Most people love mania and hate depression. They wish they could be a little bit manic all the time and never have to be depressed ever again. Jennifer is the opposite, which is what makes her charts so interesting. They look similar to a mania chart for someone in Managed Stage, but her explanations are much different from what you might expect from the graphs.

Jennifer knows from a lifetime of experience that mania is temporary, so she has patience with it even though she really does not like even low mania. She has had episodes ever since she was a little kid; twice a year until her twenties, but it escalated in both intensity and frequency (six or seven times a year) after taking a trip to India when she was 33.

She says it escalated because of increased awareness and acceptance of it as a result of yoga practices she learned. She also had fewer distractions that made it easier to pay attention to her internal world. "If I don't get wrapped up in it the perception of it changes. It becomes just a part of the experience until it gets too intense and spirals out of control."

Jennifer's high mania chart shows an increase in awareness and understanding compared to the "average" functionality graph for someone in Managed Stage. She also functions better and is more comfortable while in it. Her present value is as minimal as most, but the insights she has gained from it makes her feel a greater past value compared to most.

The Low Mania graph is almost a comfort zone graph except it is slightly lower in functionality, which leads her to feel that her understanding could be better too.When in Low Mania, she gets a lot done and is very comfortable with it as a whole. This makes the Specific Functionality Graphs even more interesting because the Emotional and Social graphs look completely different

Physical Mania

Jennifer's Physical Mania Chart highlights her enhanced awareness and understanding, especially when looking at High Mania. Because of Yoga, Dance, and other body awareness disciplines, she finds the physical aspects much easier to notice just like she does with Physical Depression. Her Yoga and meditation practices give her the ability to sit with it and see it as a condition that visits the body instead of as an illness. It has helped her to change her relationship to physical pain.

Jennifer's Physical Mania Chart highlights her enhanced awareness and understanding, especially when looking at High Mania. Because of Yoga, Dance, and other body awareness disciplines, she finds the physical aspects much easier to notice just like she does with Physical Depression. Her Yoga and meditation practices give her the ability to sit with it and see it as a condition that visits the body instead of as an illness. It has helped her to change her relationship to physical pain.

Mental Mania

Jennifer's Low Mental Mania Chart looks very much like a Comfort Zone Chart. Her awareness score is low, but that could be a result of the instructions saying that your lowest mania that you are aware of means that you are barely aware of it. In discussing the awareness, she says she is very aware of Mental Mania at forty and even down to twenty, but was unclear in doing the graphs that it should be the same intensity as the General Mania Graph.

When mania gets really high, Jennifer just shuts down. She allows it to spiral out of control, begins to hear voices and have visual hallucinations, goes into a full panic, and tries to self-medicate to stop it. This only makes it worse and creates a kind of mind-fuck conflict between what she knows and how she is responding.

Comparing the High Mental Mania Graph to the General Mania Graph, it is partly the mental aspects that hold down understanding, functionality, comfort, and even value. It is clear that learning to recognize mental mania sooner is not the issue. What needs to happen is a complete avoidance of very high states while deciding whether there is any value in being able to expand her comfort zone any higher than forty. Many people decide that forty is where they want to be and see no reason to have states beyond that.

Emotional Mania

The contrast between Emotional Depression and Emotional Mania could not be more stark. Jennifer is comfortable with Emotional Depression and is in Self-Mastery during even the deepest states. Emotional Mania is the opposite; she hates being there even in her lowest states and her graphs shows that it, along with the social aspect, is a major problem.

As you can see in the Emotional Mania Graph, Jennifer's High Mania follows the normal path, but the Low Mania takes a dive across the board. She is able to function somewhat, but she does not like it at all. It feel like being on speed and it causes a total panic in her. She has a hard time breathing calmly and fears she will have a heart attack.

The physical sensations by themselves are not an issue as shown in the Physical Mania Graph, but they trigger an emotional response. She becomes hopeless, feels out of control, and is in emotional turmoil. She feels like she has to turn it off right away because there is a feeling of not being able to stand it for another second.

When Jennifer was a teenager she tried to turn it off by cutting, but as she got older her attempts gravitated toward self-medicating with alcohol. She would drink excessively to the point of a blackout. she handles it much better now, but still feels like it will become overwhelming any minute.

Spiritual Mania

Jennifer's Spiritual Mania follows a predictable pattern that is repeated in many of her graphs, but is dramatically different from her Spiritual Depression Graph. While in complete self-mastery during depression, she loses control substantially at about a sixty intensity. She is fairly high functioning during low spiritual mania because it triggers feelings of oneness in her. This oneness feeling even holds somewhat into high mania and helps her to feel more functional and comfortable even during intense episodes.

The trouble with High Spiritual Mania comes when the feelings of oneness with the divine starts turning into a feeling of not being worthy. She then self-sabotages and starts using pills and alcohol to turn it off.

When asked why her past value is so much higher than most, but not the present value, Jennifer says "I feel special to be able to have such experiences and to still be alive to talk about it after what I do to sabotage it." That sense of specialness and connection to the divine plays a major role in Spiritual Depression too, but it is not conflicted as it is in mania. Spiritual Mania could be just as highly rated if it was not sabotaged by the intense conflicts caused by the emotional turmoil.

Social Mania

Jennifer feels socially inept in both high and low mania. She doesn't trust herself at all and is constantly afraid she will do something stupid. Based on past experience there is cause to feel that way. These feelings are also present in Social Depression, but not nearly as much. This is reflected in the differences in the depression and mania social graphs.

Mania makes Jennifer highly uncomfortable in all aspects, but especially socially. She hides from others by isolating when out or by staying home. Although when looking back on past episodes she can see that she does function in acceptable ways, during mania the fear becomes overwhelming and she feels crippled by it.

Career/Financial Mania

It is understandable that High Mania destroys Jennifer's career and financial life, it is somewhat surprising to see that she actually functions very well when the mania is low. Her answers illustrate why simply putting points on a graph is a disservice without including a discussion about why the points were chosen.

In low mania Jennifer "gets shit done." Her confidence improves and she is even more sociable at work. This is in complete conflict with her social mania graph, so her reasoning is especially informative: "Work is pretend life and I am simply playing a role there. It has no meaning outside of earning a living, so there is a huge difference between work and social life. I don't really care what people think at work."

During High Mania all of the benefits of low mania disappear. Jennifer becomes self-conscious and paranoid. She can't work at all if the mania comes while there and does not show up at all if she is highly manic. This is especially the case when her social anxiety is triggered by high social mania.

Analysis

If you compare Jennifer's General Functionality Mania Graph (left) with the generic Managed Stage one (right), she is much more normal than in her depression graphs. Her specific graphs do not swing as wildly between them either. Overall, it is a fairly predictable pattern based on what we learned from the Depression Graphs, with a couple of glaring exceptions. Her issues remain concentrated in the social and career realms, but her emotional and spiritual responses to both high and low intensity is nearly the opposite of her reactions while in depression.

Specific Mania Functionality Assessments

Concepts

Depression Exercises

Mania Exercises