Manic Behavior – I Was Charming to Strangers and Mean to Those I Loved

The Manic Contradiction: Magnetic Strangers, Fractured Families

By Jayne Millerton, staff writer

I could walk into a room full of people I’d never met and within an hour, I’d have their phone numbers. I’d have their stories. I’d have them laughing. Believing in me. Wanting to know more. I collected contacts like currency. Almost a hundred new ones. People I could barely remember but who remembered me. Who thought I was brilliant. Who thought I was special. So it seemed to me during my manic episode.

With strangers, I had this charisma I’d never felt before. I could talk to anyone. Even the people who looked terrifying, who you don’t approach in normal life. The ones with the hard faces and the look that says don’t mess with me. I’d approach them anyway. I’d often charm them. I’d find the humanity in them.

It felt like a superpower. It felt like I’d finally become who I was always meant to be.

But the moment I hung up the phone with a stranger or left that room, the moment I turned my attention to the people I actually loved, something flipped. The kindness evaporated. The patience disappeared. What was left was irritability. Anger. Pettiness.

My mom would ask me a simple question and I’d feel anger. Not justified anger. Just… anger. She’d say something innocuous and I’d hear the worst possible interpretation of it. She was questioning me. She was doubting me. She didn’t believe in what I was doing. Never mind that she was literally just asking what time I’d be home. My brain had decided it was an attack.

I would lash out. Say cruel things I knew would hurt because I needed to hurt someone back. Even though no one had hurt me. Even though my mom was just trying to care about me.

I became this person who gave the strangers everything and gave my family nothing but cruelty.

Looking back, I think it was the inflated sense of self. Mania had convinced me that these people I barely knew believed in me more than the people who actually knew me. That the strangers saw the truth about how great I was, while my family was just being dismissive or controlling or unsupportive. Never mind that they were terrified. Never mind that they were watching me self-destruct in real time.

I would ask questions obsessively if I felt even the tiniest perceived slight. Badgering them. Demanding answers. Making them defend themselves against things they hadn’t even done. The tiniest word, the tiniest tone, and I’d spiral into an inquisition. “What did you mean by that? Are you mad at me? Do you not want to be around me?” Over and over until they were exhausted.

But with strangers, I had empathy. Deep empathy. I could feel what they were feeling. I could sense their pain and their dreams and their struggles. I could be what they needed me to be. I could make them feel seen.

The truth is, both things were happening at the same time. The generosity toward strangers and the cruelty toward loved ones. They came from the same place. From a manic brain that was thinking too fast, feeling too much, and unable to regulate any of it.

If you’ve hurt someone you love during a manic episode, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means your brain was sick. And it’s possible to come back from it, to rebuild those relationships, to actually be the person you showed strangers you could be.

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