“Where did that come from?!” This is a common expression I would hear during my recovery journey. Some small comment or noise would irritate me beyond control, and I would lose my temper and say hurtful things to the person who was unfortunate enough to be around me. Often it was a family member, and I would unearth disputes from the distant past, making them feel as if I had been harboring ill feelings for many years. So, if you are a husband thinking, “Why is my wife yelling at me” or thinking about someone else who unusually snapped at you, you should look at why it happened instead of jumping to conclusions.
Let me begin by saying a lot is going on in situations like this. I mention in my book that both the person struggling with bipolar and the people in their life must proceed with a spirit of love and build healthy systems of communication. However, let me share with you from an insider’s perspective: for someone dealing with bipolar disorder, saying hurtful things is a lot more common than one might think.
I begin with the position that after having your first manic or depressive episode, you stay unstable for some time. A person regains balance but can easily be tipped over. They can vacillate between two extremes constantly and can even experience both states at the same time! The cumbersome task of managing oneself with a new range of emotions as well as becoming really sensitive feels like one is learning how to operate in a brand-new world. I would explain to people that just like the world is new and scary for a child it was like that for me too. For that reason, I would ask people to grant me some space as “I learn how to walk again.” But what exactly imbalances a person with a bipolar diagnosis?
- Sleep Deprivation Insomnia is a salient characteristic of BPD. Think of how difficult your day is if you don’t get a good night’s rest. Now imagine not sleeping well for days, weeks, or even months in a row. Due to racing thoughts, feelings of euphoria, tense muscles, and other chronic symptoms, the person has immense difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting rest even if they do fall asleep.
- Pain Poor sleep can also cause pain around the shoulders, neck, and head. It also does not allow for the vital organs such as the liver to detox during the night, which can cause internal pain in the body.
- Poor Diet People with bipolar disorder often have issues with their gut health. This is driven by eating highly processed foods and poor hydration, which greatly affect one’s mood. Indigestion, heartburn, nausea, constipation, and diarrhea can occur as well as lethargy, anxiety, and dizziness. All of this can make a terrible recipe for emotional outbursts.
- Trauma When a person is going through mania and depression, the nature of the state is extreme sadness, fear, anxiety, paranoia, anger, and euphoria. Often these feelings are not connected to any incident or memory, so the person searches for deeper wounds to attach the intense feelings. This could be turned into a whole article but essentially the person unearths traumas from the past (which is good in the long run to identify and address). When a person is inwardly going through such turmoil, they can likely improperly snap at others in a desperate attempt to call for help.
- Isolation Because the experience of bipolar is so internal, it is difficult to understand what the person is going through. The person feels that nobody understands what they are going through, and then they become isolated and bitter because of it. In this state, when someone checks in on them, they may lash out with an emotional response.
- Shame Mania is often attributed to poor decision making and depression is often associated with not performing at one’s best. Both of these foster shame in the individual and lead to further feelings of isolation. If someone tries to encourage them to forgive themselves there is a likelihood to get an emotional response because of the overwhelming feelings of grief due to losing a job, relationship, or even reputation. You may hear things like, “I feel like I can never show my face in public again.”
This kind of sleep deprivation leads to crankiness and plays a huge part in irritability. Now imagine dealing with the demands of life with such little sleep. Answers to questions like bipolar people mean the hurtful things they say don’t count if sleep deprivation is a factor for an erratic mood.
This pain can make someone irritable. What’s most frustrating is that no one can see that the person is in pain; therefore, when the person snaps and says something hurtful, it comes as a complete surprise.
Conclusion
The unifying thread for all of these reasons is pain. Hence, the adage, “hurt people hurt people,” becomes applicable with a slight modification: hurting people hurt people. The temporary agony and turmoil of mania, depression, and everything in between drags the person into a state of misery. The person experiencing the symptoms does not wish to hurt people, but the severity of the symptoms and the difficulty of navigating a new world leads to verbal and even physical abuse. As a consequence, the cycle of pain festers the wounds within, further isolates the person, and traps them in the manic-depressive cycle.
One question that people need answers for is, how to tell a bipolar person they hurt you? But This is a topic for another blog post. I will conclude this blog with two pieces of advice on how to move forward. Firstly, the person with bipolar must take ownership of identifying their triggers and learning how to navigate the world again while the person on the other end should show patience instead of arguing with a bipolar person. BP Harmony’s mission is to empower people to regain that balance.
Second, those who are close to the person experiencing bipolar must also equip themselves with knowledge so that they can better empathize with the person’s predicament. Both must commit to navigating new waters with a spirit of compassion for one another as both are trying their level best.
