Just found out I'm bipolar, anyone else relate?

A good friend of mine with bipolar 1 met me right before I was hospitalized and he totally called it, not necessarily that it was BP but he related so much to me it scared him. He also called the schizo before I did.

I was diagnosed at 17 im 23 now i understand im bipolar too

I can absolutely relate. I was diagnosed officially a few weeks ago, but was first diagnosed as a kid. My parents knew, some of my friends started asking if I had bipolar disorder and it was a huge shock but looking into it, made so much sense.

There's also cyclothymia, which is like a milder case of bipolar. My daughter was diagnosed with it when she was little. I remember when I was 16 and diagnosed with major depression and I found a pamphlet about bipolar disorder in My med providers office. It had a check list of ten signs that you might have bipolar. I immediately checked off eight of the ten signs and showed it to my doc. Because I was still an adolescent, he was not comfortable diagnosing me with bipolar and I didn't get a correct diagnosis until I switched providers at 19 yrs old. If you think you may have bipolar disorder, plz seek professional help. It can make a big difference in your life. With the right meds and counseling, mood stabilization is possible. I've spent most of my life unstable so when I have experienced stability, it's felt weird and hard to acknowledge at first. It had led me to be able to experience and accomplish things in my life that would have been difficult to achieve without stability and mood management. I wish you luck and good things in your future!

Also if you can get an accurate diagnosis (which can be really hard especially for bipolar since the behaviors are similar to some other mental health issues/diagnosis), then you’ll have a much easier time actually figuring out what could actually be helpful vs harmful for you to manage and function optimally and reduce the pain of a lot of trial and error. Diagnosis is supposed to help you manage so if it’s setting you off, I’d urge you to take it with a grain of salt and focus on improving your overall mental health, coping skills, and communication. But good news is it can be managed and it sounds like you’re one step closer to figuring out how. As to your experience you lived with this and function for this long and it probably seems normal until someone is like whoah that’s how your brain works or someone close has a diagnoses and realize your very similar. I’m diagnosed with bipolar but recently been learning about ADHD because my sister has it and a hard time functioning. The more I’ve learned about it the more I realized I may possibly have that and the coping skills for ADHD have really helped me since learning about them. I talked to my therapist and psychiatrist about it and they both told me I definitely have signs of ADHD as well so Im getting me tested to see if we can come up with a better treatment plan. Apparently bipolar and ADHD are closely related and can even overlap together. If I had known that years ago and implemented different strategies I feel like I could’ve saved myself so much emotional anguish and fatigue. So definitely recommend seeking professional help.

You should definitely get a psych eval, if you do get an official diagnoses you’ll be able to get medication that’ll help you.

Bipolar has bipolar 1, bipolar 2, & rapid cycling. How many manias a year & style of them determines what Drs call it.