If the phone never rings because I'm on it all the time ... it means I'm hypomanic - or it's Christmas!
It's been building for a few weeks but it took me a while to notice. Often, if I've been a bit hyper, it takes me weeks to notice. Occasionally someone else has to point it out to me.
Some symptoms are quite measurable, for example, how I react to the telephone. If I answer the phone when it rings, this is normal; if the phone never rings because I am always on it and as soon as I finish one call I dial another number to speak to someone else, this means I'm hypo manic, or else it's Christmas; if I run into my room and hide under the duvet when it rings, then this means I'm depressed and socially phobic.
Other things, like a pattern of irritability (which it is too easy to attribute to other people being inexplicably annoying), an increase in anxiety or connecting random concepts, are a bit harder to put your finger on.
My symptoms this time included: irritability, restlessness, poor concentration, and anxiety.
When I'm like this I find it difficult to get ideas or tasks into a coherent order: I'll be in the middle of one thing and suddenly decide to start another only to be distracted by something else. If I try to focus on anything my mind just seems to flit from one idea to another, making conversation a bit random. Bring on the dancing non-sequitors.
The same, usually negative, thoughts can go round and round in my head for days and this in turn leads to increased anxiety. I was having random little panics, coming out in cold sweats, feeling that, suddenly, there's not enough air in the room.
The flip side of being anxious is being exhausted, accompanied by lots of stammering (I stammer when I'm overtired).
I'd probably class this as a mixed state as I'm a bit up and a bit down. My mind might be racing but not with good ideas.
I spent about a week trying to work out what it is that is making me nervous before realising that I'm probably just feeling nervous, end of story.
I try to rationalise anxiety as a bit like having asthma or allergies. Something might trigger an asthma attack e.g. cat hair but its not cat hair that made me asthmatic. Stressful situations will make me panic when I'm feeling anxious but those situations are not the cause of my anxiety disorder. If I focus too much on precisely what was happening last time I panicked I develop a tendency to avoid anything associated with that situation, even though it may have been entirely coincidental.
On one occasion I had a panic attack and was sick when I went to hire a bike. From this, I got the idea that, if I went into a bike hire shop again, I might have another panic attack. I began to worry unnecessarily about that situation and guaranteed that I would indeed have a panic attack in a bike hire shop. Obviously, an inability to hire bikes is hardly crippling, and sounds ridiculous when you try to explain it to someone. However, these little self fulfilling dreads can easily get out of control.
A friend recommended a book called "feel the fear and do it anyway". I haven't read the book, I just like the title.
Spending time trying to locate the cause of the anxiety has made me more anxious and made me focus on lots of things that I cannot control. Its sometimes better just to accept that I don't feel great because I just don't and not to dwell on it.
It will pass.
In the meantime I'll be trying to focus on: not taking it out on other people, not sweating the little stuff and not letting it get out of control.
Now that I've decided to look at things that way I'm feeling quite a lot better.
