Other people's judgments is one of the worst parts about this disorder. About 10 years ago bipolar was kind of a fad diagnosis. Everyone seemed to know (or be) someone with the diagnosis despite it not being THAT common. And somehow that qualified everyone to determine what is and isn't bipolar behavior. It also turned into people assuming they knew how to treat it; I actually had an assistant at work who told me that her cousin's brothers' father's uncle's pet ducks was bipolar and once he STARTED TAKING HIS LITHIUM CONSISTENTLY (her emphasis) he was fine. In the meantime I was taking lithium every day and not getting better which in her eyes meant it was my fault.

I've discovered that any time anyone does something repugnant on the internet, like pull of some web scam, everyone online it seems will start saying that person must be bipolar. Someone commits a hard to understand crime and "bipolar" in the eyes of many.

For some reason it is very hard for many people to accept that they don't know what they are talking about and that they don't know a herd of people with bipolar and therefore are probably not experts. I eventually got pretty adamant that if someone had a question about me they ask me and not assume they knew or that what they read online was right. Of course some people dismiss that as bipolar too but at some point there is a line and that is my line.