Is anyone here bipolar or have experience with bipolar disorder?

While I have never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I have quite a few friends acquaintances who are. Furthermore, my depressions (extremely early age of onset if they're just major depressive disorder) suggest the possibility. However, I've never had a mania/hypomania required to diagnose it. Still the possibility of having undiagnosed bipolar exists for me, but it was something I viewed as remote until maybe yesterday.

I'm just looking for some wisdom from someone who may have the disorder and/or knows someone who does because I had a very unsettling experience on Sunday. I'm just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience.

I also apologize because the explanation is really quite long.

Over the past week, it had become increasingly hard for me to sleep through the night. Though I've had problems falling asleep for as long as I can remember, once I fall asleep I usually stay asleep unless I am disturbed. I wake maybe once or twice a night and can usually fall asleep again fairly easily. But last week, it seemed that as soon as I fell asleep, I would wake up again. This would continue all night until I would give up/feel able to get out of bed. It was a little strange, but I didn't give it that much thought. (Furthermore, I was not feeling as tired as I would have expected given the situation, so it didn't seem that big of a deal at the time.) Finally, I slept through a night. Then the next night I could not sleep at all.

Because I had to get up and go to church the next day, there was a point I gave up on sleeping because I was afraid that if I fell asleep I wouldn't be able to convince myself to get up in a few hours. So I got up, didn't feel all that tired, and proceeded with the morning.

By the time I got to church, I still wasn't feeling tired, but I decided to have half of a cup of coffee, since I figured the exhaustion was likely to set in right in the middle of the service. However, I felt fine. A little buzzed from the caffeine, but perfectly awake. I was a little uninterested in the sermon, but in a discussion group after the service, I was interested and seemed to have a million questions. I'll generally ask a question or two, so it didn't seem all that unusual.

Then I went and had lunch with a few friends (one who I hadn't seen in many months) and I was talking up a storm. It was a little unusual since I'm a pretty reserved person, but I am less so around close friends even if I don't normally dominate a conversation. Anyway, we had lunch at a friend's apartment and were just hanging around having a great conversation and a great time and next thing I knew it was three o' clock. Someone mentioned that we'd been there a while, but I must've just kept talking because the next time someone mentioned the time it was five-thirty and we decided to go out to dinner. And then deciding what to do for dinner kept getting sidetracked by conversation and I didn't get home from dinner until almost nine.

After arriving home, my sister and I went to watch TV, but she mentioned something or other that launched me into another (fascinating to me conversation) and we ended up staying up until two or three, just talking. At that point, I must've been talking more or less non-stop for over twelve hours. My mouth was incredibly dry from this, but this still didn't seem to deter me. This is pretty unusual behavior for me, but it didn't even phase me at the time.

Finally, my sister seemed to wrest herself away from my fountain of conversation to go to sleep. Without exactly feeling tired, I headed off to bed, too. Only to lie there without feeling sleepy at all. However, this did not bother me as usually does because I was happily going through about a million thoughts in my head. Then, at around six in the morning, I started coming up with this long list of things I was going to accomplish tomorrow. I was absolutely certain I could accomplish them all even though normally I am so depressed I have a hard time making myself leave my apartment, get dressed, or wash laundry down the hall. But I just had so much energy and felt so productive that I was certain I could run all over town and do things I had been putting off for months all in one day. After not sleeping AT ALL for two nights in a row.

Right about the time I was making these plans a thought struck me - Holy shit, am I manic? I immediately jumped online and started researching signs of mania - a vast majority of which I was currently embodying - and then ran into my sister's room and, even though she had instructed me not to wake her up before noon, immediately pounced onto her bed and insisted she tell me if I had been talking a lot the day before and talking very quickly. She, very groggily, said yes she thought I was and then ordered me to get out of her room. I then explained my theory to her while she tried to get me out of her room.

After which I returned to my computer to continue my research and found that I felt very compelled to talk to myself - not just a few thoughts out loud - but a chatter of any and everything I was thinking or even just repeating the same word over and over again until I came to some other thought I could speak out loud.

Around eight, I was so bored and had so much energy, that I just couldn't let my sister sleep any longer and sat in her room bothering her until she finally agreed to get out of bed. Since it was still too early to accomplish my grand plans for the day, I was trying to come up with things to do, but almost as soon as I would suggest something I would immediately forget it. I was extremely fidgety and felt a need to smoke at a rate I almost never do and was dashing in and out of rooms. Finally, I somehow managed to acquire the concentration to sit through a whole episode of Gray's Anatomy. This seemed to calm me down a little at least enough that I agreed to let my sister go back to bed.

However, shortly after she did, I could almost physically feel my energy level rising and I was beginning to feel agitated. I had so much energy and no idea of what to do with it at the moment and it became physically uncomfortable. My eyes felt so wide open that it felt as if they were about to bug out of my head and I felt like I was going to burst out of my skin. Finally, it became so uncomfortable, that I resolved, even though I wasn't tired, I was going to make myself sleep because it seemed to only escape from this agitation.

After lying in bed and tossing and fidgeting for another couple hours, I finally fell asleep and slept for about seven hours.

When I woke up, I felt more or less normal. None of the rushing energy. Since, there have been brief intervals where I become very talkative or feel my energy level rising, but other than that things have gone mostly back to normal.

Has anyone experienced anything like that? Did I have some bizarre one day hypomania that I managed to snap out of by sleeping? Could I still be hypomanic? Was it just a really weird day?

I'm aware that I would be best off discussing it with a mental health professional, but at the moment, I'm just waiting to see if it returns or worsens again. I'm just wondering if anyone knows just how concerned by the episode I need to be.

Hi twomoredays! Yes, what you've written is a pretty good description of manic behavior. I would suggest that if it happens again, then talking with a professional would be important, especially if the up/down cycles affect your ability to do your usual activities. I see that you have listed Kay Redfield Jamison as a favorite author, so I would guess that you are already well informed on bipolar disorder. Good luck!

hi twomoredays

I have experienced somewhat the same a few times in my younger days.
For me it was a warning sign I had been overdoing things, and should slow down a bit.

My diagnosis is Borderline, but I have some bi-polar tendencies.

>3 FAMeulstee:

I've been diagnosed as borderline as well. If it were just my mood bouncing around a little, I don't think I would've been as concerned.

The thing is - I don't really know that there's anything I've been overdoing. I haven't been working myself to death and when I have in the past it tends to result in extreme crashes and depressions. Not the opposite.