Speed Wobble

We've all had them. That shopping cart with the wobbly wheel. An unbalanced wheel, perhaps some loose bearings or dirt in the mechanism, and you have the wheel that wobbles as soon as you reach walking pace. If you're not in a hurry, it's not that big a deal. The wobble only happens when you reach a certain speed, i.e. when you are in a hurry, creating noise and slowing you down because you simply can't make the cart go any faster.

As I mentioned in the video of my Sick, Not Weak talk, my older sister suffers from bipolar disorder. My mother thinks that it's possible that my father did as well, though to a lesser degree. His aunt was hospitalized a number of times while suffering from manic depression, as it was known then. So, when I finally came to terms with the fact that I was suffering from depression, I seriously wondered if I was bipolar as well.

When I discussed it with my doctor and therapist, they didn't believe so mainly because I didn't have the traditional manic episodes. I haven't had those times where I stayed up for days doing a bazillion things. I didn't have the messianic feelings, like I was the Chosen One and had a mission to complete. So, I thought that I was dealing with 'just' depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

A recent incident, though, has me wondering.

I absolutely do have cycles where I'm down and ones where I'm more up. Actually, I think all people do and the 'bipolar' aspect simply means that you experience extremes of those. In this case, I had been down but I could feel myself coming back up. My energy was building and my mood was improving.

What happened next was intriguing. I've been making a point to pay attention to how I'm feeling and as I started to come up I noticed that I had a flood of ideas. A bunch about work, a bunch about home, a bunch of writing ideas, etc. There were so many ideas, I had no idea where to start! I actually felt overwhelmed by this explosion of thoughts in my mind.

I had a mental version of speed wobble!

As I thought about the phenomenon, I realized that it was something that I had experienced many times before. I can look at my blogging patterns and see peaks and valleys. What readers of my blog don't see, though, are all sorts of posts that I started or jotted down notes, but never completed. At home there are partially completed projects, although I've long coped with that by only taking on smaller things.

So, this last left me to wonder if perhaps I actually do suffer from bipolar disorder, but the manifestation of the mania results in an overload in my brain that prevents me from moving a whole lot faster on things that I do even when I'm down. It's not that I'm trying to be diagnosed as bipolar, but more that I find it interesting that I have this state, and that it might help me create some better coping mechanisms.