37 lines
4.2 KiB
YAML
Executable file
37 lines
4.2 KiB
YAML
Executable file
# filename: reddit_joel_2025-03-02_05.yaml
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thread:
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id: 05
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date: 2025-03-02
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subreddit: BipolarS0recovery
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url: https://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarS0recovery/comments/j203j8/looking_for_insight_bipolar_psychosis/
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op:
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author: u/Lopsided_Scheme_4927
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title: "Looking for insight: bipolar psychosis"
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timestamp: "Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 2:09:21 PM CST"
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body: |
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Recently, I got out of a 1.5 year relationship. We were long-distance, which made everything more complicated and took longer for me to fully understand what was happening.
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I had known this guy 25 years ago—back then, he was fun and lively. We lost touch for a long time, then reconnected a couple of years ago when he was 50. Early on, he told me he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder by two different psychiatrists but was not taking medication. He had tried it in the past but had stopped. I assumed he had found a way to manage without it.
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At the start of our relationship, he said he wasn’t feeling well. Since I work in mental health, I helped him find a psychiatrist (at his request), and he started taking a mood stabilizer for a while. However, he felt it wasn’t improving his symptoms—he said he felt unproductive and stuck—so he stopped going to the psychiatrist and never resumed treatment.
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Over time, regardless of the diagnosis, I realized he was very toxic toward me. There was a lot of manipulation, gaslighting, control, and extreme self-centeredness. I suspected intense narcissistic traits because bipolar disorder alone didn’t seem to explain what was happening. Even though I loved him, I had to choose between saving myself or trying to save him, and since he was determined not to seek help—either through therapy or medication—I left at the end of December.
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After the breakup, his reaction went through phases. First, he had what felt like an “attachment cry”—he was like a small child, crying desperately for a couple of days, promising love and change. I felt so guilty that I started questioning whether leaving was the right decision. But then, he suddenly shifted into a full smear campaign against me, completely discarded me, and erased me from his life.
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Later, I learned from a mutual friend that he had what seemed to be a psychotic episode. Over the last four weeks, he has self-published over 30 ebooks, writing about his delusions and trying to rationalize his mental state. He claims that a new world is emerging where logic is fluid, and thought has no rules. He now sees himself as a visionary, bending disciplines like psychology, philosophy, economics, computer science, and physics to fit his illusions. He believes he is solving physics paradoxes that real scientists have been working on for a century. He is posting about these ideas everywhere online, dismissing anyone who challenges him as “not ready” to understand.
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It’s heartbreaking to witness. This relationship already hurt me deeply, but this sudden turn into psychosis makes it even more confusing and disturbing. Looking back, I wonder if his smear campaign was actually paranoia. He was never actively manic while we were together, but he had grandiose ideas about changing the world—ideas he kept mostly to himself because he thought people wouldn’t understand. He never directly challenged them, but I wonder if that was already a mild form of psychosis.
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This is all incredibly difficult to process. I feel really sad. I don’t know if anyone here has had a similar experience or any insight into this. I’m not looking for a diagnosis, just perspectives.
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comments:
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- author: u/Lopsided_Scheme_4927
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timestamp: "Monday, March 3, 2025 at 11:24:23 AM CST"
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body: |
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I think it's a very good point! Our exes are not going to show any remorse for what they have done, even when mania ends. It’s hard to deal with that.
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- author: u/Lopsided_Scheme_4927
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timestamp: "Monday, March 3, 2025 at 11:59:11 AM CST"
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body: |
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In his family also they enable him. They are so ashamed to admit that he is mentally ill, that they prefer to patch up his financial and other disasters. And he’s so manipulative that when he’s not actively psychotic, he just twists reality around and if people are not very close they fall for his lies.
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