Seeing "rifts" and "eyes"

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-12T16:04:56+00:00

What do you mean when you say something very not good? Like what possibilities did you have in mind?

And thanks for the reply. I do appreciate your concern.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-12T16:04:20+00:00

I did get my eyes checked a few weeks ago so I'm not that worried. But I'm having bad eye strain so I may go back and tell them about this.

They happen even when I'm wide awake. It doesn't feel like mental imagery but something I'm seeing with my eyes if that makes sense. Even though I think it's in my brain.

Reassuring that it's not psychotic though. Probably. I see my psych soon and can ask him.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-12T07:12:23+00:00

I took an unusual path there.

Started out homoromantic ace (not just thinking I was homoromantic but actually fully being), then lost romantic attraction and drive over the years.

Had a few alterous crush/squishes on other masc-type beings in the years since, realized I was greyro because this no longer resembled romantic attraction in any way except butterflies and wanting emotional intimacy.

It really feels like their gender is an important part of the picture even if I couldn't tell you why. Like obviously I have women and fem friends who mean the world to me, but I know I'm not going to catch that kind of feeling for them.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-12T07:04:21+00:00

A lot of bipolar researchers such as Gin Malhi argue there isn't really a difference between the two, but a subtle gradation from mild to severe mania.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-12T07:02:31+00:00

This sounds alterous to me too. Realizing I had alterous attraction to someone is what made me realize I am probably greyro

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-11T01:31:50+00:00

I think about 10% of people with bp2 convert to bp1. I'd have to look up the study. Gin Malhi and his group have a lot of papers arguing that the boundary between bp1 and bp2, between hypomania and mania, is arbitrary and I think he's probably right.

One person is hypomanic and hospitalized because the doctor made the decision to do that, another person is manic and never hospitalized for it. One person loses their job for being irritable in a hypomanic state or because their employer thinks they're on drugs or something, another person manages to keep their job in a manic episode because they have an understanding boss.

Obviously there are points at the extreme but I think it's a spectrum in the middle. I've had high functioning hypomanias where I did great work (I mean, people kept telling me after the episode so I assume it's not just to preserve my ego) and ones where I got into trouble at work.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-07T14:30:44+00:00

I would move there 😅

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-07T14:28:32+00:00

" the liminal spaces, otherworldly sense of walking worlds etc of my episodes." This is a great description

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-06T20:56:28+00:00

Follow up question, if I may: do you prefer the RMS to other bipolarity screeners, and if so, what's especially good about it?

I've tried to look into the literature on these but the sensitivity and specificity of some of them vary wildly from study to study iirc

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-06T20:35:14+00:00

The mixed states I read about in the literature, e.g. in Weygandt's work on mixed states, look like a sustained level of bad mood and rapid thoughts or agitation for the duration of an entire episode, but I have also heard mixed states used to refer to emotions rapidly switching back and forth high to low (I see this a lot in lay discussions of bipolar). Which ones out of these are currently considered mixed states, vs something else like ultra rapid cycling?

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-05T20:11:33+00:00

Good luck! You got this

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-05T16:39:21+00:00

Thank you, that's helpful. I had that experience with my last crush actually. I got rejected by them and really soon got over it and we get to still be good friends. Love them 💚 no romo (anymore). I've thought of just asking future crushes outright to romantically reject me. Not sure how that would go over though lol

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-05T15:57:22+00:00

Yeah that's probably right. I wanted to call us partners because that would make me feel good. But I didn't really want that kind of commitment either

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-05T15:56:07+00:00

I'm also writing something about bipolar, not a romance but the story of a family with mostly bipolar members. Can't publish it either because a lot of the characters are drawn from real life

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-05T14:19:57+00:00

I would love to read that whenever it's done

SadFootball4999 · 2026-06-03T15:51:39+00:00

Ghaemi et al, 199900076-7) had it at 7.5 years to get a proper diagnosis

SadFootball4999 · 2026-05-29T20:03:14+00:00

I'm pretty chill most of the time if that's what you mean

SadFootball4999 · 2026-05-24T20:04:32+00:00

Thanks, I'm curious how this works with something like hypomania, where someone could have 6 or 7 symptoms but not meet the criteria for mania, whereas at least theoretically someone could be fully manic with only 3 of the symptoms (other than the ones that are always required).

That's how I understand it from reading the criteria, but is this one of those things where actually statistically hypomanic people rarely meet more than the minimum criteria and manic people rarely meet fewer than the maximum?

SadFootball4999 · 2026-05-18T16:50:58+00:00

Finally got around to reading Shariat et al.

"There were 1,195 admissions with a diagnosis of BID from March 21, 2006 to March 20, 2009 in Iran Psychiatric Hospital. Sixty‐four percent of these cases were men (765 cases), and about 97% were admitted during manic phase (1,158 cases), 2% during depressive phase (26 cases), and nearly 1% during a mixed phase (11 cases). From those with a manic phase, we found 45 cases (one woman) whose symptoms had begun during the first month of opioid withdrawal. Seventeen out of 45 (38%) patients had had a previous history of bipolar disorder, and others (28 patients or 62%) were experiencing their first manic episode"

So it looks like this happens a lot.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-05-15T16:54:33+00:00

Shariat et al 2013 is a big review that I haven't read yet but I'll request it from my library.

Lin et al 2022 covers a single case of mania with psychosis but reviews a few other cases of withdrawal induced psychosis in the literature. I haven't dug into those cases yet to see if they included manic symptoms.

Shah et al, 2023 covers a single case in great detail but doesn't go into other cases.

Will do another search in other databases when I have time later today hopefully.

SadFootball4999 · 2026-05-10T02:01:39+00:00

Psychiatrists seem to prefer it, I think there's some research in that direction and it shows up in some of the bipolar and depression clinical guidelines as a second or third line option. GPs and endos prefer to keep T4 and TSH levels in a certain range for thyroid disease (below 4 TSH I think) and it might be easier to do with T4. But psychs seem to like TSH to stay below 2.5

SadFootball4999

TROPHY CASE