Have you ever lost time? If you’re living with bipolar disorder, it’s a symptom you probably know all too well.

This isn’t the happy type of losing time, like when you’re on a first date and melt into a conversation that lasts until dawn.

No, losing time with bipolar disorder is more like being blackout drunk. Minutes, hours, and days disappear, and you often have little or no memory of the missing time.

There are two phases of bipolar disorder I still find frustrating after 30 years of treatment. The first one is what I like to call bipolar blur.

Bipolar blur is the days when you’re aware of the world around you, but everything is a swirling haze. You know what’s happening, but feel disconnected from it all.

The second is losing time. Segments of time disappear as if they never happened. It’s like an alien invader took over your body.

Losing time is upsetting because it’s so disorienting. It made me doubt reality when time evaporated. What’s real when pieces of your world can just vanish?

Before and early diagnosis

The worst experiences I had with losing time were well before my initial bipolar disorder diagnosis. I often found myself driving down roads, unsure of how I got there.

A few times, I snapped back to the present at a friend’s house, unaware of what day it was or the time of day. The minutes before were completely gone.

As bad as losing time is, the worst part is knowing you were active during the missing period. Everyone else remembers what you did, so you never know if you should be proud or beg for forgiveness.

My tendency to lose time led one psychiatrist to try to diagnose me with a dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

The problem with her theory was I didn’t have multiple personalities. I was always me, whether I remembered it or not. Time was just missing from my memory bank.

Now while stable

The longer I’ve been stable, the less frequently I lose time, but a few weeks ago, it happened again.

I’m the type of person who has everything scheduled on my phone calendar. Yep, everything. When I have a significant event coming up, I also schedule notifications, usually a few days before, the day before, and then an hour before.

With three notifications scheduled clearly on my calendar, you would think I would never miss anything, but I did. It was an important meeting, and one where I was supposed to have a part. When I got the message asking where I was, I pulled up my calendar, and there it was, plain as day.

Not only did I forget I was supposed to present information, I failed to show up at all. Staring at the message on my phone, I felt my stomach drop to the floor. I never miss things. The weight was like a house dropping from the sky on top of me.

A friend covered for me and was very understanding, but I still felt awful. I had let down everyone at the meeting.

Links and triggers

For years, I’ve tried to understand what causes me to lose time. In all my journaling and searching for trends, I’ve never found a common denominator.

This time, I’m sure it was tied to losing our dog Peanut just a few days before. Peanut was my dad’s dog, so having him die brought all the grief for my dad back to the surface. I can only imagine my overwhelmed mind shut down to protect itself.

I appreciate the effort, but a little warning would have been nice.

Many of my experiences with losing time have no connection to anything else in my life. Good days, bad day, and meh days, it didn’t matter. Occasionally, my brain goes on vacation and takes my memory with it.

I feel like losing time with bipolar disorder happens more often when I’m stressed, but I have no data to support that belief. Probably, there’s some alien on a far-away planet with a switch in their livingroom that they’re unsure what it controls. From time to time, they flip the switch just to see what happens, and my brain responds by taking a nap.

I believe sticking to healthy habits is helpful. The more I do the right things, like taking my meds, getting enough sleep, and eating nutritious foods, the better I do. But sometimes, time still disappears for no reason at all.

Do you lose time? Have you ever noticed a link or trigger connected with it? How do you manage it? I would love to hear about your experiences.

Announcement

The new format for the Speaking Bipolar Positivity Club starts tomorrow with posts coming out every weekday. I look forward to seeing you there.

Update

I know some of you are panicking, fearing I will crash and burn from starting a new schedule during tax season. Rest assured, this was not a bipolar decision. I’ve been writing this content for a few months. The plan was to go live on January 1, but I couldn’t get everything ready in time.

Reader, I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you for supporting Speaking Bipolar and my newsletters.

Until next time, keep fighting.

Scott Ninneman

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I publish two newsletters each week. The Sunday All Things Bipolar Newsletter (this newsletter) features the newest content about bipolar life. The Speaking Bipolar Positivity Club Newsletter shares inspirational stories to help you maintain a positive mindset.

Additional Reading:

• ​Day 2 in a Psychiatric Hospital: Adjusting to a New Reality​
• ​Embracing Change With Bipolar Disorder​
• ​Use Determination as Your Strength To Move Forward​​
• ​Archive Newsletters​