kay redfield jameson's book 'an unquiet mind' or another one called
'bipolar for dummies' might be of help to you. otherwise i would say talk to your boyfriend and check out the board for friends and families of people with bipolar which i see you are a member of.

When I was doing research on bipolar, I Googled Bipolar Symptoms
I went to the Mayo Clinic site, they have lots of good info.

Depression is complex.
Some people exhibit classic social with drawl , some people sleep a lot, some people stop eating.

Good luck with your situation

I am bp1 and my last 2 highs, whilst some 10 years apart, are always followed by a deep depression. Even mild highs in the past are followed by depression. For me, the higher the high, then the lower the low.

What I go through, is what's the point of it all, lethargy, over sleeping, avoiding social contact, not enjoying hobbies - music for example, which I love and generally hiding away and then, of course, their is shame and guilt about ones behavior during the high times.

Many more symptoms I could list, but I guess you get the gist. (I am well now btw and learning to manage stability)

Thank you Irishwriter.
Dancingd I appreciate your response, it struck a cord.
Downbut and MissSunshyne I deeply appreciate your responses. I had a more clear picture and it has helped me understand even more what my loved one is going through. I feel asking someone that has gone through helps me better understand so I can empathize. This really helped.

I did not mean to offend anyone, I'm just curious and thank you very very much for your answers :)

My depression would be a deep, dark place in my mind. I would stop eating and lose lots of weight, become suicidal, sleep a lot, and when I finally started coming out of it I couldn't remember much of what happened during those months.

I found the depression after mania a true horror story; everyone else in the world saw living color but I only saw a black and white version.

Everyone else could feel a full palatte of emotion I could only feel sadness.

When I ate food whatever it was tasted like sawdust. All I ever wanted to do was sleep and I prayed I would never wake up! I could never imagine getting back to mania or regular life for that matter....I just wanted out.

It is a ver scary and dark place, and like someone on here said the higher the highs the lower the lows.
Ihave found that certain mania episodes caused worse lows then others though.
I have aprx 6-7 different mania/manic type episodes. my husband says its like rolling a dice, and he pretty much noticed it before I do.

there is the:
creative and extremly productive episode
the depressive counter part to this episode tends to be just extreme exhaustion, lack of creative thoughts and basically the polar opposite.

there is the extremly creative but all over the place/ not that productive and a lot of unfinished products episode:
the counterpart depression to this is a little darker it has the same as the other but with a darker sense of feeling bad about myself, I can't finish anything, why can't I ever complete anything, why am i such a failure at everything. are generally the circling scary thoughts

there is the super hero episode/extremly ocd cleaning/ so very productive. my husband calls it super hero because I will suddenly be able to move and do things that i normally can't. I will move furniture and boxes etc. this is mostly because these episodes cause me to not feel pain like i normally do, like adrenaline i have to accomplish it and i have to do it now. because i can't feel pain like normal, those things that normally make you do hey this hurts i should stop or slow down, i dont get.

so the depression counterpart:
is extreme exhaustion and lots of physical pain. the thoughts usually are not too dark after these because i feel like i accomplisehd alot and i am useful but like i need to recouperate

there is the super random ocd organizer mania/manic episode:
this is where some super random area will become very organized despite the rest the house in chaos. its generally pointless . like soup cans being very organized despite their being dishes in the sink.
or the cds being really organized despite an extremly messy living room. like its very micro and not macro cleaning.
the depressive counter part to this one:
me being very tired
dark thoughts like
why can't i?
how come i ?


the worse episodes come after these darker manic episodes:

increasedsexual desire:
while its only with my husband, or sometimes my wandering mind though not physically i will agree to things that i am not really ok with not at all,
these episodes cause some of the most dark and deep spirally episodes. I will hate myself, feel dirty, ashamed. I will want to kill myself, i get dark thoughts like whats wrong with me? why did i do that? i hate myself? they would be better off without me.

another dark manic type i get is spending money i dont have:
the depressive counter part of this almost identical to the sexual one only this one is worse and much darker as now i feel i have put my family in danger and its all my fault and if it werentfor me they wouldnt be here i this place. i feel scared that my husband will grow tired of me and leave me. i feel like if he never married me he would never be here. i feel scared alone exhauseted. in both of these i feel extreme social anxiety and i have a hard time being around people i feel they are seeing my awful thoughts that someone they know i am secretly this awful person etc.

the most severe though out of all of them comes after this manic episode:
the angry/frustrated/has no patience manic episode.
i lose my cool and and yell alot, i say the most awful hurtful things most i have no knowledge of saying it feel like when you drink too much and you wake up the next day in a mental fog trying to peice together what happened before.
this is the worst because i hurt loved ones with my words.
this one causes me to want to hurt myself to make myslef pay for hurting them. i am more likly to act on suicide or other self harm behaviors durning the counter depression episodes of this type.
my thougths will not stop going over and over. i see the hurt i caused this visual of hurting them
i can not stop crying, words jumble in my head over and over and over. i fear being left, i fear being alive, i fear dying i fear fear fear fear everything is this scary exhausting emotional blur. color fades, i eat drastically diffrent more/less
my sleep is contstantly shifting , im exhausted. i feel nautious, i almost always end up getting a cold from all the snot. from crying. its so hard to breath, hard to move. my fubromyalgia pain ii everntensifies, my heart hurts, my brain hurts sound is so different, things feel numb, i feel slower, my thoughts are diffeicult to process, i get thoughts like" how could i have , why , " " i can't believe i "" they would be so much better without me" I re hear every awful thing anyone has ever said to me, over and over and over again. every awful thing things i ever did, replays in my mind over and over...."maybe they really would be better if i" and it gets so hard for me to counter it. to self talk my way out, its easier to self talk my way out during every other episode counterpart, some how there feels like hope, but this kind of depressive episode feels very dark

now though i realize in a wierd way biploar is kind of a blessing,
in that i know the depression darkness can't last forever becasue i am bipolar it literally will at some point have to swing .
we try to limit mania as best we can, or to try to take that energy and find a positve release as much as we can, but sometimes it just goes where ever....

i really hope this was helpful it affects people differently.

