For me it's a binary switch someone is playing with. Manic/depressed/manic/depressed. I notice it.

After a manic episode it becomes very extreme, but I used to be in a mixed state of changeable, uncontrollable severity for a few years. I didn't realise it wasn't normal. It was a bit like a binary dissociation, two rather isolated networks of association, minds. One painfully empty, just time you lost and a life that was constantly forgotten, and the other a highly meaningful mess of things that just controlled my actions and determined my being.

Do you sometimes experience a sudden and sometimes a gradual type of depression, and if so, what happens, what do you do and what not, before each, there maybe being a pattern?