Hi. I am Dan. I have been with my psychologist and psychiatrist for about 8 months now. I am Bipolar II. When treatment started we identified my type as rapid cycling and discovered I had been cycling for years! I have mixed cycling. I call it 'active depression' when it's on the low side and just damn frustrating and intolerable when it was on the high side.

I was just on Lamictal 100 mg. until we discovered that I was having psychotic symptoms as well. Then the Abilify started and landed at 7.5 mg.

Now I am close to stable... but not happy at all. In fact I am miserable. I wrote in to my pdoc the things I want to change about how I feel. I wrote that I am tired of feeling like I am always doing something wrong, like there is a problem with me just being me. That I was never sure about what I did and that I never felt part of anything. I wrote in about my high, constant and problematic anxiety that I can never shake.

He wrote back. He does not believe that I have BPD! (Borderline Personality Disorder) THANK YOU!!!

But he does believe that I have ADHD??? High stem??? Ugh.. I don't really know what that is. He says that could be the reason for the feelings I wrote above.

So I have to ask... is add/adhd more than just distractablility? Can it lead to feelings of severe magnitude and ruin someones life? What is it exactly?

For it to be the cause of what I am feeling, it would have to be more than the popularly advertised, "Look.... Squirell!" condition.

I apologize for knowing nothing about it or any offense my comments might have. I guess it would be like someone coming onto a Bipolar board asking if Bipolar was just happy/sad syndrome lol. I have encountered people saying that, "oh, i get happy and sad too, I must be bipolar" lol. There is so much more to it that people don't know. As there is with ADD.

I guess that's why I am posting here. Asking what else there is, because if it can make a person feel the way I am feeling, then my anger towards media and public awareness groups will be incredible for only telling one side of the story. At least with Bipolar people run scared knowing its a debilitating condition. There is less minimization as there is with ADD, assuming that my pdoc is correct. I see him on Sat. and he wants to start meds for it.

I am really unsure. could ADD mirror sympoms of both Bipolar AND BPD??