A few years ago, I entered into a hypomanic episode punctuated by several fully manic periods. The whole thing lasted maybe eight weeks or so. I had a credit card that I was desperately trying to pay off. It had a $20,000 limit, and I had it down to around $2500. But during my episode, I became enraptured by dinosaurs. For several weeks I schemed to create my own "home museum". I exceeded the maximum on the card, spending about $17,000 on fossils and a little more. Of course, as a manic, this all made perfect sense to me. Those around me were horrified. My question concerns delusional thinking. I realize that my thought processes were not psychotic per se, but my view of reality was badly distorted. So the question is this: do these conditions lie on a spectrum? In other words, a little manic rationalization is on the milder end, and on the opposite side of the spectrum is full break with reality delusions. It would seem my thinking lies perhaps off center, a little closer to delusional thinking, rather than manic rationalization. What do you think?
Yeah, I definitely see it as part of a spectrum. I often become very obsessive about things like this when I'm manic- I spent a fortune on Beanie Babies when I was in my teens. I don't think it's near delusional. I think it's lack of judgement and compulsiveness. Delusional would be more like thinking you were the world's greatest dino expert and behaving as such with other people.
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Posted by valcingetorix
A few years ago, I entered into a hypomanic episode punctuated by several fully manic periods. The whole thing lasted maybe eight weeks or so. I had a credit card that I was desperately trying to pay off. It had a $20,000 limit, and I had it down to around $2500. But during my episode, I became enraptured by dinosaurs. For several weeks I schemed to create my own "home museum". I exceeded the maximum on the card, spending about $17,000 on fossils and a little more. Of course, as a manic, this all made perfect sense to me. Those around me were horrified. My question concerns delusional thinking. I realize that my thought processes were not psychotic per se, but my view of reality was badly distorted. So the question is this: do these conditions lie on a spectrum? In other words, a little manic rationalization is on the milder end, and on the opposite side of the spectrum is full break with reality delusions. It would seem my thinking lies perhaps off center, a little closer to delusional thinking, rather than manic rationalization. What do you think?