My Bipolar Roller Coaster Ride: Agitated Mania

Usually, I look forward to manic episodes as long as they are the happy, fun-loving, euphoric types of mania. But we don’t always get what we want, do we? Right now, I am wide awake and it is after 11 at night. I know my body and mind well enough to know that I am manic, but I am anxiety-fueled and very irritable as well. Perhaps you could even sprinkle a dash of paranoia into the mix.

I have been trying so hard to push off the irritability and agitation but I’m starting to fail miserably at it I believe. I feel like maybe I am being short tempered with people when I talk to them. I just really don’t want to have conversations with anyone right now.

I feel guilty for avoiding calls and messages and being short with people who don’t deserve it but I am trying my hardest to not lose my shit right now. Perhaps no one even notices how irritable I am or that something is even off with my mood and I am just assuming everyone else can see right through me to how I am truly feeling.

I went from being extremely talkative and outgoing to closing every single chat I had open and not replying back to many people. So, yeah, maybe this manic episode did start off well enough but it quickly took a turn for the worst.

I have so much flowing through my head that I want to do or start but my agitation and anxiety keeps me from actually doing anything. It’s like before I started writing this, I was glaring at my laptop, clenching my jaw, and trying to focus on something other than how agitated I am feeling so that I could try to do something productive. That didn’t work out so well. I am honestly surprised that I am even able to tolerate blogging right now.

I have no idea how I am even going to get any sleep tonight. Even though my body is starting to feel a bit exhausted, my mind is running in high gear. And unless I can get my brain to slow down, sleep is going to be out of the question for the time being.

When I get into this type of mood, everything I try to do to entertain myself annoys me but then doing nothing also annoys me. It is like I really don’t know what to do with myself and I am incapable of making any real decisions because of the battle that is going in inside my head that is trying to pull me in so many different directions all at once.

If I had to rate my mental stability from 1 (being the most unstable) to 10 (being completely stable) I would have to rate myself at a 3 with how I am currently feeling inside.

There is a part of me that wants to scream, yell, throw things, and punch walls but then there is another part of me that is screaming to not draw any extra attention to myself. Attention could be bad right now. I just want to be left alone but yet part of me is craving human contact. Where the hell is all this indecisiveness coming from?! It’s really starting to frustrate me.

I wish I knew how to revert back to the outgoing, lovable, joyous manic episode that I started with earlier. It’s like as the day wore on, the worse I started to mentally feel. And when the sunlight finally faded away to make room for nighttime it’s like a switch got flipped and all these negative feelings were unleashed.

Although thinking about it, I must say that despite my periods of paranoia, I think that I have done a damn good job at hiding my agitation. If I looked on the outside how I feel on the inside, I would probably be ready for Halloween and I’d most likely win the scariest costume award.

I told my psych doctor about my rapid cycling still occurring despite the med changes we’ve made and she increased my Abilify to 20 mg. I hope it’s just from starting the new dose and that it will taper off, but I feel like I have been cycling even more with higher severity since the increase last week. Shouldn’t the opposite happen?

My doctor also put me on 25-50 mg of Trazodone to take every 6 hours as needed for anxiety. On top of the Buspar and gabapentin – that doubles for pain and anxiety – you would think that I should be fairly anxiety free by now. But nope.

I really wanted my doctor to put me on a mild benzo but for the longest but she said no because she was worried it will make me want to drink. Then during my last appointment, when I told her that I haven’t drank in a very long time and if she’d finally consider it, she said no again because now she said it would go against my ADHD medication. Right now I keep thinking about much a benzo might actually help with the kind of mood that I am in.

When I first woke up today, I was extremely anxious from the moment that I first opened my eyes. That anxiety turned into a good manic episode, which then turned into a bad manic episode, and now all of a sudden I am still feeling agitated and anxious but now I feel like maybe I am more so shifting into a mixed episode or something.

I feel like I am experiencing so many different emotions at once. I just want off of this bipolar roller coaster ride already. Can someone press the stop button for me please because this ride is moving too fast for me to be able to get off of it?

Well, I guess, on a good note before I started feeling so crappy, I was able to get some guest posts completed for different blogs and one of them wasn’t even due until May 20th. At least I can say that I got that accomplished today.

I will admit, I am feeling a tad bit better than I was when I started writing this. Utilizing your strongest coping mechanisms really can help when you are feeling mentally off. And, for me, that coping mechanism is always writing.

Perhaps the moral of this story could be that when you are feeling like your are going to crawl out of your skin that you should start using your favorite coping skills and working your way down the list until you find what is going to work for you in that moment in time. If you keep at it, something is bound to work and help ease the pressure that you are feeling inside; even if it just eases it a little bit. Some relief is better than none.