When I was first diagnosed I told my pdoc I don't remember any specific mania, but I do remember times when I was really off the wall hyper. I guess it's that whole "Life of the party" thing, when I was in my late teens. I mean, I thought I was the life of the party, but really I was that extremely hyper girl bouncing off all the walls. And it wouldn't end when the party ended, then I would crash days later. She said that was probably mania, but can't say for sure. Then she said to have a bipolar dx you only need to have had one episode of mania ever, even if you never have another one, which I thought was odd.

Bipolar is actually a physical illness causes by biochemical imbalances in the brain and nervous system. Sadly, although science knows this, they don't have any testing for it yet. Like diabetes is a biochemical imbalance of the digestive system, and they have physical tests for it with blood and urine. But so far that's not so for bipolar, depression, and schizophrenia. But they are working on it. But because of it, bipolar does respond to meds, although everyone responds differently to different meds.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a personality disorder, but there is talk that it may have genetic features as well. No meds but therapy helps. There is no cure for either bipolar or BPD. And bipolar and BPD mimic each other. Actually a lot of things do mimic bipolar, including ADD, which is what can make it so hard to diagnose.

Best thing is to keep a mood tracker and watch out for triggers. Learning to observe yourself and getting the observation of others on your behavior is really helpful.