I have a history of overblowing my symptoms for attention...well not exactly attention, I was kind of in some sick inner competition with everyone else to be "the worst". Anyway now I have the tendency to minimize my symptoms so that I don't feel like I'm making things up for attention again. Since being properly medicated I rarely get full blown manic. I also was reticent to label it as mania because I am high functioning. I've never gotten in trouble with the law or spent thousands of dollars or anything like that. But a pdoc said to me once that even though I was high functioning, I was delusional, and that pointed toward mania.

Still, I downplay my symptoms in my own mind. However, my doctors must see something I don't bc I tend to get thrown in the hospital fairly often when unwell. I think I've managed to talk myself out of the ER maybe twice in my life. I'm always stunned on here when people say they've gone to the er and been sent home. That almost never happens to me!

As for "keeping me down", my current pdoc is much more scared of mania than depression, which I don't like bc I struggle with depression more often, and it is more detrimental to me. I can't work when severely depressed. So she is very cautious with medication that might induce mania. It's annoying.