I’ll be honest, this is a question that I have never asked myself before. It’s only something that has started rattling around my head in the last couple of weeks after seeing someone have a manic episode on television and how it can be good and bad.
I am talking about a professional darts player by the name of James Wade. He is a very good chucker of the arrows, a very successful one and he has also been very open about his bipolar. For those of you who don’t know the world of darts, just before Christmas is the start of the Professional Darts Corporation World Darts Championships. It is the big one for darts players and fans around the world. It’s played at Alexandra Palace in London and it runs over the Christmas period with the final being played on New Year’s Day.
On 19 December 2018, James Wade played a match against Seigo Asada. After winning the second set, James celebrated, effectively, in Seigo’s face. I was watching the game live and as James did this, I said to myself (well, actually I said it to the cat) “that’s very unlike James”. In his post-match interview, after winning, James said that he “wanted to hurt him”. Again, a comment came from the comfort of my sofa of “Oh James, that’s not like you”. Post-match, one of the commentators likened his behaviour to bullying and said it was very aggressive. I’m sure there were thousands of other fans all over the world who had the same reaction I did. We don’t see this sort of behaviour from James. It’s not like him and I immediately had my suspicions that he was dealing with a manic episode.
The following day, James issued a statement on Twitter apologising for his behaviour and stating that he was going through a hypomania episode prior to the match and basically, this spilled over into the game. As we all know, I don’t like the idea of someone using mental health issues as an excuse for bad behaviour. James clearly doesn’t either. He apologised profusely for his actions and declared what he was going through as a way of explaining the behaviour, not excusing it. Unfortunately, the trolls took to Twitter and James was subjected to a barrage of abuse. People said that the apology wasn’t genuine and he had been told to make that statement. He was accused of being racist. He was told to withdraw from the competition. The Twitterati hoped that he would get banned. Indeed, at his next match, the crowd at Alexandra Palace were clearly against him and were booing him throughout most of the game. Thankfully, on that night, James let his darts do the talking and came through that match. Trust me when I tell you that there have been other behaviours during the course of last year that were equally as disgusting and weren’t treated with such disrespect by the Twitterati. To my fellow darts fans, anyone remember Anderson versus Price?
So, why tell you all of this? Well, that night made me start to think about my own hypomania episodes over the years and how they have affected my work. Anybody that has worked in the City for Investment Banks or Corporate Law Firms knows that when you’re getting close to the end of a deal, things get a little stressful to say the least. You pretty much live, breathe, eat and sleep that deal until it closes. The chances are you don’t go home for a few days and, if you do, it’s literally for a shower and change and back to the office. As a PA, the nights get so much longer, your weekends disappear and, the chances are, you end up working through the night on at least more than one occasion to get the documents done and ready for signing.
During those times, I was actually extremely grateful for a manic episode. I was literally Superwoman. There pretty much wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. I could churn out documents, I could construct complex client invoices, nothing was a problem for me. It wasn’t without its difficulties though. I would still have to try to channel the mania into the work and very occasionally it would spill over and I would snap at colleagues. However, most of the time because I internalise so much, it would be when I eventually got home that it would spill out. Mostly this would be not being able to relax and rest which, when you’ve already been awake for nearly 24 hours, isn’t brilliant. I would still self-harm during these times also. As much as self-harming for me is a controlled release of pain, the pain could sometimes be that I couldn’t sleep and I liken the self-harming at these times to draining the remaining mania out of me.
The biggest negative to any manic episode is the slump that comes afterwards. It is absolutely epic. As great as the high could be, the subsequent low would be really bad. I could work for 4 days straight on little to no sleep to help get a deal done and then I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed for 2 days afterwards. It would take every effort I would have just to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. My body would feel like an absolute dead weight and my brain just couldn’t take in any information at all.
Since not being able to work, I try to channel the manic episodes into housework. It’s even more difficult to channel a manic episode now that I am unable to work because there is only so much housework to do. I even manage to tackle ironing mountain when I’m in a manic episode. Anybody who knows me really well knows how much I loathe ironing so, again, a manic episode can sometimes be helpful!
I genuinely don’t know if a manic episode is better than the periods of depression. Looking back, when I was working, I was clearly much better at channelling and managing a manic episode than I ever have been at managing a period of depression. I’m going to assume that’s because the manic episodes are shorter than the periods of depression and I had a damn good reason and place to channel the mania – the City of London! Since being off work, it’s much more difficult to manage a manic episode but I’m still channelling it into something relatively constructive. Clearly, in my life in general, I need to find new distraction techniques in managing mania and depression and not resort to self-harming.
So, a big thank you to James Wade for making me look at my own episodes of mania and review how I have channelled and managed them over the years, or not as the case may be. It has certainly given me some pointers on things that I need to work on when the next episode strikes!
Living The BPD Life 