By Alex Rowan

I’ve always kept a journal of sorts through my life. My entries are typically sporadic, sometimes with a month or more between notes. 

However, when hypomania comes, my writing increases. I remember my therapist asking about the frequency of my entries, but I didn’t really understand why.

My therapist had told me that I might be moving towards mania, but I didn’t believe him. I thought I could manage my behavior. II even thought of it as a superpower.

Here is an example of one day in my diary about a month before it became full blown mania. It’s my reflections on the benefits of hypomania and the negative feeling.

I now understand that bipolar mania is very dangerous. I was out of control, arrested, and lost everything in my life. It devastated me.

Journal entry while in a state of hypomania

Good morning. Today is a great day. In fact, it is the single greatest day in the history of the universe up until this point, as each new day is.

With new found self-awareness, I have decided to write down all of my symptoms of hypomania.

Perceived as positive

• Increased energy
• Higher work ethic, longer hours
• Complete more goals everyday
• More attention to details
• More kind and able to give of myself
• A healthy sense of urgency, the opposite of procrastination 
• More social – connecting with friends, going out more
• Happy and grateful attitude – No feelings of depression
• High functioning on less sleep
• More motivation to exercise and actual exercise
• More motivation to eat well and actually eat well
• Weight loss – slow and steady – desirable as my BMI is overweight
• Less news consumption, more deep and thought provoking consumption such as books, documentaries, essays, studies, podcast discussions with thought leaders.
• Motivated to create more efficiencies in my life

Perceived as negative

• Racing thoughts that overwhelm – I am learning to control
• Difficulty focusing – when experiencing racing thoughts
• Annoying my partner
• Lack of sleep
• The feeling that everything has to be done now
• Too quick to react, if I don’t pause to reflect
• Clumsiness – probably from rushing
• Feeling of dehydration – even though drinking more water
• Dry cuticles – managed with hand cream
• Dry eyes – managed with natural tears
• Desire for perfection
• Overly talkative and oversharing
• Increased desire to make purchases – I need to list them and consider, rather than make impulse purchases
• Small things bother more than usual, and this causes me to lose focus on the task at hand.

Remediations

• Learning to accept that I cannot control my thoughts… but I can control my outputs in actions and words
• Focusing on getting better sleep
• Create periods of isolation for pause and reflection
• Communication more briefly with multiple friends, rather than focusing all my outputs on those nearest and dearest to me.
• Release the feeling of needing to be in control of everything. Let go. Enjoy the flow

Possible causes of my vibed state

• External stressors – work, life, love, community, nation, world
• Internal stressors – Being mean to myself

Author’s note: Please let this raw and candid journal entry serve as a warning of coming mania. I re-read it and posted here as a reminder to myself. Hopefully it can help other people.

I notice that I did not emphasize my increased irritability, which I can now see. While I perceived many of the symptoms as positive, I didn’t understand that it would lead to a manic episode and total of control.

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