u/mycattouchesgrass

I was in a months-long psychotic episode earlier this year, during which I became extremely politically intense and acted out of character. My friends witnessed this happening in real time, and some of them started distancing themselves from me.

I've since had the chance to talk to a few of them about what happened and mended things, but there was one friend I was very close to whom I never got the chance to explain things to. We hadn't spoken since February because I figured she wanted space. Yesterday, I finally reached out asking if we could talk, but she responded saying she'd rather not engage further.

It's heartbreaking because we were close, and I wish I'd warned her about this. To be fair, I hadn't known I had bipolar for that long before this episode.

I know having a episode doesn't negate responsibility for hurting people, but it is still something I had no control over, or even had awareness of, at the time.

So yeah, even if it's uncomfortable, it's definitely good to tell the people you're close to about the ways your symptoms can manifest. It might help them recognize what's happening if you have an episode, rather than thinking your behavior is a reflection of your character. It could save you from losing a friendship you really value.

I was cleaning out my docs and found a bunch of my old angsty vents lol. This one's about a parallel universe where dogs and cats are subjected to the horrors of factory farming. Obviously, these are some of the real standard industry practices inflicted on different farmed animals. I combined them into one hypothetical.

Maybe it'll help validate your feelings too. Journaling definitely helps get some of that anger out sometimes. Gotta have an outlet in a world where you're constantly pressured to heavily censor yourself/stay silent about a grave injustice.

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In a parallel universe, you're waiting in line at the puppy or kitty mill. They're kept in tight enclosures where they can barely move, they spend their lives facing one direction, and they don't even get to pace around nervously. All they do is bite at the metal bars until their mouths bleed. Their bodies are bred and treated like equipment. They're bred to be obese and this causes them health issues. There's no comfort, no medical care besides antibiotics and steroids--just production. If one is injured, they stay injured until they die, are killed by a worker, or sent to be slaughtered. Their ears are holepunched and notched, their teeth are clipped, they're branded with a burning iron, their toes are cut off, a part of their nose is sliced off, their testicles are cut and pulled out, and their tails are cut off--all without anesthetic, of course. If they're a runt, a worker grabs them by the hind legs and smashes them on the concrete floor with full force until they die. The profitable ones have their reproductive systems exploited, their bodies used and reused until they're worn out and insufficiently productive, at which point they're slaughtered.

Their babies are just inventory too. They're separated early because it's more profitable. The mothers cry and search. The useless babies are killed, ground up alive, gassed, or cut up, while the ones who can have their reproductive systems exploited are confined and used up--and the cycle repeats. They're all killed in the end--by electrocution, gassing, shooting, having their throats slashed open by some worker much less privileged than you who absorbs the blow to your conscience so you, the consumer, don't even have to be aware of it. Because in your eyes and in the industry's eyes, sentient beings who can suffer are disposable objects you're given societal permission to use for any amount of pleasure.

Afterwards, their bodies are processed until nothing looks like a dog or cat anymore. They're hacked and ground and packaged into neat portions so you don't see a face, a paw, puppy eyes that stare back. You don't see the individual they once were. You see "product;" an object of gratification. The whole point is transformation: turn someone into something, turn a life into an inanimate object, turn violence into a purchase so ordinary that people forget or never even realize what they're paying for. Then your subconscious outsources your values. Other people do it, so why can't I?

Then you go home to your beloved piglet purchased from another breeder for larger eyes and a cute docked tail. In a world set up to privilege your desires, animals exist to serve your pleasure and convenience--whether as sources of love and companionship or as bodies consumed for taste.

Idk how common this is. I have type 1 with psychotic features, and I'm wondering whether anyone else gets really acute manic/psychotic episodes where the worst part only lasts a day or two but can come in waves.

Sometimes I get incredibly intense episodes where I basically go crazy and lose touch with reality. After getting diagnosed I've been able to recognize when I'm getting in these states. I get uncontrollable racing thoughts, lose my normal sense of time, and my perceptions get distorted. I also have memory gaps and sometimes hallucinations, so a peak of symptoms lasting a day or two can actually feel pretty short lived bc it feels like I'm skipping time. Idk how common this is bc I know acute manic episodes last much longer.

Basically, the entire episode lasts longer but has these peaks of intensity--but the peaks can be unbelievably severe. I get so physically overwhelmed that I often throw up and soil myself. The aftermath isn't pretty. I've trashed my room and had to clean up vomit and urine everywhere.

