If you hang out on here for awhile you will see that there are as many different versions of Bipolar as there are people diagnosed as Bipolar. It is great that the mental health community has come so far in the classification and treatment of this illness but it is nowhere near perfect.

Someone invented julienned carrots. Before somebody thought of cutting carrots like that no one knew about julienned carrots.

Nobody invented Bipolar by calling it Bipolar. What we think of as Bipolar has been around since the beginning of time and they are just trying to fit templates down over top of it to help make sense of it. But we are what we are. We are no beholden to the DSM. We don't have to fit perfectly. They have to figure us out. We were here first.

I spent a very long time using the DSM to disqualify my Bipolar. And the. A long time using it to disqualify my manias. Now I totally accept that I am this thing called Bipolar but what I experience is beyond what the DSM can currently handle. But I still exist. I am still here being Bipolar. My own personal variation on this illness.

You sound a lot like I did.

I have learned more about real life Bipolar on this board than I ever heard from a doctor. This board has really helped me understand the nuances and mysteries and absurdities of Bipolar and in doing so helped me to understand and accept my own Bipolar.

Good luck to you!