How many episodes until realization?

Hey!

So, I had about three, maybe four manic episodes before I realized there was a problem. I burned my life down in my most recent one. The first one may have been hypomania? It may be five episodes.

There was some heavy spiritual context to all of my episodes. They involved romantic relationships as well, apart from two. My family tried to get me to see there was a problem but I was blind to the issue. I kept internally explaining away what was going on. It was like there was a complete mental block, which is what got me researching anosognosia, or the lack of insight.

My family cut me off after the most recent episode. I was awful to them, and the more they tried to get me to realize I was blowing up my life, the more angry and dismissive I got of their concerns. It wasn’t until I completely wrecked things and spent months dealing with the fallout… lost job, lost custody of daughter, technically homeless… that I finally realized there was a problem and got diagnosed.

I look back on things and I am like ‘why the hell couldn’t I see that I was out of my mind?’ My family thinks there is some personal culpability for not seeing things, but honestly it was like my brain could not process it. My prior episodes got pretty bad at times, like close to the brink bad, but I still couldn’t recognize the problem. It was only when I hit an absolute rock bottom that this shifted and I could see there was a problem.

I consider myself pretty intelligent, but this has made me reevaluate just how much of an idiot I am. I know anosognosia is not just simple denial and seems to have more organic causes, but I still feel like an idiot. My family thinks I am at fault for this failure but from my side of the fence I honestly couldn’t see the problem for what it was. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Not recognizing the problem in spite of worsening life problems until an unholy destructive episode that wrecked everything?