"Spectrums"

I had my abnormal psychology class today. It was alright; I'm fascinated by the material, but I'm afraid the teacher doesn't truly understand what she's teaching. I think only someone with experience can really speculate on the "elements of the mind", the way disorders interact and work together, and what it's like to experience mania, anxiety, phobia, etc.

I'll give an example: In class today, I said: "Isn't agoraphobia without panic more or less the same thing as social anxiety?" Well, let me correct myself by distinguishing between social anxiety and antisocial "personality disorder". I really detest the term disorder, though, so I'm not going to use it. My theory on sociality is, at least right now, I can think of three approaches. Acceptance and desire to be part of society, interact with people, etc. etc. a.k.a. the "normal" mode of functioning. Dysfunction can occur in at least two ways, however: First, they have the social drive but clincal anxiety manifests itself (for whatever reason - perhaps dysfunctional sense of self) in that part of their lives and they are afraid of being social. Or, second, they simply do not have that social desire, and they are what I would call a sociopath (which is notably different from normality dysfunction - it is a psyche completely different and seperate).

Now, social anxiety: I would say these people are normal in the social sense. They have the desire to be liked, they like other people. Whether or not their like of other people is respect or idolization, however, depends on their sense of self. Example, a person with borderline personality disorder (something I would call a disorder in this sense, because it reflects an incompletely formed sense of self) idolize other people. They do not see others as people, but rather as things about themselves that they project. Now, a question that is raised is.. can't it be said that everyone does this? Why do we like popular kids...because they have done society a favor? Because they have personally helped us somehow? Usually, we do not even know these kids, but we like certain things about them. My supplementary comment to this is, can we really ever know someone [as a person]? This is a hard question to explain now, but to those of you familiar with the concept, do we really ever see people as people? Do we see them with as much leverage, as much severity, as much...weight as they see themselves, or as they believe they are? No. We only see parts of people that either they let us see, or that we want to see. It is impossible to comprehend another person all at once. Moving on.

For this post, I am going to leave out sociopaths and those who simply do not have that societal drive, for that is something very large in-and-of itself, and I will save it for later discussion. Instead, let us look at anxiety and how it relates to mental conditions (in terms of already diagnosed disorders) and attempt to draw patterns between them.

Bipolar disorder. This is, in its most superficial sense, a person who exhibits clinical depression with outbursts of manic activity. So let's look at these two elements seperately. First off, what makes them depressed? What makes one depressed? In my eyes, there are two causes of depression. Rapid onset depression, which is without anxiety. This is the patient who has never had issues with mental health in the past come in and say "lately, I've just felt down. I've been tired all the time, I feel crappy, and I'm unhappy." The other kind, accompanies anxiety. This the person who hyper-thinks everything, my speculation as a part of anxiety (I will adress this soon), and ends up hating society, other people, themselves, whatever. The point is that they descend into depression as a result of conclusions they have reached about things, rather than inexplicably waking up one morning clinically depressed. How seperate these are is something I have not yet reached a conclusion on - a lot of it depends on how much information the patient can provide...

The person who is manic-depressive (bipolar) is depressed from hyper-thought. I suppose I should take a minute to get into what I mean by "hyper-thought".

Hyper-thought is my term for something similar to anxiety, but it is really reflected in varying degrees of something everyone partakes in. Take a look at yourself. You are most happy when you are devoted to something, be it a project, another person, a task, etc. The reason is because you are distracting yourself from your self and focusing your mind on something else. Varying degrees of energy go into this thought, as well. If your mind is racing a mile a minute trying to solve a math problem, I'm willing to bet you also exhibity this mania (hyper-thought) in other things you get caught up in as well. As for most people, their minds aren't always racing. I have found myself walking around in my better days when there is nothing on my mind, save for where I am going or what I am doing. I would suspect that people who are truly content and dedicated to something do not exhibit symptoms of mania but rather actual slow, organized thought along a logical path. This is another comparison I would like to bring up between mania, schizophrenic 'disorganized thoughts', intelligence, and logic, but not now.

So, attempting to explain again, hyper-thought is something that some people do, perhaps sometimes, perhaps all the time, but it reflects several things. First off, mania. It shows that someone projects theirself into a task and works to solve it, with the same fury they would examine themselves (aren't we the eternal tasks?) I am kicking myself right now because it's very hard to put this in a way that doesn't sound unnecessarily elegant and detached. Just picture a manic. Picture them throwing themselves into something, analyzing it from every aspect, thinking a mile a minute. When you apply this to thinking about yourself, it can only be critical. Who can honestly analyze themself with this mania and continually find good things about themselves that propels their self confidence continually upwards? We just don't work that way, please don't try to argue that. Anxiety is characterized by 'analyzing oneself from every aspect', worrying (thinking negatively) about everything, etc. My point is, and you really have to know anxiety and mania for yourself to understand, anxiety is mania. And mania (hyper-thought) is one side of a spectrum, with...hypo-thought, or...simple action at the other end.

I'm hoping that I've explained it differently enough for you to understand me, I'm having a terribly difficult time presenting it the way I'd like, so you'll have to excuse me for that. But let's get back to the issue: the mind of the bipolar. Through my thoughts on the causes of depression, I'd like to illustrate the two potentials and reconcile them with each other.

