This isn't BPD BPD is used to refer to Borderline Personality Disorder. Bipolar is typically just bp or bipolar

I started noticing things weren't right when I was a kid, actually. My first bout of severe depression was when I was 11 years old, so I clearly new something wasn't right. But I'd have times where things were normal (not too often, my depressions lasted a lot longer when I was young... if I could have thought of a quick and non-messy way to die that I could have gotten access to... I wouldn't have made it to highschool). So I knew that something was wrong. But I'd also have times where I had a lot of energy and talked a lot and found it a whoooole lot easier to pretend to be happy, because I actually sorta felt like I was. I still didn't think that I was a good person or deserve to be cared about or liked... but it didn't seem to bother me as much. Those areas started more often around the time I started highschool?

I read about bipolar when I was probably 17. It was somewhere between 16-18 as I was still in highschool and I know it was after we moved. I read about it and went ".... that sounds a lot like me" but I dismissed it as imagining things because I don't have issues with grandiosity and I never, ever, think that I'm better than other people.

So I ignored it for over a decade but taught myself a lot of various coping strategies to keep myself in control and blending in. Taught myself to act more like I do when I'm hypomanic, even when I'm baseline and can even pull it off when I'm depressed if I try hard enough.

I went and got diagnosed 3-4 months ago, because I haven't been able to kick the cycles for the last few years and I'm tired of it as it's starting to affect work. I basically knew what the issue was, and had a psychologist suggest it to me on his own, so I went off to see the pdoc and he asked a bunch of Qs and was like "What do you think your diagnosis is?" and I said "bipolar 2" and he said that I was "absolutely correct" so there's that. I don't know how mcuh I trust his judgement after 40 mins, but whatever right?