i used to have something similar...

see... from an objective (other person) perspective i vary a lot in my moods. 'labile', it is called. what that means is that i can be in a fairly intense emotional state anywhere from a few hours to a few days. it invariably shifts (from an objective stand-point) within a few days. so... from their perspective i'm not really depressed because i snap out of it.

but from my subjective perspective, while i vary a lot in my emotional state that really doesn't help me when i'm in an intense emotional state. when i'm distressed or when i'm depressed it feels like it is so intense that it is going to kill me. i can only remember other times that i was in that emotional state (state dependent memory, it is called) and i simply can't envisage it ever lifting. from my subjective perspective i am doomed to experience intense distress or intense depression FOREVER.

if someone were to tell me (as many a therapist did) that i wasn't 'objectively depressed' that would be very hard for me to take. i felt like they weren't LISTENING or they weren't SEEING my very real state of distress. they might say things like 'you will snap out of it soon' or they might not be very concened about me, thinking that i would snap out of it soon. from my subjective perspective that really didn't help me at all. in fact... it harmed me.

i've seen some clinical materian written where it is emphasised that while from an objective perspective it can seem as though the moods are labile and pass fairly swiftly... that from a subjective perspective it is intensely distressing and feels never-ending. they said something about how often clients maintain that there base level mood is very low indeed. dysthymic. interviews with people with dysthymia reveal that while objectively the depression is regarded to be 'mild' people self report their depression as 'intense and very distressing'.

so... there may be an a-symetry between how you feel and how you present. the difficulty is that in the face of invalidating / unsympathetic responses from clinicians the temptation is for one to emphasise or dramatise or escalate in ones presentation in order to receive the validation and sympathy that one really genuinely does need.

i got stuck in this cycle for many years with many different therapists :-( it surely did suck and it surely made me feel really really really really bad. really really bad about myself (i started to worry that i might be feigning symptoms or lying or being manipulative or attention seeking etc). i really was in a lot of pain, though, it was just that unsympathetic responses made me worse :-(

is there any way... that you can try and tell your therapist how you really feel? sure there is a risk involved... but... i don't know... sucks to be caught in a cycle, huh.

(though of course your experience may well be different from mine)