Definitely on talking to your doc! (But we all know we should do that lol) It does sound like there is a lot of overlap between the two conditions and I hope you can sort it out.

My docs never figured out my BD - I spent 25 years thinking I was normal albeit maladjusted, then 2 years ago was looking at the experiences of real people with BD (not the DSM) and saw an absolute correlation in myself and everything I go/had gone through. It was a total Ah Ha moment for a set of symptoms with no sense or pattern to them. Maybe asking those in the BPD forum how they knew they had it would help you discern whether you might as well.

A lot of pdocs won't use 'labels' now as they treat symptoms as opposed to a specific disorder

Would you be comfortable sharing what you mean by a bad past?

I just asked this same question to my counselor of now 4 years because thought I displayed some BPD and narcissistic traits too. My mom is BPD - absolutely 100% and now has some early dementia too. I've also read about alleged "comorbidity" of these personality disorders and bipolar disorder.

But my counselor said she is absolutely certain I am just bipolar. I think bipolars can appear to display a lot of symptoms when we're manic that look like we have BPD or NPD. She said (and she's the best counselor I've ever had, by far) personality disorders are very different from mood disorders and actual cases of true comorbidity are rare.

Basically people with BPD and/or NPD are like that all the time. That's just the way they are. It's ingrained in their 'personality'. For example, they can be depressed too, but they will always display the same symptoms/traits whatever mood they're in. That's the difference. As we all know, our symptoms vary greatly depending on our moods up or down.

And I can tell you from first hand experience with my mother with BPD that this is absolutely true. I have almost 5 decades of observations to base that opinion on, which is exactly why I describe my childhood in two words: ANXIETY and STRESS.

Also it can be extremely difficult to see clearly how the symptoms of BD, as they are written in the DSM's and other sources online, manifest and display in each individual. I was majorly confused at first and searched forever until I came across one description of himself from a guy in Australia. That's when it all started to make sense.

Can't say how correct this is - like others I'd recommend discussing this with your doctor.

Long read ahead

"Borderline vs Bipolar

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201003/three-easy-ways-differentiate-bipolar-and-borderline-disorders

Three Easy Ways to Differentiate Bipolar and Borderline Disorders
Bipolar or Borderline? A widely-used diagnostic is getting it wrong.
Published on March 25, 2010 by Randi Kreger in Stop Walking on Eggshells

While bipolar disorder (formerly manic depression) and borderline personality disorders share some clinical features-primarily unstable moods and impulsive actions--they are two different diagnoses with different treatments (although psychiatrists may use medications to treat BPD as well as bipolar). They're even categorized differently in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR). Bipolar is grouped in Axis I, clinical syndromes, and BPD is parked squarely in Axis II, personality (at least for now).
Yet that doesn't keep them from getting confused. Anecdotally, many family members tell me their loved one has been diagnosed with bipolar by a clinician when it appears to them that borderline personality disorder as described in the DSM-IV-TR seems to be a much better fit.
Now we've learned there may be more to this than a simple confusion.
A study from Rhode Island Hospital has shown that a widely-used screening tool for bipolar disorder may incorrectly indicate borderline personality disorder rather than bipolar disorder.
In the article that appears online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the researchers question the effectiveness of the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ). The MDQ is the most widely-used and studied screening tool for bipolar disorder. It is a brief questionnaire that assesses whether a patient displays some of the characteristic behaviors of bipolar disorder.
The research team interviewed nearly 500 patients using the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) and the Structured Interview for DSM-IV for personality disorders. The patients were also asked to complete the MDQ.
The research team then scored the questionnaires and found that patients with a positive indication for bipolar disorder using the MDQ were as likely to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as bipolar disorder when using the structured clinical interview.
Further, their findings indicate that borderline personality disorder was four times more frequently diagnosed in the group who screened positive on the MDQ.
Principal investigator Mark Zimmerman, MD, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, says that these findings raise caution for using the MDQ in clinical practice because of how differently the disorders are treated. (You can find more info here: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/l-iir032510.php)
BPD and bipolar are often misdiagnosed as each other. Some people diagnosed with BPD actually have bipolar; the reverse is also true.
While only a qualified clinician can make a diagnosis of one or the other (or if both are present) there are three simple ways to distinguish bipolar disorder from borderline personality disorder.
Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between. Severe changes in energy and behavior go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs and lows are called episodes of mania and depression.
A cycle is the period of time it takes for a person to go through one episode of mania and one of depression. The frequency and duration of these cycles vary from person to person, from once every five years to once every three months. People with a subtype of bipolar (rapid--cycling bipolar) may cycle more quickly, but much less quickly than people with BPD (shifts can even last minutes/seconds).
According to Dr. Friedel, director of the BPD program at Virginia Commonwealth University, there are two main differences between BPD and bipolar disorder:
1. People with BPD cycle much more quickly, often several times a day.
2. The moods in people with BPD are more dependent, either positively or negatively, on what's going on in their life at the moment. Anything that might smack of abandonment (however far fetched) is a major trigger.
3. In people with BPD, the mood swings are more distinct. Marsha M. Linehan, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that while people with bipolar disorder swing between all-¬encompassing periods of mania and major depression, the mood swings typical in BPD are more specific. She says, "You have fear going up and down, sadness going up and down, anger up and down, disgust up and down, and love up and down."

Randi Kreger
Author, "The Essential Family Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder: New Tips and Tools to Stop Walking on Eggshells"
(Available at www.BPDCentral.com)

Thank you for your very informative comment acuriousfish! I will definitely have a conversation with my doctor about my concerns about this! After reading that I feel more certain it’s just bipolar 2 but it can’t hurt to check and be sure.

I am assuming BPD is borderline personality disorder but you want to hear another possibility.... Hormone imbalance... yep that's right. If your looking into alternative diagnosis go see an endocrinologist.

I did this after doing research into my family and found out most of the men on dads side suffer from hypogonadism meaning we don't produce as much testosterone as nomal men.

When i was twenty three-ish i started having major mood swings and was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder by a psychiatrist. Year after year treatments didn't work for me and they threw more and more meds at me. Eventually my marriage failed and i lost everything so i got even more depressed. The doctors even wanted to install a computer in my shoulder to shock my brain every 30 seconds (VNS stimulator)... at that point i started looking for alternative diagnosis.

I had to go to 4 doctors before someone would run a simple Testosterone level test on me and that doctor did it to just shut me up. Lo and behold i was producing about 59 when the normal range was 250 ~ 850 (or 1100 depending on which lab did the test). I started the testosterone treatment and within weeks i was having major side effects with the psyc meds so i started tapering off them and seeing if i even needed them. I felt beter without them so i continued dropping them.

long story somewhat shorter i am off all psyc meds, completed a 4 year bachelors and am back to work after being disabled for 13 years due to a wrong diagnosis.

So explore all options and though they are doctors they may not look at all angles. I found a paper in which a psychiatrist now sends ALL of his patients to an endo doc prior to treatment because he found a whopping 33 percent (yes 1/3) actually had hormone problems that were easily fixed. like me they were never bipolar. Look at all options and try to see what is right for you though. I am NOT saying psychiatry isn't important but getting a second opinion IS important. there is nothing wrong with more eyes on your case.