If you go into my mom’s garage, you may see a bag full of dishes and clothes. There may be noodles, rice, and a few cans of food in another bag. You might see a tub filled with jewelry supplies and crochet yarn.
It looks like my mom is getting ready for a garage sale. But she’s not.
Can you guess what is going on here?
It’s my mania. Or hypomania, as I have bipolar II. When I get into a state of agitated hypomania, the urge to get rid of items in my house is strong. It feels overwhelming to have so much stuff in my life. All of my possessions are closing in on me, so out they go.
My mania tells me there is too much food in the fridge and freezer. Do I really need more than two plates or two forks and knives? Will I ever cook the noodles? What about all of the wine glasses? My mania tells me I’ll feel so much better when I have a minimalist kitchen. Depending on the strength of the agitation, I can clear out my kitchen in one night and then mop the floor. (Why doesn’t this happen when I actually do need to clean!?)
Then my mania ends and I realize I’ve given away items I really need—dishes that are actually used and jewelry supplies that would be very expensive to replace. Clothes, shoes, and food!
It’s a natural symptom of my hypomania. Mania creates feelings that feel real—it’s that simple. It’s not like I’m confused; I don’t even question if I’m doing the right thing. Mania tells me what to do, and I do it. My desire to get rid of everything is chemical, manufactured by my bipolar brain.
Here is where my mom and sister-in-law Ellen come in. We have a deal. When this mania hits me and I feel compelled to pack up all the stuff that’s crowding me, I give the bags to them, and my mom stores them in her garage. Eventually, I go into my kitchen and think, “Where are all of my darn glasses! Did I lend someone my glasses?” Then my mom will tell me, “They’re in the garage, in a bag. Where we always put them.”
Life is different now. After years of giving in to this, I’ve learned what is real and what is driven by my mania. I don’t let myself do the kitchen purge completely! When the desire to get rid of my jewelry supplies shows up, I say to myself, “This is mania, Julie. Your thoughts aren’t real. Leave the stuff alone—or, let yourself pack it up and ask your mom or Ellen to take it from the house. But don’t give anything away right now. If you still feel this way in a month, then you can give it away.”
I have found that the only way to deal with my purging is to manage my mania. We can all learn to recognize the signs that our mania is starting, and then have a plan and get help. For me, I know that even the smallest desire to put things in bags and give them away is a sign I’m in a mood swing. I have to focus on managing what’s in my head, not what’s in my kitchen.
If a person with bipolar disorder doesn’t learn to manage the smaller and often-humorous symptoms of a manic state, larger and far more disastrous symptoms can take over—such as wanting to get rid of everything, including relationships, work, and even where you live. This is how I ended up going to China by myself a few months before I was finally diagnosed!
I’d rather make decisions from a place of stability, not as a result of mania.
A few years ago, Ellen met me for karaoke wearing a really nice leopard-print velvet scarf with a black feather trim. I looked at the scarf and said, “Wait a minute! I made that scarf!” She said, “I know. You gave it away and I gave it a new home!” I said, “Can I borrow it?” We had a good laugh.
Julie
PS: Mania has a small treatment window. As you can see from the great comments below, if we don’t have a plan in place, we may throw our furniture out on the street during a mood swing! We can prevent mania and save our family treasures!
Printed as “Fast Talk: The Urge to Purge,” Fall 2013
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I have an illness that features hypomania and specifically this behavior. It happened again this past November and December 2021. The worst part, I was hospitalized Dec. 4 to 29, and when I asked family to bring clothes to hospital, they found almost nothing. I also do things like clear out paper records (including certificates, i think I am on 4th replacement copy of Clemson diploma, for example), and erase my digital records like my purchased amazon kindle library history which gets rid of books etc.). Thrilled to hear I am not alone.
I don’t have bipolar, but if I get depressed or frustrated, I go through this purge stage. I feel like my stuff is crowding me so I get rid of it. My kids are constantly telling me to stop getting rid of everything. I usually give it to my sister, but sometimes it goes straight to the thrift store or garbage. Once I loaded up all but a few dishes and utensils and put them in a box to put in the shed and my husband took them to the thrift store. I was mortified because it had my mom’s $100 silverware set in it. We live in a very small house and don’t have room for hardly anything. Our bedroom is also a music room, office, craft and sewing room. Our dining room is also a kitchen and office where my husband works from home. Our walk-in closet is also where our chlorinator, water softener, and filter are, as well as a bunch of other craft storage (and some clothes). There’s barely enough space to enter the walk-in closet, much less walk. So yesterday when I was trying to get to some printer toner and my husband’s heavy music equipment was in the way, I decided everything has to go! If it can’t go in the storage shed, which is filled to the brim and I can barely walk in it, then it’s going away. So I decided to get rid of most of the boxes in the shed so that more stuff can go in there. It’s not that we have a lot of stuff, we just don’t have space. Our house was made for a single person, not a family of 4 (used to be 6 but two moved away.) We bought our house thinking of the potential of adding on. We don’t even have a garage! No linen or coat closets. A huge yard full of puncture weeds. I’ve been thinking for the past 14 years we’ve owned this place that we should have bought something with a smaller yard and more rooms and closets. Now we can’t even find something like that for less than half a million.
Haha I do the same thing everything has to go.
This intense urge to throw things away during hypomania is really difficult for a family living with it. Son has lived with us for 6 years. His intense super-mania at the start of his Bipolar illness meant every morning we’d have to get up to look in the garbage or recycling to retrieve good things like photographs, old saved toys, books, tools, kitchenware, perfectly good clothing, etc. Now that he’s on some meds, not exactly the right ones yet, he only does it during a mood swing, usually caused by skipping meds. Today it was a bunch of wooden pieces of molding in his Dad’s tool area. Sigh. I plan to print this article so he can somehow see this is a symptom he needs his meds adjusted.
Everyone struggles with this disorder differently, Lisa. I would recommend showing some sympathy, and not assuming you know what others are going through.