I’m Scared of Bipolar Hypomania

I realized the other night that I am scared of hypomania. Some of you may remember that a little while ago I suffered a particularly notable hypomania and it was then followed up by a huge, debilitating depression. And last night I realized that while hypomania for me, is not necessarily, always unpleasant, I’m actually scared of hypomania.

Fear of Hypomania

Sometimes stress helps cause hypomania for me and lately I’ve been under a lot of stress. This stress just seems to up my anxiety more and more and more until eventually it morphs into a hypomania. And the hypomania sort of creeps up and doesn’t hit like a baseball bat. And last night, I found myself considering the hypomania symptoms I was seeing in myself and saying to myself, “this is not hypomania. It will be fine.”

And I realized that I was saying this to myself because I’m actually scared of the hypomania. And I’m scared, not so much of the hypomania, per se, but I’m terrified of what happens afterwards. I’m terrified of such dramatic, horrific, life-altering depressions.

Denying Hypomania

So, seriously, I found myself wanting to deny the hypomania symptoms and just write them off as something else. “It’s not really hypomania, I’m just energetic. I’m just productive. I’m just chatty.”

Now, it occurs to me that denying the symptoms of hypomania (or anything) doesn’t actually make it go away. It’s interesting, though, how natural denial is when you really don’t want to see what is there.

Facing Up to Hypomania Fear

But in the end, of course, I saw the hypomanic symptoms for what they were and faced them head on. That’s all you can do. Denial, as always, will make you worse, not better. And because I faced my hypomania and handled the hypomania, I was able to curb it to some degree and thus the resultant depression.

Because while I think it’s normal to be scared of any mental illness symptom (most of them really suck) I think we have to be stronger than the fear. I have to stand up, face reality and deal with it as best we can. It’s the only way to get a toehold on bipolar or maybe even, something more.

Image by ladiiibug.

You can find Natasha Tracy on Facebook or Google+ or @Natasha_Tracy on Twitter or at Bipolar Burble, her blog.