what made you realize you might be bipolar?
to preface, im f18 and only found out like, a few weeks ago. i never even considered bipolar 2 until recently, but it was due to an interaction i had with a friend where she described my mood like a “switch being flipped.”
im diagnosed with ocd, adhd and bpd, so the adhd/bpd combo made me believe i was just having mood swings due to the bpd, and the hypomania was an adhd thing LOL.
when my friend said that, it made me think. i was super down just a few days before so i questioned why I randomly had so much energy. so, i started retracing all my behaviors from when i first had a depressive episode (13) and it all started to make sense:
The long weeks of depression where everything seemed so hopeless, the horrible reaction to ssri’s, the random bursts of energy for a few days, the weirdly positive social media posts where id spam like crazy and text EVERYONE, the extreme agitation, the phases where id do things that were extremely out of character - I started to piece it together. its crazy because i thought me experiencing high energy was just how “normal” was supposed to feel so i never reported it to my psychiatrist. so i was misdiagnosed and put on an ssri, the next day my world changed. everything seemed so different, life felt worth living and my whole world was more colorful. i was so happy i wanted to explode. I thought this meant my depression was gone, however, now I realize it triggered a hypomanic episode and now im experiencing rapid cycling while on a low dose of a mood stabilizer. :,)
honestly realizing was kind of scary but it’s brought so much comfort knowing that theres an actual reason for this and im not alone. i thought i just had major depressive disorder and/or a health issue due to being fatigued
it’s so debilitating to live like this and not even know why, so now I feel at peace knowing that i might have a future where I can function properly :>