When I had roommates, I was obviously paranoid of them seeing me in that state. So when I felt one of these episodes coming on, I literally put my dresser in front of the door and basically just stayed in there until the worst of it passed.

In these states, I need to be doing something almost constantly just to get through it because it's so distressing and intense. I rock back and forth, pace, talk or write nonstop, and rip up huge amounts of printer paper. Doing something physical and repetitive helps me endure it until my brain calms down a bit.

Ik dealing with episodes that severe by myself isn't a good situation, but I have severe PTSD from previous experiences being psychotic and manic like that in psych wards. I've been tackled and physically restrained while hospitalized. These and other experiences traumatized me so badly that I basically refuse to go back and would rather suffer in my room. I also didn't have anyone who could look after me. But I have a bf now who's a doctor so that makes me feel somewhat safer--but also I'm scared of him seeing me get that bad. It's why I'm very hesitant to move in with him even though I want to eventually. Ik I have to warn him sooner rather than later that I can get like this sometimes.

Does anyone else have manic or mixed episodes with these symptoms that peak in severity for like a day or two? If you live with a partner, what was it like the first time they saw you that sick? I'm worried about him bc he gets distressed even when I get a little bit hurt (like just cutting myself by accident). So ik it'll be really hard seeing me endure those symptoms.

I relate everything back to trauma at this point lol. So... I went to law school just because it seemed like the safest economic option, and my friends from my major were going too. I didn't have any passion for law beforehand. I was just happy learning what I was learning in undergrad and that was nice while it lasted. Then after graduating I had to figure out how to actually make a living with my useless degree.

Law school seemed like the only practical route. At the time, financial stability mattered a lot to me. My relationship with money growing up was pretty unstable. I was well off when my parents were together, and then after they separated, that disappeared. My dad lived in another country and as far as I know, didn't give my mom much, if anything. My mom and stepdad are steeped in debt. I was even technically homeless for a time after my parents split.

So between that and having a really abusive, unstable home life in general, I think I became obsessed with having at least my finances secure, so I committed to law.

The problem is, I kind of hate it. Maybe I'm just older now and care less about things in general, but law has never really appealed to me. I hoped I'd eventually develop some deep interest in it, but I never did. I worked as a paralegal for years, spent summers at law firms. I got through law school. At no point did I feel like this was something I'd enjoy doing for years. But I kept going anyway.

A lot of the work just feels like soulless mental masturbation. Endless intellectual complexity in service of things I don't care about. The only legal work I enjoyed was pro bono work for animal advocacy orgs, and I think that was mostly because I actually cared about the cause.

I have the financial stability I wanted. But I built my career around fear and longing for stability rather than interest.

And then there's the culture. There are genuinely kind people in law, but I really dislike how many self-absorbed, status-conscious, mean people this profession seems to attract. I dread being in environments where people engage in vicious gossip and instinctively size each other up. It's just a really bad feeling. Like we had to rank what practice areas we wanted to go into and I picked them solely based on avoiding people I knew were mean. Like I ruled out funds just because I'd probably have to work with this attorney who was meanspirited and said "he doesn't know what he's doing anyway" about a junior associate who just joined and was still learning. I don't care about what I do. I just want to work with kind people.

I'm not denying that I'm in a very privileged position. I just also think this path isn't one I can thrive and be happy in.

I don't even start working again for another few months and I'm already dreading having to go back into that office. Feels like a pretty bad sign. The work already feels like a chore before I've even started my career.

I keep wondering how much of this came from growing up without stability. Maybe if I had felt secure, I would've taken more risks and pursued a career I was interested in. Idk.

Did anyone else choose the financially secure path out of fear (or something else) and then switch careers? I still don't really know what I'd do if not law though. Maybe I should've become a therapist or pursued a graduate degree in my major instead. But those things probably would've come with their own problems too. Idk. I just feel stuck already before I even started working as an attorney. It's just that I can't make myself care about the work. It's dead and joyless. But that's work for most people I guess. Having your passion be your career is a rare privilege not many people get to have.

I think going through a lot of trauma shaped the way I view people and made me fundamentally incompatible with a status-driven world.

Going to an "elite" postgrad program was a rude awakening for me. I met so many people who genuinely seemed to organize the world as a hierarchy where intelligence, beauty, wealth, prestige, and connections made certain people more valuable than others.

