im sorry this seems like it causes u distress. i wish i could relate but i am rapid cycling so i really dont have patterns im up dwn up down many times a day. i think stable is when u feel baseline for a good majority of the time, but when the ups and downs come we know better how to keep it under control. you just have regular emotions mildy sad or slighty unpatient not severe like severly depressed or supper happy or super mad.
Right now that is wa i am working on. when i am on my meds i feel les ups and downs but when they are coming they are just as severe (I need to talk o my pdoc appt on the 12th april) its nothing emergant so I can wait. I need to learn how to handle these situations without blowing up. Right now I can Kind of realize when I am getting irritated, which before I couldnt really and it wouldnt be till the second I blew up and then its to late, an all out brawl has been started. Now that I am realizing the irritablity sooner I think I can work on how to handle different situations approperatley, I am going to ask my tdoc about that. Right now, after I blew up I took a Xanax to calm me down or the irritabilty would have been my attitude for the rest of the night, and more and more little things would start to build up again, and just make it worse. By doing this I think I calmed myself down and diffused the situation to keep it from domanioing thru the whole weekend. Good luck!!

Its good that you are learning how to tell when you are becoming irritable. I can usually tell whenever I am because everything seems to be moving very slow...too slow for me and I start getting short tempered over it...thats my tell tale sign.

I guess it takes a while to know what stable is then? Some episodes of up and down to know where your baseline is?

I'm in the same place as you are right now. I've been feeling pretty ok for the past 6-8 weeks. Short time in comparison to your years of being stable...but a long time in my world.

I'm just taking each day as it comes...doing all the things I normally wouldn't do (ie: cleaning, socializing, spending too much money)... but I don't know if I'm hypo or if this is really how I am.

I'm nervous about the potential crash, but the weeks are passing by and so far, so good.

I say just roll with it, as long as you're not being destructive in any way.

Let me give it my best shot.

I do not know, but I do believe that the only thing harder than finding a balance is keeping a balance. Your question reminds me to check my own balance between denial and conjecture. Yes, I have a serious dysfunction that has impaired my functional life. No, I cannot predict what tomorrow may hold. Being too prepared for one possibility only seems leave room to be blindsided by a reality I didn't have the foresight to predict.

My own definition of stable is pretty simple: I am able to live this day - open to my full range of human emotions - without hurting myself or anyone around me. I am able to keep the faith that tomorrow will take care of itself.

Its been so long since Ive been on an up and down...what you are saying is making sense...i still don't fully grasp it...guess I have to experience it and know...I feel like a newbie....when I was younger I didn't take my meds regular like I do now...I was more of a wild child and didn't really want to be stable or normal or whatever you want to call it, so this is a new experience fo rme to figure out who i am in the middle?

I really don't want my meds to flatline me. Maybe it is inevitable - for them to work properly. I enjoy the experience of feeling happy, sad - just a little - not too much. I think it's part of what makes us feel human. It frustrates me that the meds want to take that away. I want some room to FEEL.

I understand your confusion. A nice hypomania can feel so much like how I want to feel when stable.

Just watch the signs so it doesn't creep up get out of hand, but your are experienced.. you know that. ;)