Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast Episode 10: People Mistake My Enthusiasm For Mania. This is another episode that’s part of the Life Of An Outsider series on bipolarexcellence.com. You’ll see the link for this series in the footer.

Hello people. This is Ken, and this is one of my favorite topics, mania.

Because I’ve enjoyed much of it as a former bipolar person. And it’s still a piece of my makeup. Let me just say the tendency to get a little too manic at times. Not full-blown mania. There’s definite difference.

Before I forget it, I will just, I will just make the point of saying, one of the coolest things when I was beating bipolar, as I slowly was climbing out of that, that hole, and various symptoms were just falling away, one of the last to go was mania. There were others, but mania hung in towards the end. I could get really wound up and, and go on a flight of fancy tear that I couldn’t be talked down from.

I couldn’t be slowed down in the delivery of… I would drive people crazy. I’d drive myself crazy. And one of the coolest things was when, and I’d never sleep, was when I started getting tired. I started getting tired more often and, and staying up for days on end because I couldn’t sleep because of mania, went away.

And then eventually I started getting tired same time every night without having to do anything to make that so. That was such a relief to realize I could just get tired. And, and then on a lower level, when I got manic, it wouldn’t go on and on and on. It would just be a moment. Maybe it would go, it went for a little too long in the beginning, you know, it’d be hours.

And then I got it down to an hour and then just so many minutes, and then it was just kind of outbursts. I could get rolling for 15 or 20 minutes and then be exhausted. With regular mania there was no being exhausted. There might just be followed by a quick breather, a sip of water and then more mania.

So I’m out of mania. But I do have the potential to be manic and I’m fully aware of it. It’s something I watch, particularly when I’m talking to people about anything I love, which is the stuff I’m doing here with you guys. And if I meet somebody like me, we’ll both, we’ll both manic out.

But even, even then, I’m able to tell if the other person’s manic as in, you know, full of mania or they’re just, you know, we’re in, we’re in the, we’re in the moment together and enjoying it. And we’re both like out of hand kind of people, over the top, and we’re just going to run with that. But I do no, I do notice if I’m spilling over too much in my day to day, because it’s, it’s very fatiguing for those around you.

And if you’re trying to do something of any, with any sort of responsibility or seriousness involved, you won’t be, you won’t be taken seriously. You’ll be looked down upon a little bit or just, you know, you’ll be brushed off when you need to be heard. So you don’t want that. So I guess my question would be for you, you have to be honest.

Are you in a mania, more often than not? Or do you just get a little wound up from time to time? You need to know the difference before you pursue getting help with your project or, or building on your career where you need people above you to take you seriously. You need to know where you stand on that. I know immediately when I’ve gotten too manic about something.

And I’ll, if, if it was, if it was problematic, I will apologize in the moment. I tend not to apologize much. I learned that from someone a long time ago, if you apologize too much, you just, you just come across as weak. There’s a time to do it, a time and a place to, to apologize.

But I minimize it to the point that I don’t even care if, I don’t even care if I leave someone upset with me at different turns, I don’t give a shit. I’m not gonna lose my, my stance in my own mind. I’m not going to give away my power, even if I mishandled it. Sometimes. This isn’t all the time.

But back to mania. What you’re going to find as a high functioning, bipolar person, the people closest to you, they’re not going to be able to tell the difference. They’ve had wired into their head, what you’re like as a manic person.

And even if you know the difference and have it under control, but it’s coming out, it’s coming out to a degree, but you know, it you’re aware of it. It doesn’t matter to them. You’re just, you’re just going nuts again. And they’re not, they’re not going to pay any attention to you.

You will then start to feel bad about yourself or mad at them. Either, which either way is, is no good. You just need to take stock of what just happened every time it happens, learn from it and adjust accordingly.

It’s what really sucks is, a person with no bipolar history can get all wound up and over the top and people will just think it’s delightful, how pumped they were over their vision. With you, you have to be very careful about how you parse out the manic tendencies, so that, you know, you’ll retain your audience.

You’ll retain your, your dignity. People will take you for real and they’ll pay attention to you as you try to pitch an idea. Because as you’re building a passion project, you’re going to need somebody’s help. And they need to know you’re stable. Depending on what’s going on, sometimes stable doesn’t matter that much.

In the artist’s world and the actor’s world, different things like that, you, it’s not such a big deal if you’re over the top, who to a high degree it’s, it’s, it’s expected. But if you’re not in those worlds, you have something a little more standard you’re trying to pitch to the world, you’ve got to try and keep your enthusiasm under control.

And it’s just a matter of, of practice. Another I’ve mentioned them before, Holosync from centerpointe.com, Holosync will enable you to get control over your mind, to where this’ll either stop entirely or you’ll catch it as it gets going along. And you’ll, you’ll adjust accordingly. And if you create a little bit of a furor or an embarrassing situation, you will get better at smoothing it over so that the project continues unhindered.

A lot of experience talking to you right now about this. I don’t really mind being manic at times. I get off on it. Cause it’s, it’s still. I don’t know, sometimes it’s required. But you gotta, I, you, I, I learned, I got to keep it minimal. There’s a way of doing it and using it as a tool to grab attention and to entertainingly put an idea forth.

But then you just gotta make sure you don’t just slip into that, you know, full on mode where you’re just a megaphone with a 200 amp cable plugged into your, your butt. And you’re just blasting energy all over the world to where people are going blind and deaf from it.

I can help you with that as well. Go over to bipolarexcellence.com and you’ll see how you can potentially work with me. And we’ll, we’ll see if we’re a fit and we’ll go for it.

But keep listening to the podcast because I’m put on this Earth to pull people out of the shit people like I used to be are still in. I feel really good about myself doing that, and I want to provide that for you. And it makes my mom proud. All right, folks be well.