A better question might be: how are your feels
impact your experiences?
Are they affecting your quality of life? And
what are your options for dealing with them?
It took me a long
time to get my diagnosis. I was experiencing hypomanic and depressive
episodes throughout high school and beyond. I didn’t do anything about it
because I thought it was normal. I thought I was being
sensitive – that I just sucked at playing it cool.
As it
turns out, I’m very good at playing it cool. It’s why I was able to
muddle on for so long before I crashed out in a big way.
But
here’s a glowing little secret for you, Anon.
No one can tell you what
your feelings are. Same as no one can tell you that you’re hungry, or
how you experience colours.
On that note, I can tell you about my experience with Bipolar Disorder II.
My feels don’t always correlate with the real world. Yes, the
feels are real, they just don’t line up with external events in terms of
cause or range.
The
“emotional-typical”
experience goes like this: something happens -> brain feels a thing. With my condition, it’s frequently in reverse: my brain feels a
thing -> brain goes looking for a cause.
You can probably guess that I wasted a lot of energy trying to
find causes for these inspirational/critical feels. And yeah, I
hacked up a few projects and relationships as a result.
I
can also tell you about extreme emotional ranges. Joy and rage and sadness and
inspiration that are magnitudes above the standard.
Your emo-typical person might experience these feels a few times in
their life – romance, heartbreak, births, marriages, deaths.
They are less likely to experience these feels because they just happened to glanced out a window and saw a
rainbow and now nothing will ever be as beautiful. Nor are they likely to start doubting their life choices because they stubbed
their toe and life is pain because they suck as a human being.
Anon, you need information before
you can take action.
Think of it like any other medical situation. If your
arm started feeling weird, you first action shouldn’t be to reset a bone. You get a scan.
This is the same. Find out what’s
happening first, then map out your options.
Again, I can only
base suggestions on my own experiences.
- I scheduled a visit with a GP.
- The GP gave me a referral to a psychologist for depression.
- This
psychologist identified my symptoms as possibly relating to a
condition outside depression. They referred me to a psychiatrist with a
background in bipolar disorder. - This psychiatrist diagnosed my bipolarity, then helped me map out
the facts. What I had experienced, what the impacts had been. - We then
worked on preferred outcomes, and the options available to get there.
Baby steps, week by week.
Anon,
I encourage you to do this sooner rather than later. The sooner you have the information,
the sooner you can map out changes that will help get
your life where you want it.
What
I do NOT recommend is just blanking your feels and muddling on. It
might feel like strength, but it’s not. That’s ignorance. And Anon, you don’t do ignorant. You want facts.
So get the information that will help you look after yourself, and those around
you.
Please feel free to get in touch if there’s anything you want to clarify, and please let me know how it goes!