When You Experience 'Holiday Hypomania' With Bipolar Disorder

This holiday season is likely to be an up and down thing with me. (Imagine that!) I started out with a definite fit of hypomania that has lasted for several weeks, but I fully expect to hit a patch of depression, which is common for me around the holidays.

• What is Bipolar disorder?

That manicky feeling was exacerbated by preparations for Thanksgiving, which largely centered on finding a local restaurant that was going to be open and deciding among the choices. We did find a place that was open and merrily over-ate, with drinks and dinners and desserts galore. (There are only the two of us, with no family in town. I cooked ratatouille for Thanksgiving last year, but was too jittery to plan anything of the kind for this year.)

In the past, over-cooking has been one of my slightly manicky reactions to the holidays. Over-baking, really. I remember baking multiple loaves of banana bread and raisin spice cake as Christmas gifts for all our friends one year, even those who lived out of town. (Mailing baked goods is probably best left to the professionals.) Manicky cooking behavior can be seen as normal, or even celebrated, during the holidays. We all know someone who gives out not just leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, but whole home-baked pies.

The shopping that surrounds Hannukah and Christmas and the partying that goes with Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve make it easier for one to indulge in hypomanic or manic behavior without sending up as many red flags as they might at any other time of the year. Usually, holiday depression gets all the attention, and there is certainly more than enough of that to go around. But this year my anxieties — which is how my hypomania usually manifests — have tipped over into a spending spree.

Shopping online made it an easy thing to fall into. Having PayPal and, this year, credit cards, made it even easier. I did try to shop around and limit myself to sale items, but by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I had packages being delivered nearly every day — sometimes more than one. I like to think that I was able to keep the total down, but it really was excessive compared to my normal purchasing patterns. I primarily bought ebooks and pajamas, which says a lot about my lifestyle. I also ordered two expensive gifts for my husband, one of which is stashed in the back of my closet and the other not scheduled to arrive until January. Today I ordered a small gift ($25) for him and then two tie-dyed t-shirts. I stopped myself before I ordered more underwear for myself. I still might get Dan more underwear.

My husband noticed the packages that have arrived, of course, and mentioned hypomania to me just as I was about to order more pajamas. “You already have a lot of pajamas,” he said. “You asked me to tell you if I thought you were getting carried away.” That’s true. He does help me track my moods when I don’t realize I’m veering one way or the other, and I have asked him to try to help me keep it in check. I didn’t order that last pair of pajamas, though it was a great sale price.

We’re lucky that this year we had an unexpected windfall, so all my holiday purchasing hasn’t pushed us into financial problems. But as I settle in for the winter in my cozy pajamas, reading my books, I know I’ll have to keep in mind that rush I’ve been feeling ordering online and try to recognize that it’s a function of my bipolar disorder and not just normal holiday cheer.