moominmuppet

Sometimes it's really odd to try to sort out the distinction between mixed state symptoms, and symptoms of plain old mania functioning rather counter-intuitively. This is some of my "best-guessing" about elements of that in my own life. I was thinking about my tendency to go from the heights of joy to tears of pain and despair in a matter of moments. Occasionally that's really a mixed state thing, but sometimes I think it's really just an expression of how the actual mania itself works in my brainmeats.

Being depressed is mostly about apathy for me. The whole world feels muffled, I can't even precisely imagine what it's like to really care about things or be deeply touched by anything outside my own headfuckery. I may be miserable, but I can also be relatively hard to hurt all that much beyond the endogenous pain.

When I'm manic, I'm hugely emotionally sensitive, both in terms of the positive and the negative. I'm open-hearted in ways that bring me great joy, a marvelous sense of connection with and appreciation for the world, and a deeper empathy than I experience at any other time. It also leaves me wide open to getting hurt or thrown by the smallest of external factors. I take big scary emotional risks, and I love some of what that brings into my life, but I also burst into tears at a wrong word from a loved one, and can drop from joy to misery in a matter of moments. On the other hand, misery back to joy can happen almost as quickly, and forgiveness comes as easily as the tears at those times. I know it's all tied up with my feelings about exposing emotional vulnerability, too, and sometimes the loneliness of reaching out and not finding contact that I'm craving and needing. I don't generally get lonely when I'm depressed. Miserable and isolated, but not the same kind of feeling I can get when I'm manic, and feeling all emotional and vulnerable and reaching out for connection with my people.

And I feel like there's a huge amount more to say or clarify about all of this, but I'm emotionally exhausted and grieving and stopping here for now.