Definately yes. But with time and education, and therapy I have learned better about who I am and where the illness ends.

With me, my Illness and I are one in the same. My moraility is somthing differant that helpes me keep myself in check.
If i did not have that the people around me would have not servived.

Don't like that response at all. I was talking to my x sister inlaw the other night and told her I was on Lithium for my BP. She said Oh I could have told you that you were BP years ago, you were really a moody handful. FU She is one of the biggest wackos around no one even answers the phone any more when she calls it's like a family understanding. PPL are rude and stupid sometimes.

Agree with Lilly..I am what I am (says popeye). It includes BP disorder.

Yeah my pdoc said, he thinks its my personality, i make myself feel this way. oh i didn't know i did. well the joke really is on me. every other pdoc i'd ever seen told me i was bipolar. i guess this one's smarter then the average bear. omg i'm not really bp i just act this way because i want to. can't believe he said this to me. cry,cry,cry. i'm so confused.

tedi...you might want to join my thread about punchin our pdoc in the face. Seems we both have stupid pdocs!

I was HYPOMANIC ,my entire life.Always on the go...needed a job done fast?I was your woman.Needed to move out of your apartment in 24 hours?Needed a house painted...dinner party for 12..always smileing ,always the happy that I was alive and there were adventures in everyday things.

Then in my late 40's ,things started to unravel,I wasn't so energized,I wasn't so happy...I lost interest in most everything.Then came a series of trajic events,and I slowly at first..then plunged into a phycotic depression.It was my first episode of that magnatude.....been up and down and dancing around those poles since then(several years)..
So am I bipolar...or is bipolar me?

I really can't answer that questian.


The diabetic ,is not their disease,(they had normal blood levels at one time) the cancer patient is not their disease(they had normal celluar growth at one time)...but bipolar....since it all has to do with wacked chem imbalances(probabaly starting in our youth)who knows?

number 5... mine said that to me to.

It honestly never occurred to me that I was bipolar. I was on anti depressants for 3 years before my divorce for clinical depression and the divorce sent me to the hospital with first S episode. Wasn't diagnosed with BP until 45 years old and I'm 54 now. It was staring me in the face, I just thought I was moody.

Me too bbipolar, I thought it was all my quirky personality except the depression...that I recognized as seriously "abnormal".

Yeah well I am just F'ed up. That simple There is even something wrong with my underlying personality!!!!

Tell me why I even bother again?!?!?

Because you are great just the way you are.

On a related side-note I find mood stabilzers destroy my "personality". I have had difficulties with almost all classes of them. Having gone on and off so many I can clearly see the difference. On them I often have "flattened affect" ie: it feels like I have no personality cause frankly I don't have any moods. Still looking for that magic cocktail that allows me some mental stability without destroying the pleasure in life along with the pain.

I've always had this problem and probably always will. It's hard to tell who is me and what is the Bipolarness in me.

I feel I have lost who I am unless I am one on one with a person I know. That sounds weird but I know what I mean.