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Originally Posted by ultramar
I agree with you and your therapist. There's a temptation/danger to attribute every mood and emotion to bipolar. I hate to beat a dead horse (because I've brought this up before) but bipolar (according to DSM criteria) only manifests itself during episodes -between episodes we just are who we are and deal with what life throws at us like everyone else.
I deal with lots of things that have nothing to do with my bipolar. Except when anxiety gets extreme, for me, these other things aren't to be dealt with medications. Sometimes we can get angry, anxious, irritable, happy, productive, down, hurt, and that's just the way it is. Therapy has helped me a lot. I don't think throwing pills at every uncomfortable emotion (and I'm not saying anyone is claiming this, just thinking this out) is the answer in the long term, nor does all of this pain and/or discomfort necessitate -or not always- an additional diagnosis. Then, I think, there's the danger of wracking these up, and then, yes, everything can and does end up becoming a symptom of a diagnosis/illness. I'm sure we all have things we can work on outside of bipolar, and without medications.
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I understand what the DSM states but I disagree. I learned through personal experience every medical and mental health book is not exactly accurate.
Personally I've noticed my temper is a lot worse after BP onset. Now I'm afraid to get real mad. I also have a lot more mood swings (for no reason, no trigger) through out the day and week. For example yesterday I had a mellow day. I was able to get a few household things completed. I woke up this morning completed one errand then my mood changed. I've been home in bed for the past five hours. Nothing situational happened to sadden me. I also read other threads on here mentioning the exact same thing about tempers being extremely bad. I heard it referred to as having a BP moment. I do not know what is actually is but it's not baseline.
I do agree we should not blame everything on BP. But that DSM is not a Bible. Everything is not black and white. The gray area does exist.