Am I bipolar?
My doctor diagnosed me with bipolar disorder but I’m unsure about it. Sometimes I think I’m bipolar but sometimes I feel like I’m normal. I’ve had episodes of depression and mania but I’m still not sure about it. All of my episodes had a reason behind them, they weren’t triggered without a reason. For instance, in my manic episode, I was on a spending spree but it was the first time I was living on my own and had moved away from my family, so I probably wasn’t good at managing money, it wasn’t mania. Then again, in my manic episode, I started to hate my old friends and started socializing with new people. I lied a lot, took my best friend’s girlfriend away from him and drank a lot. I’ve felt suicidal lots of times, I’ve tried to kill myself. I sometimes feel worthless and hopeless but that’s cause I failed to graduate from high school, not because I was depressive.
I don’t fit in the kind of environment I’m living in and I know that I’ll never be able to leave, that’s another reason for depression. I’ve very few friends and I usually don’t get along with people, I’ve always thought I’m different from the kind of people I’m living with. But I somehow got along with everybody in my ‘manic phase’. I don’t have any history of mental illness in my family. So, could I be bipolar? What do you think? – Anonymous
Answer:
I can only give you some very limited advice on this topic since I am not counseling you but many people come in with this very question. The truth is it takes a bit to rule it out. Most clinicians will do a full audit of your history of trauma and other potential factors. They may also suggest that you see a physician to make sure that you have had a physical recently to ensure it isn’t a thyroid issue or something else along those lines. When you say you don’t have a family history of bipolar, it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t hidden away somewhere in your family as it does tend to be pretty common, especially in really bright families. Just because someone wasn’t diagnosed doesn’t mean it isn’t present. Bipolar and the way it looks tend to really range as there are a number of different subtypes. If you did have it in your family, it only means you are 30% more likely to have it. Anyway, the focus is on collecting a broad spectrum of data. Mood charts can be helpful for you to try and keep track of the up’s and down’s. If you have a past incidence of suicidal thoughts, I would definitely suggest you find a therapist you trust and think about getting a good psychiatrist too if you don’t already have one. They can help you to study what is going on with this as they have a trained eye. Again, find someone you trust.
What tends to be tricky for most people with bipolar is they love the mania and hate the depression. The mania feels amazing and tends to be blinding as people will do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do like cheat on a spouse, come to work drunk, spend lots of money that they don’t really have to spend. I would take a look at the quiz below and the symptoms. I would also download an app to track your moods like Optimism online or T2. If you wanted my off the cuff opinion as to if you have bipolar I would say a couple things:
1) You need to test this hypothesis and believe in the results.
2) From what you are saying, as a clinician, I would take some time to evaluate thoroughly what’s going on as trauma and attachment injuries can also present like bipolar. Besides, a diagnosis is just a cluster of symptoms and I don’t think it’s helpful to over-identify with any illness. The better thing is to understand what helps you to get better in a strengths-based way. Sometimes this includes medications, but it’s helpful to note that it’s not only the medications that make us better, is a whole cluster of changes that we make that help us to cope in our crazy world.
3) Tests:
http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/bipolarquiz.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/bipolar-disorder/DS00356/DSECTION=tests-and-diagnosis
I hope this helps.
William Schroeder, MA, LPC, NCC
Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash
