Bipolar/Aspergers support and chat thread

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I used to, but haven't been violent (towards others) for years during an episode.

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?

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.

I get violent and the more depressed I get, the heavier the asperger traits, and due to events in my life and not wanting to hurt anyone or break anything (anymore) I start hitting myself in the head.

sleep patterns? that's a laugh. depending where i am in my cycle it could be anywhere from 3 to 9. Never ever more than 9 uninterrupted but 80 percent of the time, never more than 6. I try not to measure sleep unless i'm looking for a reason for my irritability otherwise it just makes me irritable. I would like to have the same amount of sleep every night. Yeah, like that'll ever happen. Not without being a zombie.

Meh, I pay attention to my sleeping habits specifically because I have insomnia. I have gone for 2 days before (with no episodes) without more than cat naps every so often.

I try to keep a schedule for it. Go to bed around the same time (though tonight I'm clearly past that... ) and have my alarm set for 8am every morning to wake myself. I like routine, I just find it hard to have one when it comes to sleep.

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?

Can I just ask if it's possible for someone with Bipolar disorder to be able to maintain a romantic relationship?

I just ask because my last two break ups have been with bipolar girls who've told me it's for my own good.
It also felt like with each girl that I was dating two different people, one chirpy and positive and one negative and completely irrational. I put up with the negativity because the chirpy and positive was awesome.

It certainly is possible, but many with Bipolar Disorder often feel that they shouldn't. The reasons for this vary from person to person.

For me, I'm starting to believe I shouldn't because I become too distant due to paranoia. (both about my ability to not hurt my partner and thinking my partner wants to hurt me)

Yes, I was accused of settling and all manner of BS. Why would I settle? It's not like I smell or I'm an axe murderer.

lmao you might be one day... >.>
I get this all the time, with my moods.

I'm with someone unusually patient so I think it might last a bit longer but I don't expect it to last as I get anxious about relationships and think they are settling, just because I'm easy to be with when I'm happy and help give people confidence.

The idea of you (and any other person in a relationship with someone with a mood disorder) putting up witht he negative side for the positive side is also horrible. It's like you feel like you're 2 or 3 people and they only love one of them, and you're not even fully them.
Out there, there's someone who is just like me but not broken, all a full person without f**** up moods. And my partner should just spend their effort looking for them if they really like that side of me, rather then spending it trying to grasp at the glimpses of that side of me which might only last 3 weeks in a year...