Bipolar Social Club invites people at every stage of their bipolar journey to join our community!
If you are in crisis, reach out to a crisis counselor, or contact the Suicide Prevention Hotline by sending a text to 988 or calling 1-800-273-8255.
Living with bipolar disorder?
Request to join the Bipolar Social Club, an email list for people with bipolar illness. To join anonymously, consider setting up a Gmail account that doesn’t include your real name.
Looking to support friends & family?
Request to join Bipolar Love, a confidential email list for friends and family of people who are living with bipolar illness.
BSC founder Paul English’s recent TED Talk
Paul recently gave this candid and heartfelt TED talk in Boston. Watch more videos.
What is bipolar?
Mania is a high. We have seemingly boundless energy. Colors and light shine brighter. The world around us seems full and beautiful. We can stay up all night multiple nights in a row without caffeine or feeling fatigue. We have poor impulse control, making decisions quickly: an urge becomes action without a second thought. We can also be easily distracted or irritated. We talk at a million miles a minute and make logical leaps that can be hard to follow but make total sense (to us). We’re jubilantly self-confident and feel invincible, like nobody and nothing can stop us.
Hypomania is similar to mania but is “less than” manic. The sensations are similar—rapid speech, flight of ideas, risk taking, feelings of euphoria—but less intense.
Depression is the low. Depression is much better understood and represented in pop culture. The definition includes feelings of sluggishness, loss of energy, hopelessness, and worthlessness and can include thinking about or planning suicide. We can’t concentrate and, in contrast to when we’re manic, might struggle to make decisions. We can become trapped in our bedrooms for days or weeks at a time, sometimes longer.
It’s called bipolar because we swing between mania or hypomania and depression, with occasional, rare, or no breaks in between.
Bipolar disorders fall on a spectrum and include Bipolar I, Bipolar II, Cyclothymia, and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The National Institute of Mental Health is one site that provides a detailed description of bipolar.
Getting help
Diagnosis: Your doctor can help you start your journey. You’ll likely have a physical exam and then get a referral to a psychiatrist. It’s helpful for your psychiatrist if you keep a journal or some sort of daily record of your moods, sleep patterns, and other factors, such as drug and alcohol consumption and eating habits.
If your doctor won’t refer you to a psychiatrist, a number of free services can help you with getting the care you need that fits with your insurance. Psychology Today is one well-known resource that offers a tool for finding mental health providers.
Support: Our Bipolar Social Club is also a resource for you to meet and talk to people who already have a diagnosis. Bipolar is defined in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (commonly known as DSM-5), but the symptoms can manifest differently in different people. Listening to someone talk about their journey with bipolar can put words to feelings and experiences you knew but didn’t understand.
You can also contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or info@nami.org if you have any questions about bipolar disorder or finding support and resources.