My Bipolar Snapshot

When I was in the fourth grade, my 4-H club county extension agent wrote in my record book that I was high strung. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded disparaging. I was offended. I knew it was somehow related to Mom’s telling me if I didn’t quit acting “that way,” which was never defined, I would end up "crazy" like my Dad before I reached the age of 20. [See footnote **.] She would often say I “fly off the handle” like her sister Ella! Now I think she also might have been referring to my oversensitivity--getting upset or crying over seemingly insignificant things. I remember thinking on my 20th birthday that I had "beat the odds for crazy!"

Though I experienced undiagnosed symptoms in my 20s, I was first diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder in December, 1982 at age 31 after a full blown psychotic manic episode with subsequent hospitalization. Before my mother passed away in 1997, I hadn’t been depressed enough to notice. Mania has always been the more serious and predominant mood disorder for me. My symptoms of bipolar disorder with mania begin with unpredictable mood changes, poor judgment, and excessive talking. As the illness progresses, I experience periods of extreme energy, occasional grandiose ideas about myself and my abilities, and euphoria. My thoughts become disconnected. My mind feels as though it’s racing. Sometimes I become irritable. I require less sleep. As severe mania progresses to psychosis, my thinking becomes delusional and I lose all contact with reality.

When I’m manic I often have flights of thought in normal conversations and generally find it difficult to focus. In a psychotic manic episode, these problems are exacerbated. My mind vacillates between scenarios, usually with little or no apparent rhyme or reason. I will experience one motif for a while then go back to a previous one without any sense of connectivity. What I’m thinking and what you think I’m thinking are often worlds apart!

Realizing I was probably having my first nervous breakdown, in late December, 1982 I called my brother and asked him to take me to the airport so I could visit my favorite aunt, who lived close to the Intracoastal Waterway in North Palm Beach, FL. I was accustomed to visiting her a week or so each summer. I mistakenly believed if I could rest in a comfortable, peaceful, familiar, and loving environment, I might be able to reverse the symptoms. I describe this first episode in the “Dr. Ruth’s Wild Ride” pages on this blog (http://www.ruthforthebroken.org/dr-ruth-s-wild-ride). I write about it in more detail in my soon to be published book: When Brilliance and Madness Collide: Bipolar Disorder Without Boundaries.

This excerpt from my book might be a tease for this first episode:

“I’d landed in a psych ward in North Palm Beach because a shower head “told me” to go to

the Intracostal Waterway and scream when I saw a small plane overhead to alert my husband of my whereabouts…only problem was the shower head forgot to tell me to put on some clothes!”

Psychotic behavior didn’t end with this first hospitalization. I became psychotic after the birth of our first child in 1983. Her dad had to bring her home without me. The psychiatric hospital gave me weekend passes to visit her until my mental health improved enough to assist her grandmothers with her care. I didn't experience a manic episode after our son was born in 1985. Nonetheless, I averaged one psychotic episode per year during our eight-year marriage. One time their dad saved my life by sprinting to the porch to flip the main switch in the circuit box when he heard both the hairdryer and water running in a locked bathroom. It would have been ruled a suicide. How could anyone have known what was going on inside my brain? That I thought I was Jesus and therefore invincible!

It’s common for people who are experiencing an extreme manic psychotic episode to believe they’re someone else for a short period of time--usually a significant family member or friend or a famous historical figure. For me, the latter would be Jesus or a Bible character such as Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Queen of Sheba, or even the Antichrist. One psychiatrist told me I couldn’t be the Antichrist. That was his ex-wife!

Talking with other patients who’d been psychotic, I learned that had I been a history buff, I might have assumed the role of Winston Churchill, Napoleon, General George Patton, or even cycled back-and-forth among all of them.

I would often cycle between characters. One minute I might be my baby daughter, then my grandmother, and then myself. When I was my baby, I would poop in my pants. Once when I put my soiled jeans in a hospital laundry cart, the psychiatric nurse who caught me reamed me out a new one!

Over the course of my psychiatric hospitalizations, I found many Nurse Ratcheds. It’s unfortunate that many nurses, and even doctors, don’t seem to understand the illness well enough to realize we can’t help our actions. A nurse friend, whose daughter was experiencing a psychotic episode while still at home, told me she was throwing dishes against the wall and breaking them just to get attention. She had no clue! I told her that her daughter might have thought they were flying saucers!

Footnote

**Use of the word "crazy," is offensive to many people, but it was commonly used in the 50s and 60s.

Ruth Manning, 2023