I've bipolar, and when I get hypomanic -- I get insanely (using this word for a reason) creative. I will be unable to sleep because the characters won't shut up until I write them. The high from that is -- honestly, I haven't a way to explain it. It's euphoric, and addictive, in its way. That said, it's dysfunctional, and not without issues (like the insomnia), but when you made the comment of "good madness", this is where my mind went to.
But the downswings that happen afterward... ugh. I am then convinced that everything I have wrote is crap, or that I have somehow been offensive and I will hurt someone (this is a particularly bad fear of mine, and I think my brain takes it beyond the point of being reasonable), and it's just awful. But with bipolar, you can't have one without the other, really.
So because the downswings were too much, I am on meds, and while I still get some amount of mood fluctuations, I don't get the high so much. I will be honest that I miss that. But at the same point, I don't miss the destructive downswing.
IDK if that's what he's even talking about by "good madness". It's just what my mind goes to because of my experiences. I think I need to talk to the psych about fiddling with my meds again, because I have just felt very "meh" towards anything creative, and I think that's a symptom of low-level depression for me (along with the wanting to sleeeeep, sleeeeep, sleeeeep). The med I was on previously didn't do this.
My bipolar, at least the mania, is so wrapped around my writing that it's been hard for me to learn how to write without it. That's something I'm working on. I don't know if Gaiman has had any mental health issues himself, but for me with bipolar, that is what I thought of first. I can't see it applying to many other types of mental health issues (like my anxiety, holy shit; you've read my journal, you have some idea of how badly I worry and overthink things and it ends up stopping me from writing altogether), which I think defeats the purpose of the idea, if he is in fact talking about mental health.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-25 04:27 pm (UTC)But the downswings that happen afterward... ugh. I am then convinced that everything I have wrote is crap, or that I have somehow been offensive and I will hurt someone (this is a particularly bad fear of mine, and I think my brain takes it beyond the point of being reasonable), and it's just awful. But with bipolar, you can't have one without the other, really.
So because the downswings were too much, I am on meds, and while I still get some amount of mood fluctuations, I don't get the high so much. I will be honest that I miss that. But at the same point, I don't miss the destructive downswing.
IDK if that's what he's even talking about by "good madness". It's just what my mind goes to because of my experiences. I think I need to talk to the psych about fiddling with my meds again, because I have just felt very "meh" towards anything creative, and I think that's a symptom of low-level depression for me (along with the wanting to sleeeeep, sleeeeep, sleeeeep). The med I was on previously didn't do this.
My bipolar, at least the mania, is so wrapped around my writing that it's been hard for me to learn how to write without it. That's something I'm working on. I don't know if Gaiman has had any mental health issues himself, but for me with bipolar, that is what I thought of first. I can't see it applying to many other types of mental health issues (like my anxiety, holy shit; you've read my journal, you have some idea of how badly I worry and overthink things and it ends up stopping me from writing altogether), which I think defeats the purpose of the idea, if he is in fact talking about mental health.