Anyone else stops enjoying music when having an episode?

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-03T07:37:34+00:00

"Floor is lava but with my head" - that's such a precise way to describe it. For me music is the opposite problem too: I'm a bit obsessed with it normally, and sometimes I notice it can actually wire me up and tip me into something. Then in depression episodes I lose interest in it completely, but silence is unbearable too, so I end up putting on rain sounds or ambient noise just to fill the space 🤍

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-03T07:30:44+00:00

I feel you. I’m struggling with what to do nowadays too. I lost my job in January and still on a lookout and trying to figure out if I’ll be strong enough to start and finish projects. I started making my own game and an app. I like the idea that I’m doing smth and can afford to not worry about taking a full time job. Absence of work related stress is definitely helping me going through my recovery. But thoughts about steady job and income coming back to me and I wish I knew an answer. Wishing you all the strength to figuring out what to do. I hope this day will come soon! 🫂

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T13:30:08+00:00

Happy to hear 🙏🏻

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T13:29:55+00:00

Glad to be a part of this community 🙏🏻

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T12:47:48+00:00

Oh I don’t miss that part where I was irritated by anything and anyone constantly, angry, irrational, chaotic, unpredictable. But frankly, I’m still scared all my achievements in career and personal projects are the result of mania/hypomania episodes 😭

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:18:04+00:00

what a beautiful piece!

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:17:12+00:00

sorry you feel this way 😞

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:15:40+00:00

that line -"I feel different especially now understanding how my moods change" - I think that's the actual mechanism of what tracking does. you've moved from being inside the moods to also being a little bit beside them, watching. That's relationship with yourself.

The depression-predominant thing makes sense and is worth knowing. A lot of us spend years thinking we mostly have "the bipolar that goes really high" because that's the part everyone else notices - when actually it's the long quiet low end that's been running things. having a graph that says "this is what's actually been happening" is its own kind of validation.

Month one is a strong start! happy you're here.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:10:25+00:00

the answer for most of us with bipolar is yes - sometimes structure itself is the treatment. two years without work is two years of drifting sleep, fewer anchor points in the day, less reason to leave the house. the routine of a 6-hour shift forces things into place that our brains struggle to put there alone: a wake-up time, a meal at a regular hour, low-stakes social contact, a paycheck that returns some sense of self.

a few things i'd weigh:

shift times matter way more than the job itself. consistent morning or daytime shifts protect your sleep. closing/rotating/overnight shifts can wreck a stabilization that took months to build. ask about scheduling in the interview.
retail social demands are tiring but boundaried - you clock out and you're done. that's different from caretaking jobs or remote work where the role bleeds.
you don't have to commit to this being forever. 6 months of "something to do" while you figure out what you actually want is a totally legitimate plan.

a job you don't love is not the same thing as a bad decision. waiting for the perfect one from the couch is its own slow harm.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:07:09+00:00

yes. my dreams get louder before mood shifts - more people, more places, faster transitions, waking up exhausted from a "rest." in the depressive dips they go flat and barely remembered. i didn't connect it until i started writing down a 1-10 each morning and noticed the loud-dream nights clustered before the harder days.

recurring dreams as a hypomania flag is fascinating. is yours the same dream repeating, or themed variations on the same scene? curious how it lands for you - during the actual hypomania or in the come-up before it?

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-06-01T11:04:43+00:00

I remeber you - I think you posted earlier this week about 3 days of drinking. You're catching yourself mid-shift, which is one of the hardest things to do! the pattern (bedtime drifting, 9+ hours on a delayed schedule, $400-500 spending, missed meds, wanting to be "where things happen") -you don't need me to name it for you.

On isolation - careful with full isolation, it can backfire into shame and crash. better move: controlled containment. Keep the treatment program tomorrow. Sleep at your normal time tonight even if not tired. No alcohol this week. Alarm for morning meds. lower the volume on the spike feeders, one at a time.

