Quote:
Originally Posted by Alice Noodle
Hello, I am newly diagnosed and at this stage I am having big issues accepting the diagnosis, which means I'm constantly off and on meds.
How did you accept your diagnosis?
How long did it take before you felt comfortable with this term being applied to you?
What if my team is actually just wrong but they tell me I "lack insight." How ca. I trust their opinion over my own view of myself!?
I'll post my intro from the welcome thread to give people an idea of my situation right now
"Hello 
My name is Alice and I'm 22. I have recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I'm having a hard time dealing with it.
I've had a depression every year since I was 13 (I used to say that I began puberty and then "broke")
A psychiatrist diagnosed me when I was 18 but I rejected it and stopped seeking help.
These depressions got more out control until I've had lengthy admissions the last few years for them. I'm told I've had "manic" episodes
Where I've not needed sleep as much, felt like I was "on fire," very personable etc etc. (but I'm very skeptical)
I feel confused about my future and really upset that I won't just get better and have a day where I won't have a mental illness anymore. I wanted to come here to see how people have accepted their diagnosis and to meet other people diagnosed as a young person.
Sorry for the ramble. This is a hard time for me right now "
Thank you for if you read this or can help.
<b> how do I tell if I actually have bipolar...? </b>
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I know this is from awhile ago already, but like you were in this post, I also was recently diagnosed BP I. I found out through a neuropsychological evaluation I got for memory problems I thought might have been from either brain injury or PTSD (turns out the latter). However, I learned today that both my pdocs think BP II because most of the manic episodes were induced by SSRI/SNRIs, even though the first two were unmedicated and provoked by extreme stress (age 12 and 15). I also thought BP I was extreme, but then I recalled that I may have had a mixed psychotic episode at age 21, SSRI-induced. I told my doctors, but my psychiatrist thinks that since it's been a few years since one occurred, and the hospitalization was eight years ago, that it's unlikely I have BP I because more manic episodes with more regularity haven't occurred. He said he suspected BP II all along (I thought to myself, then why haven't you said anything?! And especially when I brought up that I thought I may be bipolar?), and prescribed me Lamictal. The DSM-V criteria say that, "If there are psychotic features, the episode is, by definition, manic," and the fact that two known manic episodes preceded the SSRI-induced ones, it wouldn't better be accounted for by "substance/medication induced bipolar." So... that's where the neuropsychs are coming from, and my pdocs both think BP II because the SSRI-induced ones somehow "don't count" and I'm depressed more often than not (a feature of BP II, with which I agree).
Now I'm just utterly confused. I just spent nearly two weeks trying to accept this BP I diagnosis only to get confused with "clinical judgment" and my own interpretation of myself. The fact that "this has been me all along" and I just didn't know it makes me feel ridiculous. The fact that all these symptoms are present in my mother (but with way more pronounced grandiose thinking, my god) makes a lot more sense in the context of how miserably she failed on numerous occasions at being a mother. Which of course, that brings up so many issues (e.g., she refused to let me attend public high school after being unable to continue paying for my private school because she was convinced something bad was going to happen to me and that I would get "brainwashed by evolution," YET she would buy me alcohol and cigarettes—great, give a 15 year old depressed person alcohol, smooth move; she also tended to get hyper-religious, ironically, yet saw nothing wrong with the alcohol) that I'd rather not have to think about now, in my depressed state. I just sort of broke down awhile ago with the heaviness of it all. I've been so numb for so long that I haven't been able to cry, but today, it just overtook me. I realized the things I cry over are all the little traumas I check-marked as experiencing on an inventory of trauma exposure during the neuropsych eval. Reduced to a sheet of paper, filled with horrible things.
Being a psychology student, I'm usually the one administering the tests in my research and analyzing the data. Being on the opposite side of the survey really changes one's perspective. And not that this is new, I've dealt with MDD and evidently BP for years, long before I was a psychology student. So I'm familiar with the "under the microscope" feeling, but just not to this degree. BP is, as far as we know it, lifelong. There's a strange feeling associated with realizing you'll need medication always to keep you from tipping too far over a line. Save you from yourself. Or others. Mostly yourself.
Just don't know anymore. Lots of thinking commences.