Limerence, bipolar, and suicide... why has no one made the connection...

I am going to try to explain something succinctly which is virtually impossible to explain and should be something I sit down with a psychiatrist (for them to learn from) for several hours, but since no one will do anything unless you pay them in this world this isn't going to happen.

But I know it's important so it will just go down here.

First of all you have to think really deeply about the obvious statement that; we all experience the world differently. Think on that one. The way you experience the world is nothing like the way I do or anyone else does...

Nothing like.

Now imagine having bipolar disorder. You can't. You can only know what it's like if you have had it. It's inexplicably horrendous.

I have only just realised how sensitive our bipolar brains really are. No one speaks about this stuff but HONESTLY (and again no one will listen to me) but if I have one sugar in my tea it can send me through the roof and if I continued I could easily have a manic episode. If I eat one bar of chocolate - SAME thing...

Now imagine what a cup of coffee would do to a bipolar brain. Now imagine what a cigarette would do.. now imagine what cannabis would do.. now imagine cocaine, alcohol.... blah blah blah..

Now imagine what being on antidepressants would do to a bipolar brain. Now imagine what antipsychotics would do to the bipolar brain, now imagine what 'mood stabilisers' would do, now imagine what Ketamine would do.....

THROUGH the ROOF with these things for the true bipolar. No wonder it's been hell because the crash the other side is unsurvivable!!!

It's no wonder 1 in 5 die from bipolar and the others achieve nothing in life....

The cruelest thing is that you have no idea you have bipolar before it starts... you imagine that of course you can drink, of course you can smoke etc, everyone else is! But you have no idea that when the person next to you is just getting a mild 'hit' off that marlboro light and you are going up to the stars and looking down from above them that there's anything wrong with that - because we only have our own subjective reality to go from...

Moving on...Now imagine all the other stuff in life: job stress, relationships, people getting angry with you and how that would affect the true bipolar.

Now imagine what every emotion, feeling, and experience is like for a true bipolar. Imagine what shame is like for a bipolar. Imagine the worst shame of your life and times it by 1,000,000.

Now imagine what guilt is like for the bipolar. Times that by 1,000,000.

Imagine what sorrow, grief, hurt, rejection are like for the bipolar.

Now imagine what being bipolar AND limerent are like.

And that's what I've worked out I have.

I read a book this week called Living with Limerence by Dr L and it was jaw droppingly revealing.

I assumed that everyone suffered heartbreak like I do. I assumed that everyone who breaks up with someone must feel like Romeo and Juliet and want to die, drinking hemlock and feeling the most pain possibly imaginable as they bleed out slowly from the inside... it's almost masochistic but the bipolar limerent FEEELS SO STRONGLY. I have felt like this for fifteen years after one relationship... this is not average heartbreak it's something FAR DEEPER.

And having read the book I am just going to congratulate myself to the roof tops for still being alive. I really am. I do not know how I have survived such pain in these circumstances. The heart has ached in wildest pain for years and years and years.

All this was evident to me in all that poetry that came gushing out. It's heartbreak and love OFF the SCALE.

What happens is (and it has only happened to me once) but some people give the limerent that 'glimmer' which turns into heavenly gushing 'The ONE' love almost instantly. This isn't helped by all the shit in Pride and Prejudice and every other romance book where we're told that 'love changes everything', 'love wins the day', 'soulmates exist', 'I would die for love' etc...

The limerent takes it further, they start seeing patterns in the sky when they think of the LO (limerent object), they obsess constantly, they pine for years and years, they dream about LO, they literally cannot escape LO ever, not even in sleep. And none of this is their fault. When I realised that I was still dreaming vivid dreams about my LO fifteen years later and read this book I realised that this is NOT NORMAL.

NB [This was when my dreams finally returned having been obliterated by that poison quetiapine which lobotomised my ability to dream for several years and took years to withdraw from - excruciating pain]

What I have realised is that what I have endured is quite frankly unfathomable to anyone. I truly believe that pretty much everyone who has suffered the degree of mental suffering, limerence and torture that I have is already dead.

It's true.

And now I'm seeing a pattern in the friends I've lost to suicide - heartbreak (high possibility of limerence), antidepressants, and alcohol...

It's pretty obvious but not one psychiatrist has asked me about it.

The other thing I'd like to know is why I have spiritual mania and not the classic promiscuity and overspending of the other 'manics'...

Again, no psychiatrist can be bothered to speak to me about this so it just goes here.

Frankly, I am utterly disappointed that not one of them picked up limerence in me and not one of them has asked me about ego death and spiritual mania. Also not one of them really discussed the dangers of sugar, caffeine and cigarettes on a full blown mania either.

Anyway, I am alive and I have overcome so much that I am proud of myself FULL STOP.

Good job I don't need anyone to recognise this anymore because they never will!

How anyone else will survive this though I have no idea and that WORRIES me because it isn't really survivable, especially when you add in the horrific withdrawal suffering they are going to have to go through when they finally realise that they can never have caffeine, nicotine, or any of the psych drugs that they are now dependent on...

Horrifying.

And if they are limerent too and get dumped by a not very tolerant or understanding non bipolar, non limerent LO?

Zero chance of survival...

I am a walking miracle.

TR