Chronic mania and persistent euphoric states

Thanks, that was a very interesting read!

I know paracetamol also works to some extent for emotional pain, and perhaps anxiety and physical pain share some neural and developmental pathways.

Do you feel any physical pain?

How about empathy?

I've always had a profound disliking for people without empathy, and for good measure -- those people usually are psychopaths or narcissists, but if they are compassionate but just don't feel empathy, it's ok, I guess... though the nauseating feeling in my stomach that I first got when I was maybe 5 and I saw the reaction of a child I struck and robbed of his sunflower, just as instructed by my older cousin -- that is so fundamental to me, that it seems inconceivable that you can become a decent human being without it.

I caught myself hoping that at some point in the article some professional would point out how the lady is in fact flawed in some major ways.

As in you can't have your cookie and eat it too, while the rest of us are struggling?

I also wish the article elaborated more about why the daughter thought the lady was in fact horrible -- was that feeling ongoing, or just something in her adolescence, or just the same nagging feeling I have -- that there MUST be something terribly bad about someone without empathy.

Take for instance the story of her bipolar husband that died(killed himself?). Most likely she indeed could not have prevented it.

BUT maybe.... someone feeling empathy and not feeling reciprocated, would over time feel they are interracting with a robot, not with a human being.

I know I feel that way when I talk with my father and I know he's very low on the empathy scale -- the whole interaction feels so very fake and scripted after a while -- I can read his emotional states, I know what he wants, what he wants me to say, what his fears are, what his intentions are, but it is absolutely not the other way around.

Overall my father is a good person -- a very good and hard working doctor, contributes to charities and so on.

I wouldn't get my bad feelings about him if I only knew and spent a couple of days in my life with him as a writer writing an article about him, but I sure do as someone who wants a genuine and deep connection with him, just like the lady's daughter probaby did with her mother.

I am glad I am not the only one. Thank you for posting.

Sometimes when you tell people it is difficult to not be happy and to get angry, they treat you like a skinny person humble bragging about how they can't gain weight no matter how much they eat.

It is just a thing in your genes and I am sure it came from my grandfather who survived the Bataan death march and Odonnel prison camp and was up until his death one of the happiest people I ever knew.

That looks like a man that doesn't let life hand him lemons without a juicer.

Thanks for sharing that!

Sounds like a normal non-depressed human to me, is what I wanted to say before I saw the picture :) Thanks.

Pessimist may have been a wrong word. Maybe something along the lines of anxiety that can make you miserable in today's safe environment but could make you think more about potential problems and prepare for them ahead of time. Like "I need to have more food for winter" vs "It's going to be fine, it's such a nice day today".

I blogged about this recently. There's been a recent trend to fetishize optimism in companies.

"Pessimists Are Welcome To Apply"

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pessimists-welcome-apply-ben-...

I mean, I don't think I'd make it exclusionary and private to only people that pass a test or something. Perhaps anyone could join, just with the request that they have an open mind and be generally happy.

And no worries about not understanding it, some of the writing on it naturally focuses on the more extreme cases. If you met me IRL you'd just think I'm a normal guy, perhaps one that's just mostly upbeat. I don't have any worries about a psychopath infiltrating whatever future group for that reason: most people with it are just normal people, but happier.

The only thing I can think of is that people with it are usually a good bit less risk-averse. So perhaps there'd be someone pushing people into doing risky things. But I already do risky things: just my last trip pre-Corona I hitchhiked on a dump truck through two countries and a conflict zone :) Furthermore, I already evaluate the risk of most things I do and direct my life accordingly. (For example, I avoid excessive driving, and as such I do most of my medium or long distance travel in very safe modes of transportation like the TGV, which has never had a fatal accident in its many years of operation.)

You've given me an idea for a comedy: someone tries to infiltrate the group to get everyone to go on a risky adventure, he succeededs, and then the entire time he tries to hide that he's the only one stressing out at all the danger while everyone else is enjoying it and having a great time :)

So as someone who is normally hypomanic but had a reaction to antidepressants that put me fully manic for a while, I don't think hypomania really needs to be treated with anything other than talk therapy. If I'm aware of it, I can manage the downsides pretty well through emotional regulation techniques like breathing / meditation and exercise. Hypomania can be overall positive if you learn to control it.

