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Depression – Breaking Bipolar

Bipolar disorder is associated with extremely high (mania/hypomania) and low (depressed) moods. This is typically seen with emotional changes, behavioral changes, energy changes and so on. Psychosis, on the other hand is the presence of delusions and hallucinations. Delusions – false beliefs that persist in spite of the existence of contrary evidence – and hallucinations are most closely associated with schizophrenia. However, symptoms of psychosis can occur in bipolar disorder and depression as well.
Bipolar disorder is an affective disorder, in other words it affects your emotions (among other things). Bipolar disorder symptoms are often about feelings. Well, they're about FEELINGS. I feel HAPPY. I feel SAD. I feel IRRITATED. I feel ENERGETIC. But one thing that's rarely recognized is that sometimes bipolar disorder is about feeling nothing at all.
I've been studying mental illness for a long time and while I knew the answer to this question, I couldn't really have told you why. This is mostly because I haven't done a lot of work on personality disorders, but I have had occasion to learn more about them recently. No, bipolar disorder is not a personality disorder, and here's why.
Last night I was feeding my cats and thinking suicidal thoughts - I like to call that a Wednesday night. And I was thinking to myself that no one (save others in my position) understands what that is like - to go from some sort of normal person in the daytime to a sobbing, suicidal headcase at night. I thought about the fact that I have spent eight years talking about this very disease, this very state, this very problem, and yet still, people don't get it. No matter how many words I use, no matter how I phrase it, people simply do not understand. So what do we do with the lack of understanding by others?
Happy new year to everyone. Thanks to all for joining me for a wonderful year of information, interaction and debate. I have learned a lot and I hope you have too. But in case you missed it, here are the top ten articles people were reading from Breaking Bipolar last year:
Happy holidays, all. I am back from my family sojourn and feeling exhausted from it. Which is odd, actually, because nothing stressful happened. I worked, we ate, we played cards we pretended to be happy (some more than others) and the holiday passed by. And a giant "meh" was heard by all. And yet still I find myself crippled with exhaustion and stress post-holiday. Why, exactly, is that?
Last week we talked about five of the top things that we learned about mental illness last year: Statistics on Prevalence of Bipolar Disorder How often is Bipolar Diagnosis Mistaken for Depression? Predictor of Bipolar Treatment Success Antimanic Treatment Efficacy - Drugs Compared Are Two Antidepressants Better Than One? Today we will discuss 6-10 in part two of this article.
There's nothing new under the sun. Or so I've been told. And while nothing new may exist, we sure learn about new things all the time. People do lament that our understanding of bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses is too lacking, but each year we learn more about the human brain and mental illness. Here then are top ten things we learned this year about mental illness.
Recently, someone who was new to the world of bipolar disorder asked me if there was a cure for bipolar disorder or if he had to live like this forever. I had to, of course, tell him there is no cure. I felt like I was telling him his dog was about to die. I felt like knowing this, he might give up.
Sex is a basic human drive. We want to eat. We want to sleep. And we want to have sex. These are the things that bring us pleasure in life. Almost everything boils down to those three things. But unfortunately, bipolar disorder and bipolar medication can affect all three. Bipolar disorder and its associated medication can make you eat. Or make you not eat. It can make you sleep. Or it can make you not sleep. And it can affect your sex life the same way. But for some reason, doctors often take the effect on your sex life least seriously.