Читать книгу Welcome to the Jungle - Hilary T. Smith - Страница 32

For hypomania, take the mania section and turn the volume down several notches. You talk faster, walk faster, and think faster—enough for other people to comment. Maybe you start writing a novel, building a sailboat, and recording an electro album all on the same day. Or you join a rock-climbing gym because you “suddenly” realize you'd make a fabulous rock climber. It's hard to sleep and hard to sit still and listen when someone else is talking. Other people seem to be talking and moving incredibly slowly. Sitting in class is torture because it seems to drag on for hours and hours, and you've got more important things to do! You might be agitated and elated at the same time, the life of the party, but your engine's running a little hot. You dance down the street, filled with this wonderful sense of how happy the world is, or flit around your room like a trapped fly.

The DSM-IV definition of hypomania includes the same seven symptoms as for mania, but the difference is that the episode is not severe enough to land you in the hospital or make it impossible for you to get through a normal day at work or school. It also notes that a change in your mood and behavior should be observable to other people (i.e., that your parents or friends notice that you're talking faster and making uncharacteristic judgments). A hypomanic episode marks a distinct change from your usual self, and the elevated, expansive, or irritated mood should last for at least four days. Hypomania usually isn't accompanied by psychosis, and it doesn't count (at least, not to the guy in the white coat) if your symptoms are due to your taking a drug like ecstasy.

There have been a few books published recently that discuss the advantages of hypomania. The Hypomanic Edge by John Gardner and Finding Your Bipolar Muse by Lana Castle both discuss how one can safely harness hypomania to increase one's productivity, creative output, and potential to become a railway tycoon, dominatrix, or Zamboni driver. (OK, I made up the last three, but if I wrote a book about hypomania, those would get at least a chapter each.) Hypomania can imbue you with wonderful feelings of confidence, talent, creativity, self-esteem, charm, and intelligence, all of which can help you achieve great things. It can also feel distinctly uncomfortable and irritating—sometimes both at once. When I'm hypomanic, I love to go running because the pleasure of flying over the pavement is enhanced a million percent. But sometimes underneath the pleasure there's the churning of this desperate engine that wants to go ever faster, and I can't always keep up.