This video has edited captions in English, to correct errors in autocaptions from accent/pace.

blog post hypomania vs mania for me: http://www.bipolarcourage.com/bipolar...

My name is Xanthe Wyse. Diagnosed bipolar 1 disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), social anxiety disorder. Later acknowledged by clinicians to have clinically significant autism spectrum features (fitting PDDNOS diagnosis).

I was off my meds and went manic in this video, a compilation from over a month. I was filming some of my creative trauma processing but things spun out of control. I then deleted the channel in embarrassment before starting Bipolar Courage.

I had a lot of insight into PTSD (describing it at the beginning of the video), before I was formally diagnosed with it. Clinicians say I have had PTSD most of my life but they kept calling it other things, like treatmentresistant depression and anxiety.

Then, as I gained more insight into my diagnoses, I made this compilation showing the elevation into mania. Some people are surprised I managed to capture this on video. I was off meds, in denial and finding benefit from my creative processing.

I now insist on minimal meds, as a compromise between benefits and very significant side effects. I have been having therapy for PTSD for the past 3 years with a clinicial psychologist. She said she can see I was processing the trauma in creative ways, yet it got out of control. She said her main advice is to not go too fast when processing.

This is the most viewed video on my channel. Nearly all my videos are improvised, raw and unedited.

In 2021, I published Pet Purpose: Your Unspoken Voice, a petthemed novel inspired by my experiences. The main character has my diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD and is trying to resolve her trauma in creative ways.

Pet Purpose: Your Unspoken Voice is available from Amazon in printed and ebook formats. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0924S2HB3

Pet Purpose is available on major ebook distributors. https://books2read.com/u/4NwY66

I also published a raw, gutsy memoir, Bipolar Cringe, which was written when my mental health was derailing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0473593009

I am now writing a memoir, Bipolar Courage about some of the behindthescenes during my public mental health advocacy journey as Bipolar Courage. Mainly about the intense connection I had with an autistic man. I hope to complete it in 2023.

This is a very vulnerable video. A compilation of some parts of my first attempts to vlog in 2017. I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and refused to accept the diagnosis. I went off meds and lost the weight I had put on with meds. My anxiety levels were high (visible with shaking). I was triggered with PTSD and I went 'high' (mania). I didn't get on film just how bad it got (when I was completely paranoid and in terror).

If you compare with my more recent videos, I will perhaps seem like a completely different person. In this video, showing parts of a manic episode that lasted a few months before a massive crash (requiring sedation), I felt super confident, super sexy, believed I had special superpowers such as seeing the future. I enjoyed smashing symbolic objects (that was therapeutic by the way) and did a lingerie dance (after a stranger on social media told me to). Behaving in ways that I don't usually behave.

I was euphoric near the end the same day I saw a dead body. Going high is a temporary escape from pain but then there is the crash.

My emotions which were usually shut down became very intense and out of control. I unravelled terribly and didn't manage to film that part as I was too busy running around anxiously when my trauma surfaced as the 'high' of the wave came crashing back down.

Then I was severely depressed and unable to function for months.

I ended up asking for help in mania. My psychiatrist was astonished that I could be so unwell, yet still have some degree of insight that I was unwell. I was too exhausted by then to communicate but later I told him that I could see myself from the outside in. Partially from the videos dairies my internal experience felt very different to watching them back.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0473572141

#bipolar #mania #cringe