To be bipolar means, in a colloquial sense, to have a changing mood, to go from sadness to joy, and from joy to anger , about trifles, in a matter of minutes, in an impulsive and unpredictable way, throughout the day.

Being bipolar implies, also in its most popular meaning, moving from love to hate in social relationships. In short, it is synonymous with great emotional instability and sudden changes in a person’s behaviour that confuse everyone.

Well… Nothing could be further from the truth. I clarified before that the description was in a “colloquial sense”, that is, what ordinary people, in general terms, “believe” to be bipolar. However, bipolarity has to be understood as a concept linked to what is known as bipolar disorder .

The purpose of this article is to describe some typical behavioral manifestations of bipolar disorder that may help the affected person’s family or friends recognize the disorder quickly and effectively by facilitating appropriate consultation with a mental health specialist.

You may be interested in: “Bipolar Disorder: 10 Little Known Characteristics and Curiosities”

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is a rare and quite disabling disorder in many ways, which makes the sufferer’s state of mind unmanageable, but which has nothing to do with what has been described so far.

It is actually a mixed disorder, combining episodes of deep depression, which can last for months, with episodes of mania, which usually last for days or weeks.

Bipolar Mania

We all know the broad strokes of depression: a mood disorder in which sadness, frustration, or the inability to experience feelings linked to joy is disabling to the person experiencing it. Now, what is mania? Nothing more or less than a state of heightened joy .

During the cycle of depression, the bipolar person feels as if he or she has sunk into the deepest, darkest abyss. In severe cases, he or she may even lose interest in basic survival issues, such as feeding himself or herself, let alone bathing, going to work, or going out with friends. He finds himself in a state of helplessness and hopelessness in which nothing makes sense.

But when the person with bipolar disorder recovers from the sadness, he invariably goes to the other extreme, to the pathological joy commonly called mania. Hence the term “bipolar.

A person in a manic state feels euphoric, overflowing with energy, which leads him to commit all kinds of recklessness and overreaching. In episodes of mania the course of thought is accelerated, as well as the verbal fluidity, which often becomes an unstoppable verb, in which it is very common the lack of a directive line in the speech, the association of distant ideas about arbitrary links or personal meaning, childish jokes and misplaced jokes, which the individual fails to recognize as such, considering them as extremely funny.

The consequences of the manic stage in Bipolar Disorder

When mania is installed, the whole behavior is disorganized . The excess of vitality makes the person not feel the need to sleep and launches into an unbridled sociability that leads him to make friends easily everywhere, and to attend in a marathon way all sorts of parties and events that he finds.

Indiscriminate and unprotected sex is also common as a sense of courage and invulnerability appears. There are even cases of people who, being heterosexuals in a normal state, embark on homosexual relationships prompted by pure curiosity, and the overwhelming need to explore new experiences that will circulate adrenaline in their bloodstream.

All kinds of risk behaviors appear in this disease, while the capacity for self-criticism or self-control is blocked. Substance abuse such as alcohol or drugs, reckless driving at high speeds, and defiance or contempt for all forms of authority are common in a marked sense of omnipotence.

That is why from joy to suspicion, paranoia, and open hostility toward others, there is only one step in cases where bipolar disorder goes through the manic phase. It is common for a person to misinterpret ambiguous comments made by others as personal offenses and to provoke physical fights or arguments that often involve unsuspecting relatives, friends, or acquaintances.

More little known aspects of this disorder

In a single night at the casino, a person whose bipolarity has given way to a state of mania can bet a month’s full salary on roulette, since his capacity for judgment is profoundly altered, momentarily hijacked by an exaggerated optimism: he may come to believe that he alone will break the bank .

It is also common in cases of bipolar disorder for credit cards to be maxed out in just a few hours due to compulsive and uncontrolled shopping. When this happens, and the family of the sick person decides to seek professional help, often there is no alternative but to prescribe hospitalization , so that the patient can receive and adhere to the pharmacological and psychological treatment of rigour in these cases, based on mood stabilizers and therapy.

It is essentially a disease that has its origin in chemical imbalances and dysfunction of certain brain areas, which I do not intend to explain here so as not to bore the reader to death. For the moment, I am content with this small contribution in order to clarify or shed some light on one of the most distorted and least understood mental illnesses in society.