“That morning I had tried to write a letter…but when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right almost diagonally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and blown them askew. I knew I couldn’t send a letter like that, so I tore it up in little pieces.”
(Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar)
Sylvia Plath's Handwriting
In Sylvia Plath’s iconic semi-biographical novel The Bell Jar, she describes a time when she was physically unable to write. Historically, it was speculated that Plath suffered from major depressive disorder (MDD), but more recently it’s come to light that she was most likely bipolar. The main character of the book, Esther, had a high-achieving resume as a student and collected numerous accolades. However, during a prestigious internship program in New York City, she found herself crippled by both a strange apathy and a frenetic energy that rendered her sleepless. After dropping out of the program, she returned home with a frenzied drive to begin numerous projects, such as writing her thesis, becoming a potter’s apprentice, dropping out of school to be a waitress in Germany until she was fluent in German, writing a book about a lover she would someday have in Europe…
Yup, she was having a hypomanic or manic episode. After multiple unsuccessful suicide attempts, Esther was shuffled from inpatient facility to inpatient facility. Unfortunately at the time, her disorder was not well understood and treatment was insufficient. Even today we are still coming across new discoveries regarding bipolar disorders.
Handwriting to Predict Start and End of Manic Episode
One fascinating current piece of research found that changes in handwriting can be used to screen for bipolar disorders. The National Institutes of Health published a study this year on the motor skill deficiencies related to the neurological changes in bipolar individuals. This experiment showed that those experiencing a manic episode wrote more words with less or incorrect punctuation, left out spaces between words, pressed harder with their pens, and exhibited macrographia, or abnormally large letters. This was no longer true for the same individuals when in a healthier state. These changes were so distinct and severe that handwriting has become used to predict an oncoming manic episode or remission.
This all makes sense, doesn’t it? When your thoughts race and your adrenaline levels skyrocket, the words in your head hardly have spaces between them. There are no periods between sentences in your mind. In fact, your ideas seem to bloom and bubble and pile on top of each other into one huge, frothy mess. You suddenly want to sob about the bigness of life. OF COURSE your letters would balloon to match the size of your AWE and EXCITEMENT. With cortisol and serotonin racing through your veins, you grip your pen with the fervor of a sword. The rush of blood is so palpable that it bleeds through your pen, creating inky silhouettes that are as confident and grand as you. You can do anything. You can be anything. You are the embodiment of a motivation poster.
Looking back at my old journals, I see these changes in my own handwriting. I’ve kept diaries for fifteen years, and my letterforms range from neat to frantic. In fact, many of my writings (that I now understand were created during hypomanic upswings) were typed, not written. I believe this was my attempt to keep up with the volume of realizations and insights suddenly proliferating my brain. Imagine if your head was a bag of popcorn kernels abruptly stuffed into a feverish microwave. Picture all of those thoughts in your mind bursting and your head swelling until it seemingly overflows. You have no time to physically write all of these firefly fantasies! These popcorn revelations! And so you furiously type every darting idea into documents, notes, texts to your friends (with gifs to capture your flying visions!) until you’re spammed with notifications to upgrade your online cloud storage. But you also ignore this because YOUR THOUGHTS ARE STILL DASHING AHEAD of your pens, pencils, keyboards! And how are you going to fund your latest business venture, spontaneous solo trip, or higher education endeavors if you keep spending more on cloud storage every year?
And on and on you go…
Keep Writing Those Chaotic Words
Anyways. Perhaps you’ve noticed these discrepancies in your own handwriting and you now have a deeper understanding of your own tendencies. Maybe you are also a fan of Sylvia Plath’s work and gained even further appreciation for both her struggles and successes. Wherever you are in your journey of life, hopefully you learned something new or found pieces of this interesting. As always, the study referenced is cited at the bottom of the blog post, in case you would like to read more about that particular publication. Whoever you are, always stay curious about your own behaviors and the behaviors of those around you. And keep writing, abnormally large words or not.
Happy Writing,
BrainwaveBlog ❤️
P.S. One more quote from The Bell Jar that will probably resonate with my bipolar friends as much as it did for me:
“I would start babbling about how I couldn’t read and couldn’t write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.”
(Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar)
REFERENCES
Ayaz, Nusret et al. “The Use of Handwriting Changes for the Follow-up of Patients with Bipolar Disorder.” Noro psikiyatri arsivi vol. 59,1 3-9. 31 Jan. 2022, doi:10.29399/npa.27666
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.