Scenario 1: Having been completely healthy, for no reason, Jack finds himself tired all the time, generally unhappy, and cannot explain why. He simply feels depressed. This goes on for months, and as a result he begins to hate himself (whether depression diminishes sense of self or low sense of self causes depression, I will go into later). But let's get back to Jack. All of a sudden, things start to perk up. He finds himself feeling good again, getting his energy back. He stops thinking about what a loser he is and how awful the world is and adopts a positive philosophy. He decides he wants to start exercising. He decides he wants to be the center of attention. When he's playing tennis, he hyperfocuses on his game: he becomes his game. Every move is calculated and he throws all he has into everything, exhausting himself to a state of gratification. Socially, he becomes obsessed with what everyone is thinking. While he is not inhibited by social anxiety, he certainly reaps in pleasure from people idolizing him, just as he used to idolize them. "The tables have turned," he thinks, and whatever situation he is in, he focuses solely on that and devotes himself entirely to acheiving what his mind is set on. Please note that the attention span spectrum is referenced here. Jack can not explain why he was depressed, nor can he explain the sudden onset of energy, and after a while, he sinks inexplicably back into depression again.

Scenario 2: Jack has a high level of anxiety. This anxiety leads to a sense of defeat and depression sets in. After several positive things happen to Jack, he starts to feel good again. All of a sudden, he's feeling really good. "Things are going great, I can't believe how great they're going, this is awesome, I'm feeling awesome, I'm so happy," he reminds himself several times a day, whenever the thought crosses his mind (again, pay attention to how attention - more specifically controlled intake of information - has global impacts on him).

In one case, the depression is rapid and unexplainable. In the other case, it is the result of negative conclusions about one's self. In both cases, the euphoria is inexplicable. Now, what I find strange about these two possibilities (keep in mind, these are just my attempts to understand the bipolar mind at both stages) is that in the first scenario the hyperactivity is not always present. In the other one, it is. In both cases, the manic feeling cannot be explained... It seems that the most plausible scenario is the first, where the subject experiences "pure depression", that is without anxiety, which can be more accurately compared to low-level catatonia, where the mind completely shuts down. That means that the hypothought leads the person to depression, and the hyperthought leads them to mania, meaning the base problem they have is:

a) inconsistent and volatile shifting of states of mental energy (mania)
b) a biological (perhaps) or mental (I'll admit I have no answer for this at this point) specific reaction to an increase or decrease in states of mania

A couple points: The euphoria is the reaction to increased mania. The rise in self-esteem, the decrease in inhibitions...these lead me to believe that they are the results of the increased mania, not the other way around. I have had speculation that these "conclusions" about oneself are very temporary and fleeting, subject to ones present condition. This provides further speculation that it is the level of mania rapidly changing, with effects following, rather than drastic feelings about oneself which enable massive expenditures of energy. I'm not sure I can ever conclusionsively prove this, however, without a visible biological origin, and the ability to manipulate it.

I dropped off a point earlier when I was talking about an manic(anxiety)-fueled descent into depression and a manic-fueled ascent out of it. This is something different than bipolar disorder, from what I just concluded in the last paragraph. This is a constant level of mania which leads to drastics states of self-perception. It seems that these people exhibit mania, perhaps not physically, and perhaps not always, in all their lives. It is a constant accompaniment to whatever they are paying attention to. In the spirit of not erasing things, I'd like to start over. Actually, I'm just going to end this post, but I'd like to make one last point.

In reference to the awe-some way in which the thoughts and the state of mind interact and change each other, I would propose that perhaps depression (in the sense that it induces hypothought) is the body's reaction to a manic state of negative self-assessment. It simply shuts the mind down before one negatively assesses themself and everything around them to the point where they snap. Which, really is possible. If one had high-anxiety and it kept getting stronger and stronger, we all recognize they would "snap".

Spectrums I am aware of:
[low mental activity] vs. mania
[low mental activity] vs. anxiety (I would STILL like to provide a conclusion definition of the relationship between mania and anxiety)
sense of self (self identity) vs. no sense of self

depression vs. contentment (?) no...

This actually makes more sense:



negative mania (self destruction)..."i hate myself"...generalized depression...no describable condition [no energy]...range of normal functioning...euphoric mania



So, we have high levels of energy at both levels, with no energy in the middle. I would label the far left end "self-involved" and the far right end "[non-self] involved" (does anyone know a good term for the opposite of self?) Factors that weigh in on one's placement involve energy level, how one's sense of self reacts according to energy level, and one's stability of energy level. This speculates that energy is a factor in self-perception.

I'm going to stop this here. More will come on:

ADD/ADHD and how selective attention plays into self-perception, and what dictates this selection
Characteristics of schizophrenia
-which parts are related to manic-depressive, anxiety/depression, and normal functioning
-which parts are different
Society
Everything

One *last* point I would like to make, and that is from here on out I will probably using the term depression with reference to the active-energy state of mind rather than its low-energy state, which I'll call mental fatigue. Thank you, and goodnight.