Becky B, MayB and Sirsmiley 21 Thank You soooo much. My heart aches for you and anyone that has gone through the lows of bp. I feel that learning from someone's personal experience helps me so much more since my loved one won't tell me anything. You have helped me sooo much and have a deeper understanding of what my loved one is going through. I want to be the best person I can be toward him and I want to avoid doing things that might affect him negatively.From the bottom of my heart thank you.

Bedridden or lack of wanting to do things and energy. It can be an irritating feeling too. You will lose that inability to do everything and hibernate

I forgot the parenoia part. which for me can come with a really high or a really low.
sometimes I will worry about being poisoned, left, cheated on, like people are secretly out to get me. sometimes bipolar can have temporary episodes of psychosis . It doesn't help me that I have had actual abuse/ awful people experiences where people actually did do this to me and it wasn't just in my head.

things that help me :
understanding,
gratitude
reasurrence


oh i forgot i have had lows so low that just getting up to go to the bathroom felt like an exhausting event , like the 3-5 feet to the bathroom felt like a 3-5 k marathon run to me, to the point i have thought in my mind maybe i will just wet the bed...but then i think of all the work involed in cleaning up and decide that would be more work and end up using the bathroom. i have fallen asleep on the toilet and jolted awake when i have nearly fallen off when very depressed. sometimes when working to get better or ( forced) to shower and bath i have thought of just drwoning it all away.

sometimes the i will get such dark awful creepy wicked morbid thoughts when ill that i will think of killing myself torid the world of such a wicked person would do the world a service.
anyways

my husband encourages me to not worry about things like housework during my really dark times and just do things he knows are coping skills for me. like painting. singing, reading or whatever he knows has been a coping thing for me in the past. he usually lets a few days or whatever go by before he asks for anything knowing that overwhelming me in the beginning stages will often make me worse and cause me to sink further.

he says that he can often tell when i am getting sick because i have trouble forming words and getting sentences. and he sees frustration and exhaustion from me.

sometimes its simple things like making me a nest and hugging me

when i am sick asking me whats wrong is so tiring because i dont usually know whats wrong. so i would avoid that. knowing someone is there for me if i need to talk is always helpful when i can put my thoughts together.
not being judged. although i often think people are even if they are not so thats tricky.

sometimes hugs are helpful, but dont feel unloved if they dont want to hug you , as sometimes i feel so anxious and hugs can hurt like physically. sometimes when my anxiety is really bad my skin physically hurts. like everything feels like sandpaper rubbing against my skin.

sometimes inside it feels like in trapped in a cement room being filled with poison and im clawing my nails into cement trying to scrap my way out.

sometimes inside i feel like a kid jumping up and down on a bed with such excitement, and like this outer grown up side of me is trying to chase my inner around and be like no no no we dont jump on beds thats not normal.

i wrote a book called walking the great dane where i expalin alot of about what it feels like in a way that can help others grasp it.

sometimes there are all these triggers, and when i can spot them i can avoid them or whatnot sometimes i can't

to explain my emotions think of three scenarios one person is walking a great dane or a mastiff, one person is walking like a yellow lab, one person is walking a chihuahua.

tirggers are akin to say a cat or a squirrel that the dog you are walking sees.

the dogs are your emotions.

the leash is life.

the person walking the great dane or mastiff is like me, ( though since finding a better medicine its a little closer to the lab)
when the trigger is seen and the dog goes running its hard to pull that thing in, it just takes off and your pretty much just holding on for dear life and it is exhausting.

most people are like the one with the lab, it can be difficult but with hard work they can pull it in, though it may be difficult at first.

some people have Chihuahuas, there emotions rarely get extreme and can hold it in with great ease. often these people are the ones most judgemental they have the i can do it why can't you. they tend to think if we just didnt think about it then it would go away, they think oh its because you are lazy, or you just dont want to or whatever.

another example:
most people emotions are on a 1-10 scale.
bipolar people have a 1-100 scale
with correct meds and hard work my scale ranges closer to
20-80, or 30-70. but still wider than most.


other things that help:
" i would really miss you if you were gone"


this is all over the place sorry for that , i haven't been the greatest lately.

also i know its really hard, but try really hard to not take it personally, know that depressive episodes can not last forever in a bipolar person, other wise they would not be bipolar.
i have rapid cyclin apid cycling moments where i have cycled between despair to euphoiria 10 times in 5 minutes. which is really really exhausing and hard to watch apparently. laughing crying laughing crying etc.


while it is imporatant to be there for your loved one, do not put yourself in danger as i do not know what kind of cycles your loved one has. if your loved one gets dangerous during a cycle you will need them to go into a hospital to get proper medical support and treatment. at the time this may be upsetting, for me when i get better i ually understand and am thankful for it.

I would just like to add a word about anti-depressants in case your bf is on these. They do not work for everybody. They do not even touch the sides for me and I have tried many different types over time. The depressive side of my BP can last up to 3 years with or without anti-depressants.