Oh, wow. So I'm not the only one who used to make herself sick, or fake ankle sprains as a child! I actually would sit out in the rain for hours, trying to get pneumonia (and succeeding some of the time) in the hope that I'd come close enough to death to get my mother's attention and concern. Isn't that pathetic.....

I've never told that to anyone. Not even my pdoc, who I honestly thought was humoring me for the first year or so after diagnosing me with BP. I couldn't believe there was anything really wrong with me, since my health issues were basically ignored when I was young and I was always told "life is tough, wear a helmet". I thought he was just calling it BP because I had so many ups and downs, and that at some point he'd say "You're OK, I just medicated you to get you through that rough patch". Yeah, my thinking was pretty effed up all right.

The only time I was taken seriously when I was growing up, was when I fell into a clinical depression at age 13 and didn't come out of it for months. I just wanted to disappear, and if it meant dying, oh well, no great loss. Finally my mother took me to several doctors and NPs, and I was put on some kind of pills---I never knew what they were---but they all gave me bad side effects and eventually the depression went away.

It was back then that I first heard the words "manic depression".....I'll never know if it was in reference to me, but I remember hearing her talking to my dad when I was in another room. I kind of doubt it, because nobody was really diagnosing teenagers with that back then, but it sticks out in my mind and I wonder why. But of course, I got better and the whole matter was dropped, and I fought BP without knowing it for the next 40 years.

Whew! What a relief it is to get that out in the open! It's been my secret shame for decades.....I never knew it could've been part of, or a precursor to, my illness. Thank you OP for bringing up the topic.