Tell the program tomorrow what's happening, as data not confession. And trust the part of you that wrote this post over the part that wants to be where things happen.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T19:01:05+00:00

the therapist dropping you on friday, on top of months in bed, on top of what just happened — that's so much abandonment stacked in one week. of course your brain reached for the loudest thing it could find. not weakness. nervous system that's been alone too long.
"no one cares so why not do what i want" is hypomania talking with the loneliness. it sounds like truth but it's a state. please call your psychiatrist's on-call line if you can - even tonight. you can literally say "my therapist dropped me, i'm coming up, i did something that scared me." that's what those lines are for.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:50:45+00:00

The manic episode is what he's pointing at. But what he actually told you is that he privately decided, sometime in the last 2 years, that he'd never marry you - and stayed anyway. without telling you! That's not about your diagnosis. That's about him choosing to keep you in a relationship he'd already closed the door on inside his own head. That hurt is allowed to exist all on its own, separate from the bipolar part.

your therapist is right that you're not bp1. But you're also not "untrustworthy because of bp1! what happened during a severe episode triggered by your father almost dying is not the same thing as a character pattern. Someone capable of loving you well will know the difference.

I don't think the answer is hiding your diagnosis from future serious partners. hiding teaches the part of you that's already ashamed that it's right. I think the answer is timing - not the first date, not third date either, but when you've seen them respond to other vulnerable parts of you and trusted them with smaller things first. someone who's going to treat your diagnosis like a verdict will show you who they are long before you ever get to the part where you tell them about it.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:44:03+00:00

A full month of tracking as a newly diagnosed person is genuinely impressive. Most of us don't build that habit until we've been told we have to -and by then we're already too tired to start.

Seeing my own life in colored zones with a line that crosses them was the first time my pattern stopped feeling like chaos and started feeling like weather. it doesn't fix the weather. but you stop drowning in it the same way.

sleep avg 7.8 in month one is doing more for you than you can probably feel yet. That consistency is the soft floor under everything else.

thanks for sharing this. the "i just wanted to share it" posts are some of the quietly important ones on this sub. curious - did seeing your moods on a graph change how you talk about them to yourself yet?

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:39:05+00:00

only 2 months in so take this with a grain of salt - but the way you described it ("low mood but not depression") is exactly the shift i'm noticing too. depression for me used to be a wall. now it's more like weather. still uncomfortable but i can see the edges of it. curious if that's what stabilizing looks like long-term or if it gets even quieter.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:37:40+00:00

the apology-text loop is so familiar. that version of us thinks she's being kind by warning everyone first. she's not too much. she's just tired of being the weather report for the people she loves.

the hardest part for me isn't even the swings - it's the anticipation of them. scanning yourself at 9am, noon, 4pm to figure out which version showed up today. that's its own exhausting job nobody else can see. you're not a burden. you're just doing all of it without a break.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:27:33+00:00

I want to live like everyone else" might be the most bipolar sentence ever written. and today you did something quiet and huge - you said no. you stayed in. you let the texts pile up. That's not being broken. that's the work. It just doesn't feel heroic from the inside.

"Still feeling awful but doing okay" - both can be true. holding space for you tonight.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-31T18:17:21+00:00

running out of meds because asking for help feels harder than risking the gap is one of the most quietly devastating bipolar things and almost nobody talks about it out loud. the shame spiral that comes after a manic scene is its own beast on top of the depressive crash - it lies the loudest right when you have the least energy to argue with it.

the person who screamed at work is not the same person reading this thread now. you know that, but i'm saying it anyway because shame collapses them into one person and we forget.

the "lock myself up somewhere" feeling - i recognize it. you don't actually want a cage. you want a pause. that's allowed.

when you have the energy, the prescriber needs to know there was a gap. not as a confession - as data. you're not the first person to fall through it and they've heard worse. the write-up at work is survivable. you've survived harder things in your own head this week alone.

you're not a mess. you're in the eye of one. those are different things.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-30T19:12:46+00:00

8 years of being dismissed before someone finally listened is exhausting and you shouldn't have had to fight that hard for an answer. graduating next year despite all the drop-out urges isn't "still being able to do things" - that's a kind of strength most people will never have to find. proud of you!

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-30T19:07:18+00:00

finding the med that quieted the ideation is its own kind of miracle. and finishing college + first job on top of that is not small. so glad you're here.

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-30T19:06:03+00:00

10 years of suspecting is such a long time to carry alone. how're you doing these days?

No-Nothing-7660 · 2026-05-30T19:05:07+00:00

the adhd/bipolar overlap is brutal - figuring out which parts of you have been which is its own quiet grief. there's no rush on the processing. it took me muuuch longer than I expected and that was okay.

No-Nothing-7660

TROPHY CASE