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You can tell when you had a manic episode by looking at your credit card bill. Just not for me. Family members have mistaken you for the Incredible Hulk. Gaslight is also an old movie, in which a husband uses the technique to try to convince his wife that she is insane. The victim of gaslighting is usually a woman and the perpetrator usually a man.
Of course this is not always true. Either sex can be the gaslighter and either sex the gaslightee. But what does gaslighting have to do with bipolar disorder? Someone who is in the depressive phase of bipolar — especially one who is undiagnosed — is especially susceptible to gaslighting. Back when I was undiagnosed and in the middle of a major depressive episode, I had an experience of being gaslit.
My grasp on reality was not entirely firm at the time, both because of the depression and because I was physically, socially, and emotionally cut off from the outside world, family and most friends.
This isolation left the gaslighter, Rex, in a position of control. I endured everyday denials of reality, like those mentioned above, but the most obvious one — the one that made me aware that I was being gaslit —happened when I suggested that we go for couples counseling.
Rex asked if I was sure I wanted to, as he and the therapist could declare me a danger to self and others and have me put away. That is the very basis of gaslighting — to make the other person seem or possibly even become crazy. Once a person recognizes the gaslighting for what it is, she can begin learning to trust her own perceptions again. For a person in the grips of depression or mania, this will not be easy.
It took a long time and a lot of healing before I could recognize what had happened, how my circumstances had been controlled, how my perceptions had been invalidated — how I had been gaslit.
That was a vast revelation. As mentioned earlier, the most characteristic signs of bipolar disorder are dramatic mood swings — from mania to depression and back again. Periods of normal mood are sometimes found in between, but sometimes there are none. In addition to these changes of mood, there are several other changes, in energy and behavior.
The most common sign of mania include:. On the other hand, common symptoms of depression include:. Sometimes severe episodes of mania or depression include symptoms of psychosis. Common psychotic symptoms include hallucinations audio and visual and delusions delusions of grandiosity, guilt or worthlessness. Also, it is not uncommon for people with bipolar disorder who exhibit these symptoms to be incorrectly diagnosed as having schizophrenia, another severe mental illness.
It is difficult to talk about a single cause of bipolar disorder. According to the US National Institute of Mental Health, "There is no single cause for bipolar disorder - rather, many factors act together to produce the illness. They concluded that there is no single gene the mutation of which could cause this illness.
However, a family history of bipolar spectrum disorders can impart a genetic predisposition towards developing a bipolar spectrum disorder. Other factors may also be part of the patient's family history. Some of the most common are: anxiety disorders, clinical depression, eating disorders, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia.
This theory claims that people who are genetically predisposed to bipolar disorder can experience a series of stressful events which lower the threshold at which mood changes occur.
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