BlueInanna: So awesome that you can relate to this so closely! Especially with the swirling stomach feeling. I am happy that you've found a better way to understand yourself.
I have actually heard that my experience is not that uncommon, but seems unbelievable as a diagnosis because it often expressed itself as depression with anxiety, treatment resistant depression, cycling depression, etc, so it is looked over. A lot of times people with unipolar depression are giving mood stabilizers like Lamotrigine and lithium, even anti-psychotics like Abilify, so these people could really have experiences like us.
Eliza Jane: Admittedly, I was only meeting with my Psychiatrist for a little over a year before she changed my diagnosis, which is pretty quick. However, during this time I had been on so many varieties of medications for depression and anxiety that never succeeding in helping. She's a keen doctor, I think that she knows all about different expressions of Bipolar 2
Ultramar:
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That said, I don't think there's such a thing as some sort of 'pure' mood state and we'll all be feeling different things at the same time. I certainly don't feel just 'happy' when manic, although I wish that were the case. And maybe when feeling different things at once it's not necessarily a 'mixed episode' maybe it's just that it's normal to experience different emotions together within a given 'pole.'
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This! Thanks for this idea. I like it a lot.
Confused: One of my worst symptoms in anxiety is nausea and tummy troubles. I have lost 20 pounds in 5 weeks from a period of mental anguish where I could not even get food in my mouth without gagging. If I managed to get food inside of me it felt like a hard, sickening lump and I vomited a few times from this feeling. This week this feeling has begun again, ironic considering that I was dieting to lose weight for two months (14 pounds! yay!) but I am ashamed with the weight loss I experience through anxiety. When I initially had panic attacks that I could not identify, I always thought that I was having a strong reaction to something bad I had eaten, as I always ended up being nauseous.
Pretty much to anyone: I am convinced that my anxiety is tied to the bipolar and not that I have a separate anxiety disorder, which may be the case for others. I have the same concept as when I have a difficult time focusing. I don't think that I have ADHD or Panic Disorder...I can't distinguish it from anything else.
It took a long time for me to even realize that I was having panic attacks, so maybe it's possible I have a comorbid condition and I just don't harve the self awareness to recognize it. When I started becoming really depressed, I spent a lot of time hiding in bathrooms crying, always wishing to flee class, and persistent intense worry. I was crying, so I thought that was depression, and I thought the fears (failure, abandonment, death) were a reasonable reaction to how I felt. (But I guess there was nothing "reasonable" about it.)