Does anyone else consistently minimize the severity of their condition? Like tell yourself you're just being dramatic or that you're the one causing all this and it's easily rectified. And then it turns out not to be.

I do this all the time. Most of it is because i can't trust my own self. Much like another member of this board, I grew up faking illness and injury because I felt like it was the only way to get anyone to care about me. I got so good at it that i would actually have the symptoms of whatever illness or injury. Once right after my dad died from complications of diabetes i thought I had diabetes. I got all the symptoms - fatigue, extreme thirst, extreme hunger, etc. When i went to the doctor to get tested i didn't have it and the symptoms went away immediately. I also hurt my foot once and thought I broke it so it was super painful. Then the doctor called bull and my foot suddenly had no pain the next day.

So you see, I can't trust myself. Every day I say i'm just being dramatic. it's very difficult for me to see what others see.

For example, I will never admit to full blown mania because I don't want to pretend i'm manic when i'm really just hypomanic. Because I don't want people to think I'm looking for attention. I was dx bp2 a year ago. Then the dx changed to bp1 because of a mixed state. I had a very hard time accepting that reality. I thought maybe I was just making it up.

Then I read on here that people with bipolar 2 also have mixed states so I decided i was "only" bipolar 2 (which I don't believe is any better than bp1, still devastating at times). I had a psychotic episode but I believed it was medication induced so it didn't count.

This line of thinking for me always leads me to ditch meds because I feel like I'm just being dramatic and i shouldn't need pills to help me through the day.

The reason i'm asking now is because i was confronted with the severity of my condition last week when I was a quivering mess of paranoia. I'd never had psychotic symptoms that were not medication induced. So now I do believe I have bipolar 1 and I'm just so upset. How can I learn to accept my condition? I must convince myself that it is real and can be very dangerous if I don't stay in treatment. The terror I felt those few days was horrible and i never want to go back there.

And i'm worried that I will never be stable again....and i need to put a plan in place for when I am because i will be tempted to ditch meds AMA again and though many people can live without meds, i need them right now. Which SUCKS.

Thanks for listening. I'm manic as hell - I can admit this time that it might be full-blown - and the geodon is doing absolutely jack **** for stabilization. But it took care of the psychosis. And it keeps the full-blown mania at bay for about half the day. I just need to hang on until i've been on the Lamictal long enough to determine if it's a help or a hindrance.