Sorry to hear you're struggling right now. It sounds like you have a very attentive pdoc, so that's a good start to getting things sorted out. The problem with psych diagnosis is that it's really not an exact science. There are no laboratory tests that give you the threshold of "normal" vs "illness", and the guides the pdocs have are fairly limited in their scope. They're revising the guide the US docs use (DSM), but I'm not sure when the last ICD revision was. They've learned so much more about bipolar disorders and how we don't all fit the nice symptom lists in the books.

That being said, my husband just went through a similar process as you are going through. He was ultimately diagnosed with "bipolar spectrum disorder" or "soft bipolar" - essentially "Bipolar NOS" in the DSM listing. I have Bipolar I, so our illnesses look very different, but it's still there for him. There's a website we found helpful that helped explain a lot of what he was experiencing. It's written by an American pdoc who runs a mood disorder clinic and has the backing of some well-known pdocs. Not all pdocs agree with his ideas, but they are worth looking at. Take a look at it and see what your pdoc thinks. Here's the link: http://psycheducation.org/

I hope you can get things sorted out soon.