I don't think most of them would say that directly. I think it's more subconscious. They seemed to genuinely believe that they deserved everything they had because they were smarter, more attractive, more accomplished, or better connected--and that people without those advantages were less deserving of respect and even deserving of contempt.

It also made me see up close how intelligence, beauty, productivity, wealth, and success aren't reliable measures of character. I actually think having an abundance of those things makes you at risk of being less compassionate and more caught up in this worldview.

Idk. When you've seen how abuse, illness, instability, disability, etc can derail someone's life, it seems nonsensical to believe that people just end up where they deserve to be. Everything you have is based on luck: your genetics, health, family, opportunity, connections, timing, resources, and countless other circumstances outside your control.

That worldview functions as a psychological protection mechanism. Believing that your success proves your superiority gives you a convenient, stable sense of identity and control. It lets you feel better or safer because you're one of the talented, desirable, or successful people. You never have to confront the reality that your life would've been completely different if you'd been born with another brain, body, family, illness, or set of circumstances.

And yeah trauma can produce the opposite response too. Some people react to suffering by becoming obsessed with status, throwing themselves into work, and distancing themselves from anyone they perceive as weak. But I think in my case, it made hierarchy feel artificial and empty. It doesn't make any sense to me. And it made me identify more with outsiders and become deeply suspicious of anyone whose self worth depends on putting other people beneath them.

A lot of the people I met also seemed to have very limited exposure to lives unlike their own. They haven't spent much, if any, time with people who lived through poverty, survived abuse, lived with serious mental illness or disability, came from unstable families, or watched their potential get destroyed or impeded by circumstances they couldn't control. A lot of them mostly moved through environments populated by other privileged, ambitious, conventionally successful people. In that bubble it's probably easy and seductive to believe your achievements are self created.

But once you've personally been affected by something like severe trauma, you might have a harder time buying into that way of thinking.

I realized I can't be close with people who fundamentally see the world as a ranking system and place themselves at or near the top. I can't connect with someone who believes they deserve their advantages because they're inherently better, while people who lack intelligence, beauty, money, prestige, or connections are lesser people. That worldview is fundamentally incompatible with who I am.

I also hate my field because it seems to be filled with people who think this way. It feels particularly bad in the city where I live, which seems like the epicenter of status obsession and narcissism. I dread going back to work. The culture/values, the constant measurement of people by prestige, appearance, productivity, social capital, and proximity to power--and the constant talking shit behind people's backs and viciously judging and hating on people for every little thing is utterly stupid and childish. I can't stand it, and I'd rather die than become the kind of person who thrives in that environment.

Some people love living in a world built around hierarchy, competition, status, and evaluation. I do not. My experiences have made it impossible to buy into the comforting fiction that so many people around me depend on for their sense of sense worth.

It's SO aggravating. I'm taking amulti-day, full-day exam I spent months preparing for on literally no sleep and only got a couple hours a night for the entire week leading up to it. It's excruciating to say the least.

I've tried so many things short of working with a sleep specialist to address the insomnia. Sleep meds don't work well for me because they might knock me out, but usually don't keep me asleep for more than a few hours. If I'm desperate I'll try to knock myself out twice in a row, but that isn't advisable. Anyway, the meds don't work at all sometimes, especially if I'm particularly stressed and hve a lot on my mind. Some of the meds also come with horrible side effects.

Has anyone actually managed to fix severe insomnia?

My psychosis comes with extreme sleep deprivation, which makes the insomnia scarier. Recently I've been seeing what looks like people in the corner of my eye but no one's there. And Ive been hearing loud creaking noises that other people don't hear. I know how extreme my psychosis can get if I'm not careful so I'm really patanoid about it.

I want to pull my hair out. I hate constantly living exhausted and afraid of being pushed over the edge into full-blown psychosis or ideation. And how am I supposed to hpld down a stressful job with unpredictable hours in the near future when I cant even rely on sleep meds to knock me out for a sufficient amount of time when lack of sleep can literally make me clinically insane? It feels like this is unsustainable and probably won't end well.

My brain feels like its burning and tingling. That's usually what happens when the psychosis starts getting bad. I'm fairly sure I'll die early just from the chronic sleep deprivation. Help

Maybe it's partly because I found out I had bipolar too late and didn't start getting treated until my late-twenties. Maybe if I'd addressed it sooner, I'd have an easier time now. But it's really, really hard to keep pushing when it feels like my brain's been deteriorating for the past fifteen years and I didn't even know what was happening. I'm noticeably stupider now and it's so frustrating. And I'm dealing with PTSD symptoms, barely sleeping, anxiety, and all the other shit. Living in my brain feels like being trapped in a torture chamber.

