I can never tell what is going on mania wise when it is occuring, but looking back I can assign a big "M" or little "m" to it for sure. Same with big "D" or little "d" depression. But I find the following helpful for my doc.

"The basic concept of a bipolar spectrum is more than a century old, having been proposed by the original founders of modern psychiatry in 1970s after a leading psychiatrist proposed classifying mood symptoms as follows:

• Upper-case "M": Episodes of full-blown mania
• Lower-case "m": Episodes of mild mania (hypomania)
• Upper-case "D": Major depressive episodes
• Lower-case "d": Less-severe symptoms of depression

Under this proposed classification, people are described by the combination of their manic and depressive symptoms."