading what you said just now! suddenly they make a lot more sense haha).

I always took on WAY more than I could handle. When "up" my self esteem was through the roof and I felt confident I could ace anything (and generally I did... until I crashed, which was inevitable. I had pretty much regular "up" periods of insane productivity, cumulating in a "crash" where I had to be cared for by my parents until I recovered, and then experienced a "down" period. It was quite cyclic.)

I have often had "highs" at night also, where I would be up on MSN/facebook talking crazy fast to everyone who would listen, waxing lyrical, writing poetry, etc. I used to go running at night a lot too as I would get bursts of energy.

I have also always had severe concentration problems although I was diagnosed/misdiagnosed(?) with ADHD when I was 16. I personally suspect I may have ADD (I definitely have all the symptoms for this) and the "H" part was actually related to my bipolar.

You mentioned you watched my videos - did you watch the one I made describing my story/my own experience of bipolar?

Anyway, it sounds a lot like bipolar to me although obviously it's pretty had to draw any conclusions from a few subjective paragraphs somebody posted up on the internet. I agree it's good to gauge other people's response to what you wrote, and I would recommend reading up on bipolar as much as you can because it's a tricky disorder to pin down.

Yes, I saw that video (the 2nd one, right?). If only the energy and floods of ideas I experienced were directed at my schoolwork, not my hobbies... I'd probably be in a much better place right now. My moods only ever served to hinder my academic success.

I suffered a severe breakdown a few years ago, from which I have only recently fully recovered (well, here's hoping), during which I required 24/7 care and had to drop out of college. However, due to other factors which helped trigger this I'm not sure I can count it as an indication of mental illness. Physical paralysis was one of the symptoms I experienced during this time.

Another, more recent breakdown was far less severe... a few amazing, "hypomanic" days culminated in a sudden crash where I basically broke down in public then refused to eat for the next week. Again, there were other factors involved (I read somewhere that emotional suppression can trigger something very like a bipolar mixed episode, which I think is what happened).

I've always found my mood swings to be cyclic... I noticed that a few months of feeling high was always cancelled out by a corresponding low period, only to be exceeded by the next wave of high and low. Guess I always thought that was life's way of balancing itself out.

Re: "a few subjective paragraphs" - totally true, it's all too easy to misdiagnose when you consider only the most relevant information. I've read a lot about bipolar disorder, and while some of it fits there are also parts that don't.Then again, that is also true of AS. Until, that is, I take in the subjective accounts, then it all sort of falls into place.

It's the prozac part that gets me. Is manic response to SSRI's a requirement for bipolar disorder, or are there exceptions?
If not bipolar, could I perhaps be borderline (personality disorder, that is)?

-It's also worth noting that, as an adolescent I was put on prozac (for the OCD elements of my AS I think) and suffered no manic effects, that I can recall anyway. In fact, it improved a lot of my symptoms. Does this rule out bipolar disorder?

Not at all. Some drs use antidepressants in treatment for bipolar during depressive phases (actually, many use them all the time, which is a whole other issue that I don't agree with, particularly in Bipolar II d/o). Also: "that I can recall" may be key, since a lot of people with mania/hypomania lack insight.

An interesting point. The only things I really recall about "the prozac years" were going to bed feeling very relaxed with a big stupid grin on my face (not something I think I've felt at any other time) and having my creativity totally drained out. So, not very manic at all really.

On a related note, does anyone else get that thing where you think of something inconsequential that you did or said, with the potential for mild social embarassment, and the memory feels like someone viciously and repeatedly bashing you over the head with a large brick until you want to scream out loud, but your brain won't let you repress it? Because prozac took that away, too.

I anly just discovered my Aspergers because some of the symptoms overlap my manic swings.

I frequently find myself talking quickly and "creatively" skipping from one tangential development to another deluding myself that the listener)s) are interested and impressed. I have been known to think of a song that would contain an appropriate or related lyric to a subject in a discussion and suddenly start singing it "operatically". I have done this in important business meetings. Sometimes its as if I can stand outside myself and see myself doing it , but unable to stop myself. Its almost as if I think it will work if I can carry it off with confidence, but its only wrong or absurd if I lose my nerve, get embarrassed and stop...because I then wouldn't know how to behave or explain it. So I carry on and act as if it was normal.

Then on other occassions I get intellectual vertigo. Its a bit like a mental equivalent of that scene in Jaws(1) where the cop on the beach suddenly recognises the fin in the water and the focus and zoom and camera all move to create an effect as if total perspective and prominence has changed.

Also its like if I lie on my back on a clear summers night looking up at the stars and try to conceive the distance and vastness between us and suddenly realise that there is no such thing as up or down in space, and actually it is the earths gravity that is sucking me UPWARD so that my back is pressed against the LOWER side of the earth, and I am staring light years of distance DOWNWARDS into a bottomless pit of stars, and if someone turns off gravity I will fall into it.

Well I get that same feeling suddenly as I go about, in relation to my relationships with people and life and what the world is about and what holds things together.....like its only peoples believing in the need to all do the different jobs and for banks and shops and electricity people, and everybody to keep doing it, but there is nothing to make them...and there is nothing to make anything I depend on still be there or even be there now.....its like mental vertigo or sideways shifts.

Many years ago I made several attempts at suicide, for a combination of reasons..some logical, and some illogical but just because of such serious and acute depressive periods, when all my values would be removed or negated.

Now I convince myself that I will be dead soon enough anyway, but that life can't therefore really hurt me or inflict permanent damage and there might be a few more good experiences to come so I might as well hang around for them. Some times though its just a mantra in my head to hold on hold on hold on, because any previous motivation suddenly has no value or worth, so "good experiences" are a null concept.

So then the effort self-understanding, and working hardto compensate for what is going on inside my head and appear normal. To intellectually think what people would like to hear at a party or from small talk and from humour and then do it. To shut out all the Asperger literality and word-play and playing with words and sounds and following curious lines of thought from a converastion. To suppress it and keep to a business purpose, and conduct a meeting, or supervise staff or answer questions after a presentation. All utterly exhausting.
But most paralising is to be able to conceptualise a project or initiative, or a process towards a business objective, and have to explain and break it down, to why the processes link and will work, and why a particular aspect is crucial because of its relationship to another, and how it creates a receptive and primed environment for the subsequent action or phase of implementation to be well received and acted upon.

That is so paralising! I ( and many of you) do thinking and mental manipulation of process planning intuitively and in an organic almost osmotic way which we can't possibly explain to others. If they leave you alone to do it, and it is possible to do it alone, then it works and you are congratulated as a genious. But if you need permission or need to get others to share and understand why and what you are trying to do towards the outcome, they don't follow you and they want to block you,,,or take it in another direction which they can understand.... but then it becomes something totally different and does not achieve what it should have achieved...., so frustrating.

And in the middle of that you get so exhausted that you can't always hold in and translate into " normal " the things that are flashing through your head and building conclusion upon conclusion, and you start to appear a bit crazy......but then you realise and get embarrased and that knocks your confidence and everything collapses.

STOP.........there you are. Awful isn't it? my main consolation is ...its not boring!.......

Guess what phase I am in at the moment?