The added stress of all my obligations crushes me. It's so hard but I also feel like I can't quit unless something bad enough happens that forces me off this path. Also, the struggle is invisible. Most people around me wouldn't have reason to know about all of this. They just see the bad side effects like the occasional poor performance, having to miss days because of this extreme disorder, the strange things you do while psychotic without knowing it's a medical symptom.

The anger and all the what ifs suck too. I get angry at all the abuse that I was forced to go through and thinking about what I might've been like if I hadn't gone through all that fucked-up shit. I still get flashbacks and intense episodes of anger from the random thoughts of it. I'm scared that I'll have another episode and act completely out of character. Then I have to snap out of it and try to repair everything with people who were affected by things I did when I wasn't myself.

I really understand why so most people with this disorder choose to end their lives or try to. I know I'm very lucky to be financially stable, but I'm also afraid that it's conditional on my performance and that I have to keep being high-functioning no matter how bad things get, or I'll eventually end up in a really bad place.

This feels like the worst combo to have especially because lack of sleep triggers mania. How do I address this? I've tried many different medications and even tried a new one last night, which left me feeling really weak and barely able to sit up and work. It's the sensation of being very low on blood sugar (it's almost 2pm the next day and the listlessness still hasn't subsided).

I already only get 6 - 7 hours when I'm feeling my best but I'm going on maybe a week now with very little sleep--like a few hours a night. This is extremely bad because I have an important exam in a few days.

I really don't know what to do. This usually happens before exams, probably because of the added stress, but I can never find a permanent effective solution for it even though I'm working with professionals to address it. Sleep medications can only help me fall asleep. They don't help much with staying asleep. I'm so frustrated.

Can't sleep and I'm having strange thoughts lol

They could be deep, major, minor, quirky, silly, mundane, oddly specific, etc changes to your life or yourself as a person

I hate how whenever I get super stressed, I get manic or close to it. I have an important exam in a week and I've only slept a few hours over the past two days. It's not looking good. I'm feeling paranoid and I keep hearing distracting creaking noises that might be hallucinations. No one preparing for this stupid test with me can understand this niche struggle. This ain't my first rodeo but I hate the rodeo!!

I've had some pretty disturbing experiences with men I met through dating apps, including multiple instances/attempts of sexual assault, that made me stop using them and stop looking for anyone for over a year. I finally went back on the apps a few days ago and met up with someone. The date itself was normal and he seemed very nice at first, but I decided I didn't want to pursue things further mostly because our communication didn't feel right to me.

I let him down politely, saying he was "such a lovely person" but I didn't think our communication styles matched. He got extremely angry and said some really rude things. It shook me. This was my first experience trying to find someone again after finally mustering up the will to get past my previous negative experiences meeting men through the apps. I just blocked him after that.

I'm talking to someone else now who seems very nice and mature, but I have deep trust issues at this point. I hate this process so much. I keep running into predatory, abusive men who can convincingly pretend to be nice until they show their true colors.

I went on a date for the first time in a while, and I really liked the person I met. But somehow my LO came up in conversation, and I felt immediate sadness talking about him. I'm not sure how long I'll have to grieve this. I hate how hard it is for me to move on. Even writing this is making me tear up. I'm really pathetic. It almost feels like I'm betraying him by trying to care about someone else, even though we were strictly platonic.

I wish I could be present with this new person. Instead I feel a heavy sense of loss that's been plaguing me for a while. I can't be a normal person who moves on when a relationship isn't possible. I wish I didn't feel everything so strongly.

I get SI consistently at night when I'm in bed, and it's strongest when I wake up in the middle of the night, but I don't think I'm in a depressive episode. I changed meds a few months ago and I think it's finally starting to stabilize the mania better, but I consistently feel low at night. Things are more or less fine during the day. Do I need to add an anti-depressant or something to my medications list? Has anyone experienced this?

Also, I think part of it has to do with the fact that I can never get enough sleep. My body always wakes up prematurely (these days usually around 4am) and my sleep is never restful. I already take meds for nightmares and for knocking me out, but none of them make me stay asleep long enough to feel rested. Suggestions?