Is mania a spectrum to you, or episodic?
Do you see mania as a discrete state, or as something that exists on a spectrum? I'm asking because I've noticed a couple of people describing behavior or people as "a bit manic," or something like that, but when I talk to medical professionals, they usually refer to manic episodes like it's a binary where either you are having a manic episode or you are not.
I think my baseline more closely resembles mania than depression. I call it running hot. When I get depressed, I say I went cold.
Surely, depression exists on a spectrum, right?
What is the internal language you use to think about these things?
When I was first diagnosed, I think I even wrote out a list of red flags that indicated I might be having a manic episode like I was turning into a werwolf or entering the Twilight Zone or something, but a couple of years in, it all seems blurrier than that to me.