Been reading this wonderful forum for awhile and (I think) I'm finally ready to put myself out there.

Early 30's male, misdiagnosed with depression for 17 years. About a year ago, I started therapy again and was correctly diagnosed as BPD II. My shrink tapered me off the Zoloft and eased me into Lamictal, now 200 mg daily. It took a few months for the therapy, meds and lifestyle changes to kick in but as of now, this is the most balanced I've felt in my adult life.

The problem I'm having now deals with this almost paralyzing regret when looking back. It's as though the better I feel, the more clear my mind is, the worse the remorse, the uglier the memories. I feel like I'm assessing the damage from a 17 year long hurricane. I was an awful, angry, crazy drunk who scared people, mostly my friends. While I'm nearly 3 years sober, I still can't talk about my prior self, those terrible nights, with those that were there, with those friends I hurt. And I feel as though that's all my friends see when they look at me, as I'm incapable of acknowledging my past actions. My bad nights are not spoken about, even with my closest friends who saw me at my worst. I want to be able to forgive myself. I want nothing more than to sit down with every person affected and apologize, talk it over, explain what was going on in my head at the time. But the thought of it makes me shutter. Additionally, aside from the drunken regret, there's an endless amount of manic, frantic sober actions that I also feel embarrassed about.

Oddly enough, despite these issues, I managed to graduate law school and this past January, opened my private practice. It's incredibly stressful but it's a natural, rational stress that I've dealt with through therapy, meds, yoga, exercise, etc. And my friends and family are all still here.

My questions are:

How do you handle the remorse/regret/embarrassment?

And for those who have gone about making amends, did you make mention of the bipolar disorder? I'd like those close to me to know why I acted the way I did, as the person they see now was quite different from the monster they dealt with in the past.

Phew. That was tough. Thanks in advance for your comments, everyone.