“Hypomania has many faces.
Most of the words below came from patients who experienced it.
Thoughts move like a ping-pong ball
Cleaning the house all night
Strong desire to reconnect with old friends or lovers
Interest shifts from one thing to another, can’t finish anything
More puns or play on words
Easily overstimulated
Seductive or flirtatious as if playing a role
Tired and wired at the same time
Buying things with pleasure
Engaging in lots of new pursuits
No verbal filter- blurt things out
Heightened sensations: colors are brighter, sounds are louder
Acute sense of humor or irony
Spending too much money
Intense romantic life
Full of plans and projects
Never met a stranger
Disregard for authority
Dramatic or high-fashion clothing
Frequently changing lovers
Feeling people stare or laugh at you
Not bound by everyday social etiquette
Like to be the center of attention
High curiosity, interested in everything and everybody
Driving recklessly or speeding
Over-commit: Could not say “no” to opportunities, even with no time to do them
Felt particularly strong and invulnerable, resistant to illnesses and accidents
Doing things to excess
Very assertive
Enjoy your work more
Sudden travel plans
When your daily routines are disrupted, you get irritable or have trouble functioning
A slightly paranoid feeling, feeling that comments are directed at you
So many thoughts and ideas all at once that it’s hard to express them
Other were attracted to your confidence, energy and enthusiasm
So noisy, for example, with music or TV, that others complained
Very impatient
Other thought you were irresponsible
Overreactive
Puns or word play
Warm, extroverted and social
People can’t keep up with you
Hearing things, even just your name being called
Emotionally expressive
Emotions shift rapidly from happy to sad
Making foolish business or major life decisions
Tended to break rules or the law a little
Self-assured, charismatic, a natural leader
Restless
Suddenly changing hair styles, color, or other fashions
Greater mental clarity
Taking risks easily
Seeing things, such as shadows or bugs
Collecting, buying multiples of the same thing
Enjoy dangerous, risky, challenging or emotionally intense activities
Easily distracted
Frequently changed jobs, homes, friends, hobbies
Charismatic
Feeling overly certain about your own ideas
More interested in sex
Do things more quickly and easily
Stubborn, one-track mind
See connections in things others miss
Exhausting or irritating to others
Mistrusting the intentions of others
More optimistic
Hostile
Vigorous, much livelier than usual, and fully of energy
Felt really good about how you looked
Can’t think before you act
Unusually high self-esteem, feelings of superiority, or unrealistic ideas that you had amazing abilities, talents, knowledge or powers
Multiple trains of thought, like you can carry on a conversation while another track is writing a short story
Intense enjoyment or appreciation of artistic works
Overly carefree
Felt you could make decisions for others because you knew their thoughts, intentions, or wishes
More fluent with words
You went for days without sleeping or with much less sleep than usual but didn’t feel tired
Overly talkative, spoke rapidly, and loudly
Sped up inside
Easily caught up in addictive things, like gambling, sweets, porn, drugs
If, for some reason, you get much less sleep than normal for you, you found that you actually had more energy rather than less the next day
Interrupting others
Mystical experiences or visions
Driven to do something but don’t know what to do
Giving lots of presents
A lot of activity makes it hard for you to wind down and sleep at night
The smallest thing makes you very enthusiastic
Self-assured, feeling you are incapable of making mistakes, and indifferent to criticism
Perfectionist
Felt like you had extrasensory perception (ESP)
Time moves quickly
Made very important decisions (such as selling or buying a house or car, or changing jobs) quickly
Vivid tastes and smells
An irresistible urge to communicate by phone, letters, emails or texts
Drawn to bright colors or red hues
The life of the party
You often see humor where others miss it
A sense of oneness with things
Gravitate toward colorful clothing
Ideas came and went with unusual ease
Urges to self-medicate, to calm your nerves
Ending relationships suddenly
Particularly sensitive to shapes, forms, and harmony in nature
Spent a lot of time on social, political or religious causes
Vindictive, a need to even the score
Leaving big tips
More physically active
Did the opposite of what people wanted you to do or played the devil’s advocate
Artistic and creative
Crying and laughing at the same time
Unusually spiritual or mystical
Binging on food
Critical or sarcastic
Usually argumentative
Felt you were mentally very sharp, brilliant, and clever
Mood and energy heightened in the spring
Musical, rhyming, or dancing a lot
Irritable at small things
A lot of daydreaming, fantasy
Decorating or reorganizing the house a lot
Great difficulty seeing others’ points of view
Felt unappreciated because others did not understand or share your optimistic or imaginative ideas
Your mood, energy, interest and efficiency improved if you were in a regular routine
Thoughts jump from topic to topic
Wanting to decorate your body with tattoos, piercings, or make-up
Inappropriate jokes”
Source: “Bipolar, Not So Much” Appendix B
The Calculating Mind 