1.2 The psychology of emotions, feelings and thoughts {adv}  (Page 19/74)

There are two degrees of change in emotion however; one is a major change from depression to mania (which is what bipolar is). Another is just your ordinary change from sad to happy, which can occur many times in a day. So if someone is manic or depressed are they being more emotional than someone who is just happy or just sad? [Emotional in a different way.]

Symptoms of mania ("The highs"):

• Excessive happiness, hopefulness, and excitement
• Sudden changes from being joyful to being irritable, angry, and hostile
• Restlessness
• Rapid speech and poor concentration
• Increased energy and less need for sleep
• High sex drive
• Tendency to make grand and unattainable plans
• Tendency to show poor judgment, such as deciding to quit a job
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Increased impulsivity

The symptoms of bipolar depression are the same as those of major depression and include:

• Sadness
• Loss of energy
• Feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness
• Loss of enjoyment from things that were once pleasurable
• Difficulty concentrating
• Uncontrollable crying
• Difficulty making decisions
• Irritability
• Increased need for sleep
• Insomnia or excessive sleep
• A change in appetite causing weight loss or gain
• Thoughts of death or suicide
• Attempting suicide

I don’t think that people with the two extremes of mania and depression are any more emotional than people who are just happy or sad. That is because being too happy or too sad shuts off the other emotions people would experience like anger, fear, disgust, surprise, acceptance, and curiosity. Why does it? Because with all the other symptoms of mania and depression, there isn’t really any room left for emotions other than happy and sad, a person’s system can only handle so much emotion. If you are crying all the time (like you would if you were severely depressed) there isn’t any more room for you to experience other emotions. Or if you are as happy as you can be, you’re probably too out of it (in your happy land) to think about anything else. [That ties into previously discussed how you can only feel a few feelings at once, pay attention to a few things at once, and not think a lot and feel a lot at the same time.]

A person could be happy or sad and be less emotional than someone with mania or depression, however. But a person (if they were experiencing the other emotions other than happy and sad) could be just as emotional as someone with mania or depression. Although those people may be crying or have expressions of extreme glee on their faces, happy and sad are not the only emotions someone can experience and therefore they may not be as emotional. [Someone is so happy when they are manic, that it might not be like an emotion entirely, but more like a thought/emotion because you are so focused on the happiness that it is like you are thinking about it (remember we defined thought as a period of high attention).]

Emotion means that you are feeling something; if you are feeling emotions other than happy and sad, then wouldn’t the other emotions (if they were positive) increase the happy emotion and you then have a happy emotion that is larger than the other positive emotions you are experiencing? I guess that would be happy, but it would probably lead to overload. That is why it makes sense that people who are emotional experience a range of emotions from happy to sad ones, so that if they just experienced happy ones it would lead to too much happiness causing overload. [Remember there isn't just the few basic emotions, but there is a variation of each emotion based on the circumstance. In each circumstance there is going to be a different emotion because something happened that was different. The emotion is based off of the real experience, if you are worried in one situation, that worry is going to be different in another situation (but both are still the emotion worry). That shows how you can be very emotional without the emotions happy and sad.]