When bipolar disorder (bipolar depression or manic depression), people traditionally think in terms of highs and lows. This simplifies bipolar disorder (bipolar or manic depression) so that the average person may grasp what it is. But looking at bipolar disorder in this way is misleading. The characteristics of bipolar disorder (manic depression) include loss of memory preceding a bipolar event. In conjunction with memory loss (primarily of nouns and adjectives; the names of things and their descriptors) the sufferer grows agitated and even irritable because of an inability to think in terms of objects in space and time. When the names of even simple objects, like couch, clock, or book, cannot be remembered, the sufferer will say something like, "Hand me the thingy" or "what-cha-ma-call-it". If the personality of the suffer is such whereby feeling foolish is unrealistically embarrassing, then not remembering simple things frequently leads to anger. So a person suffering bipolar disorder (manic depression) not only argues easily, but sometimes behaves aggressively or nasty with phrases that do not include nouns or adjectives, "I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me. You turn everything so we have to look at you but this time it's not about you." The object of the anger is deflecting attention by focusing on the negative traits of others. Logical consistency seems to be the last thing to go preceding an episode. But immediate recall is interrupted. When a person with bipolar disorder (manic depression or bipolar depression) is having an attack, a powerful compulsion to be defensively assertive is ignited in the context of out of control emotions, which may be out of control because the person is unable to think straight.
I was irritated and cranky at
first but in minutes hopeless-
ness turned to danger, then panic,
then despair as grief mushroomed like an atomic explosion inside my nerves. I thought my mother just died though she's been gone for years. And then it happened... But I tell it much better in Out of Joint so I needn't burden us here. The point is scenes like this infuse fear in bystanders whose primal urge is to run fearing for their safety. The truth is nearly 98% of depression attacks pass without serious incident. Bipolar disorder is treatable. Who you see in the photo is the person who's writing these words. We aren't a danger to anyone and yet this is what many believe. I won't downplay it. With or without care, this is serious. With care, symptoms usually run their course in hours. They lasted for days before treatment. It feels like the end of the world but it's not. My husband
watches the clock repeating, "This
will pass." So far, he's right.
