Hi! I’ve Been Diagnosed With BP2 Just Today, I Will Start With The Meds Tomorrow And I Am Looking For

Some rando: You should think about stopping your prescription

Me: My pills make me not want to die tho

They: You shouldn’t want to die, that’s not normal

Me: Yeah that’s why I’m taking my pills

manic episode symptoms/warning signs

THIS IS NOT GOING TO APPLY TO EVERYONE!!! this is my own personal experience. mental illness isn't a one size fits all, i'm not claiming to be an expert or know what everyone's mania feels like, this is just what i've experienced

increased irritability

increased energy

change in appetite, not feeling hungry for days and then becoming ravenous

frequent sensory overload

oversensitivity

changes in sleep pattern, sleeping only 3-4 hours or shifting to sleeping more during the day and being awake all night

noticeable increase in productivity, that might start out as good, but you notice yourself being hyper fixated and jumping from several different projects

increase in impulsivity

feeling like you've lost control over yourself and your actions

paranoia

intrusive thoughts

nightmares

talking a lot, rambling, going on long rants

a feeling like you're watching yourself on a screen, like someone else took over your body and you're watching from the outside as they live your life

being aware you're making bad choices or that you are being reckless but not caring or being able to stop

dissociation

impulse purchases and reckless spending

reckless driving

impulse to change appearance or alter your image that can feel like a NEED if it isn't done immediately (for me this manifests in my hair, like cutting it or changing the color at 3 am. it also used to be comorbid with my eating disorder, which led to extreme fasting to try and lose weight)

feeling like you can accomplish things you couldn't normally do, feeling powerful, inflated ego and sense of self. i sometimes would think i was invincible and that nothing could hurt me and tried to act on it to prove it

increase in libido

risky sexual behavior

heightened emotions, everything feels larger than life, the highs feel like they'll never end and the lows feel like the end of the world

for myself this was only in extreme cases, but visual or auditory hallucinations. i've only had visual hallucinations a couple times, but when things got really bad, i would hear things that weren't there, or hear people calling me when i was all alone

feeling like thoughts are racing and you can't stop them, feeling like everything is loud and you're being pulled in a million directions

friends and family noticing uncharacteristic behavior, cutting people off, becoming VERY irritable, or showing too much affection in a way that isn't normal for you

and, inevitably, when it ends: The Big Crash. the depressive episode after that knocks you out

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

The memory issues ADHD causes are some of the scarier and more frustrating parts of living with it - so here’s a set of reaction doodles that all my fellow ADHD peeps are welcome to use whenever anybody decides to comment on your forgetfulness ^ 

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

Common phrases said to you before you realise you have Adhd

my adhd ass when someone says something and expects me to be able to comprehend it the first time

Just saw a spicy hot take in the notes of an ADHD post that was like “adhd isn’t a mood disorder stop making excuses” from a supposed fellow ADHD person and like yes, ADHD is not exclusively a mood disorder. It’s 4 of them hiding under a trench coat with 15 other neurological disorders. And also:

ID, a screen grab from an article that reads: About 70 percent of adults with ADHD report problems with emotional dysregulation, going up to 80 percent in children with ADHD. In clinical terms, these problem areas include:

-Irritability: issues with anger dysregulation – “tantrum” episodes as well as chronic or generally negative feelings in between episodes.

-Lability: frequent, reactive mood changes during the day.

-Recognition: the ability to accurately recognize other people’s feelings. Individuals with ADHD may tend to not notice other people’s emotions until pointed out.

-Affective intensity: felt intensity – how strongly an emotion is experienced. People with ADHD tend to feel emotions very intensely.

-Emotional dysregulation: global difficulty adapting emotional intensity or state to situation.

/end ID. (Source)

Like not to be wildly and irrationally peeved about this, but bully for you if you don’t experience this as part of your ADHD, but over 70% of us do and saying we’re making excuses or not trying hard enough is the exact same shit neurotypicals say to invalidate us, and causes us real harm. Please don’t do the same thing. Trauma inflicted by neurotypicals is a huge part of why living with ADHD is so difficult. We don’t need it from within our own community too.

We all experience this shit show disorder differently. It’s a spectrum of one size fits no one, not a cookie cutter mold to fit into.

And yeah, you know what, this shit isn’t an excuse to behave badly, but you know what, knowing emotional dysregulation is a symptom of ADHD helps you to treat it and work on getting a handle on it. Knowing the reason it feels like the world is ending in your chest because something bad happened, and knowing it’s because your gremlin brain is perpetually starved for dopamine so there’s no cushion for the raw emotional feedback currently happening can help you, with practice, to curb the impulsive desire to do something rash or harmful.

I mean, fuck, there’s a reason for why suicide is so prevalent in ADHD, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that impulsivity and severe emotional dysregulation is a part of that.

Knowing that the feeling will end and isn’t an accurate reflection of the situation, overwhelmingly painful as it is in the moment, can help. It does help. So denying this aspect as part of ADHD? Not helpful, and you need to take some time to sit with your thoughts and see why you want to distance yourself so much from this to the point of invalidating others.

if you’re a mentally ill adult, especially if you’re psychotic or have bipolar, i highly recommend you look into getting a psychiatric advance directive. basically they’re a form you can fill out where you can specify what kind of treatment you want and don’t want in the case that you ever get legally declared incompetent. normally, getting declared incompetent means that psychiatrists take away your right to make decisions about your mental health care. for example, they can force you to take medications you don’t want or institutionalize you longterm without your consent. also the state appoints someone they choose to legally “consent” in your place.

what a psychiatric advance directive does is put limits on what the psychiatrists assigned to you can do. you can appoint your own person to be your legal representative, someone you trust who knows you and cares about you. you can also specify what hospitals you don’t want to be sent to or what doctors you don’t want to see or medications you don’t want to take or whether or not you consent to electroconvulsive treatment. you can also say what you do want, like i put down that they decided to institutionalize me, i wanted it to be at a specific psych ward i’d already been to and had a not terrible time at. and now, if i ever get declared incompetent, psychiatrists are legally not allowed to put me back on the meds that gave me a seizure. 

nobody wants to be legally declared incompetent. it’s really scary to think about, but it does happen, especially to people with psychosis or bipolar disorder. it’s better to have legal safeguards in place ahead of time and not need them than to get declared incompetent and not have an advance directive

Things that don’t make you a bad person:

Displaying “scary” symptoms of mental illness

Being diagnosed with multiple disorders

Having one or various personality disorders

Being diagnosed with NPD, BPD, or ASPD

Having very low empathy, or no empathy

Having symptoms that cause anger, emptiness, or paranoia

Having triggers or “strange” personal boundaries

Needing extra help or accommodations

Having intrusive thoughts about upsetting or scary topics