Doesn't our individulal personalities , coping skills, learned responses, thought processes etc.. play a role in how we play out our mental illness....just sayin'. A lot of times someone with bipolar who gravitates to rage might because because they would gravitate towards that anyways. I gravitate towards tears and holding it in, but seldom in anger...because I was not allowed to display anger growing up and as an adult I never did end up expressing myself that way, and choose not to even tho I could choose to now. My tears can be on such a quick switch it can seem quite inappropriate at times. That however is my go to response. But has little to nothing to do with bipolar. Alas it does not go away with mania either or when in a normal state. And it is still something I can take some accountability for and work on.

Bipolar can make some people irritable etc.. how we express it has a lot to do with ourselves outside of the dx. People do need to own some of what they get up to, or seek help to learn how to deal with it more appropriatly....which leads to some accountability anyways.

When we start to eqaute all our behaviour to our dx we just become our dx and nothing more. Is all our good behaviour or behaviour we are proud of because of bipolar too... because people love to own up to that bit.