Very Frustrated with my Bipolar cousin right now

[Neoma]

5. With bipolar, depression does lift.

Last edited Wed May 8, 2013, 04:13 PM - Edit history (1)

In fact, you can be content with neither up or down for a long while. It's just that you have roller coaster emotions. Medicine doesn't cure that, it just lessens the ups and downs. Unfortunately people with bipolar disease sometimes LOVE the highs. It feels better when you're bipolar I though, since bipolar I has more highs than lows and bipolar II has more lows than highs.

I'm bipolar II, but my main complaint, what got me to seek treatment, was the hypomanic attacks. Which can turn into either mania or depression, or at the same time. You're more suicidal in that state than any other. (At least, that is how it was discribed to me once.) But then again, they gave me the wrong diagnosis and they gave me a SSRI... Which made me 50x worse. Unfortunately since my diagnosis is based on when I reacted horribly to that medicine, I still question the diagnosis at times. And you also have to keep this in mind: depression isn't necessarily a permanent disease, but bipolar is. There's a definite, "I don't want this to define my life" to it, and there's horrible stereotypes attached to people who have bipolar. A lot of people don't want to even be associated with it.