Mania on the other hand is basically like, you can't control the shit that comes out of your mouth. You act on every fucking thing that pops into your head, even when you recognize that it's hurting the people around you. You just can't stop yourself; its compulsive and incredibly distressing. People are uncomfortable around you and you can tell. Your judgment is impaired and you don't understand the grey area between right and wrong. You have like 15 thoughts flying through your head and you can't keep any of them straight for more than a few seconds at a time. It really, really sucks.

Not always, no. In hypomania there is, by definition, no significant functional impairment. However, the underlying bipolar illness usually needs to be treated, and that usually involves reducing the amount of mood cycling. Indirectly that will often reduce the time spent in a hypomanic state.

This is a good educational site with a lot of info about bipolar II and hypomania: https://psycheducation.org/

Hypomania is sometimes called the Entrepreneur's Disease. Let's say Elon Musk has hypomania (it does seem like it). Treatment levels him out and dulls his creativity at same time. Is that a desirable outcome?

Well as I've said real mania should surely be treated (regardless of cause). But there is an interesting gray zone where I think it's more difficult to say if the problem lays with the patient, or with his/her social surroundings.

For example the Swedish journalist Ola Wong recently shared his story on national radio about going hypomanic and then full on manic during the Swedish "refugee crisis" in 2015. It was quite interesting to hear him describe how he just felt that his social surroundings of journalists and opinion makers had gone mad when they refused to acknowledge there were potential problems associated with accepting 160k refugees in a single year (relative to population that's like if the US accepted 5.2 million refugees in one year). After "banging his head against the social wall" for a few months he became more and more agitated and restless, and finally needed hospitalisation. Just weeks after his hospitalisation the debate climate turned around 180 degrees to agree with Wong. That probably helped his recovery. He seems to have had no psychiatric trouble before then, or after.

Now, was the problem entirely with Mr Wong? :P

Yes, probably. I was not referring so much to "benefits", or lack thereof, but to the subjective experience of the kind of high it gives.

Yes, but only for you. The people you live your life with (some of whom you even love) are in the same state of mind as before, and you have no (or at the very least less) reason to change something for the better for them.

That's not true if you consider the world around you and your interactions with it to be part of your "state".

Ever since I learned to meditate, I've been happily watching my life circle the drain.

The question is if you want to be peaceful or happy?

> Do thought-free states feel better than good feeling thoughts?

Yes, significantly better. Firstly, the state of just being is much lighter, not dependent on the memory and understanding of the world it takes to be cognitively happy; it is child-like. Secondly, this silent state is aware that it is self-contained, free from external circumstances, and revels in it; it is not wrong to say it is full of energy and power from self-sufficiency. Thirdly, there is awareness that there is no effort involved in being silent and happy, that no work needs to be done, and that brings a 2nd-order joy, too.

I'm new to this state, though; I just entered into silence for the first time around 6 months ago. It immediately makes me a bit excited when all thought subsides and the silence descends onto me, and that just results in the thoughts coming back :-)

I'm fairly sure I know someone who's unipolar BP type II, and while sometimes they can be very depressed or fatigued, the vast majority of the time they have absolutely mind boggling stamina for challenge. They constantly read, think, plan, experiment, and just get stuff done. When combined with a work ethic and intelligence, they manage to somehow pull off remarkable feats on a daily basis. It's not at all surprising to consider that they'd be extremely successful at starting a business, if that was what they chose to do.

They're almost like the guy from Limitless, when they put their mind to something it just happens like magic. Of course, they rarely stay focused on anything for too long, so starting a business they'd likely feel too trapped. They're always eyeing the exits, because they're so restless and need freedom like we need air.

This makes sense to me, every change from the average comes with corresponding pros and cons. The same traits in an office that make someone successful in business might not translate to a survival situation, etc.

In their case, I'd say it mostly comes out in the wash. They do decently well at work, but don't commit well to bigger projects, and they don't finish projects well.