Obsessing about social behavior, not quite 'social anxiety'?

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I need help with an increasingly upsetting symptom, that isn't cleaving to any typical categorization in any other sense than meeting the 'royally f***s up my day' requirement.

Meets length and depth of focus requirements during episodes.
Focus on developing system for understanding and navigating social interactions through observation and categorization.

They not only include obsessing over my performance in public settings, but also what the people around me are thinking, the intricacies of the social web I happen to be in the middle of, or have been interacting with, trying to figure out rough plot maps of conversational and behavioral patterns. Associated appropriate episodes of mild social paranoia also included.

I find myself getting swept up in hours long storms of this kind of thinking that while enjoyable in the sense of mental exercise and a useful education, is in all other ways incredibly terrifying and frustrating how much control it has over my life. Has all the patterns of thought I associate with my obsession about the most efficient path through a room, the order in which to preform tasks, or the occasional hyper-violent thought interlude that comes with my OCD, but a level of academic and borderline scientific approach that seems to be associated with less mode anxiety during episodes.

At first I thought it was just social anxiety, but while it has all the elements of non-clinical level social anxiety, the length of the bouts tends to be longer and revolve around social interactions with the full range of emotional implications, not just negative ones.

From the practical standpoint, the side effect of being hyper-aware and prepared for otherwise... troubling social navigation comes in delightfully handy. It provides a constant and significant, if sometimes amusingly academic, stress to every interaction, even with the very short list of people I would call myself otherwise comfortable around.

Please help, the level of diminishing returns on the silver lining of this symptom is pushing my already wobbly stability.

Demographic information: Diagnosed bipolar II with psychotic features, with OCD, with anxiety, female, bisexual, 26

This correlates with my thought process and social "struggle" more than anything I've read up to this point. While I have not been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I have observed a relatively consistent cycle between mild depression and hypomania, along with a manic episode triggered by an SNRI. I'm also fairly sure that I have OCD, though it is typically merely obsessional, compulsions being limited to things like holding my breath to avoid airborne pathogens coming from vents.

I relate to the coexistence of enjoyable mental exertion and less intellectual frustration a great deal, which I have typically viewed as the most unusual aspect of my neuroses. I've always tried to remain skeptical of over-diagnosis, both of myself and others, so I'm quite intrigued by the similarity between your (presumably) professional diagnoses and my self-diagnosis. I've always felt that my social struggles have come from an excess of attention to detail and borderline neurotic drive to understand people's thoughts and motivations, rather than a feeling of basic inferiority.

While this is always a risky path and one I don't think people should take as a first option, I have been able to have great success with Neurontin (gabapentin), which seems to have both decreased my level of general anxiety, increased my social desire, and made it easier for me to "deintellectualize" everyday social interactions and thus enjoy them more and get better responses from people. For me personally, I would have been put off by anything that had even the slightest chance of hindering my over-intellectualizing, but I can say that I am very glad that I took this path. I have not noticed any cognitive declines, unless I'm too stupid to notice that I've gotten dumber.

Things about gabapentin: Pfizer was ordered to pay a record settlement for falsely advertising Neurontin for symptoms outside of its original purpose (anticonvulsant), including anxiety and bipolar disorder. Despite this, anecdotal evidence has led many psychiatrists to continue prescribing gabapentin. Side effects are also minor, except for the odd cases of skin necrosis. Who needs skin when you have friends?