It takes time to get a grip on this bipolar stuff. And I know we feel like " I ain't got time for this". I think for a lot of us we experience a worsening after dx. Maybe because now it has our attention, now we are really looking at it. And feel confused about what to do, which adds stress, which pushes the bipolar. Also the meds, while they are being new to us, added, switched, dose changes, and we know that these meds also can cause symptoms of bipolar, they same ones we are targeting to treat. I think we can see a worsening. AD's can cause mania, ad's can cause depression, ..... and so forth.

But it's important to realize that even it if seems to worsen sometimes, it can also improve. Mine worsened for 7 years straight and at a nice pace, I really thought that was it, but now I am not having full on episodes, I am not having many symptoms at all. I really did not think that could happen before. Bipolar does have flexibility to it. In that 7 years I really thought I was doing everything i could, and everything I had been taught. Only I wasn't actually taught too much, and some of what I was taught was very wrong for me, and some of it was just not really truth. Things started to click, like magic moments things started to make a lot more sense.

Perspective is massive in life, and with bipolar. So that can be a really big tool for us.

But yes it's still new, and when you wake up listening to illness, talk about illness, have appointments for illness, and meds for illness it's really overwhelming. We have to be careful not to become too involved in participating in illness, cause well.. that will make us more ill. So we have to look for ways to participate in being well.

It happens to a lot of us, and it happens in physical health too, becoming over medicalized, it's consuming. We can get lost in it.

You do have some coping skills, I can see that as well. And you will gain more and more if you keep seeking them out.

Sometimes we can't make sense out of an episode, specially if there was no sense in it, or the sense that was in has left the building. But looking at what has happened doesn't hurt, it helps us know prepare. But don't drive yourself nuts thinking about it either.