I've had anxiety my entire life, since I was a little girl, and it wasn't trauma or abuse related. I was scared of cars, phones, etc.

In high school, just a lot of anxiety. I remember going through a depressed period, and writing about it in my journal, and being disturbed because I actually felt suicidal for the first time ever. I had a lot of euphoric feelings though too--like I used to stand at the very edge of very tall buildings because I wanted to fly, stuff like that. I was kind of the life of the party I guess. I was the sort of crazy fun friend. Lol.

Then, the summer after I graduated high school, when I was eighteen, a very traumatic event happened to me. And everything just spiraled out of control from there. I think I temporarily had borderline personality disorder. I abused alcohol and did a lot of risky things. I had what I consider my first real episode of depression over the summer when I was 24. Then I got a DUI when I was 25 and had to take those classes and stuff, and my counselor recognized I had a problem and referred me to a pnp.

Then the pnp thought I had clinical depression and put me on sertraline, and about an hour after taking it I became very euphoric, and I think that was the start of my first manic episode, which eventually led me to be hospitalized. We tried some different meds, and I settled on lamictal and alprazolam, and was fine for awhile (I talked to a therapist, and she helped me get through the traumatic event that happened to me when I was eighteen).

Then I got pregnant when I was 28 (surprise!), and got PPD after our daughter was born and ended up spending a few days in the hospital two weeks after she was born. That lasted about a year before it subsided (the depression). Then when she was about fifteen months old we found out that she was delayed, I blamed myself, and had another episode of depression. That one lasted about six months, I lost at least twenty pounds, and it ended when my pnp raised my lamictal dose to 300mg.

After that I was fine for about two years (or three?). It was awhile. Then my pnp retired, and, at 32 (age I am now) I had my first manic/mixed episode with psychosis, which happened in January, and I ended up IP.

And now I'm still recovering from that experience because it was pretty traumatizing, and I got bumped up from bp2 to bp1.

I honestly, never really believed I had bp until that episode in January, but there's no denying it now. I was manic and out of my mind. I have an appointment next thursday with a new pdoc and wanted a little refresher from that experience, so I started reading my journal entries from those two weeks. Wow. I was so manic. Lol!