Did you know that having trouble accepting the diagnosis is part of the disease? We deny how sick we are all the time. Especially when we are manic or hypomanic.

What helped me accept my diagnosis was two things. First, the understanding that my diagnosis wasn't a label, or a guarantee, or a certainty, but rather a hypothesis that provided a framework for treatment. Seeing how the symptoms responded to various treatments would potentially help confirm or deny that hypothesis. I could operate within those guides. But while I could accept treatment, I could not fully accept that I was bipolar (in spite of a very strong family history of Bipolar I) with just that though, no matter how smart and clever it sounded.

The second thing--and this is the thing that brought no-looking-back acceptance was getting really, really sick with a full-blown dysphoric mania. Sick enough to almost succeed at suicide. Sick enough to end up wearing the little black dress. You know...the one that snaps at the shoulders? The one with the padding? Yes, it was the perfect things to wear to the single room on the PICU--that lovely ward with 24 hour in-room surveillance and nothing but a bare mattress on the floor.

I woke up on day four of lithium therapy and a pretty woman--she turned out to be the ward psychiatrist--was sitting on the floor near me. "What happened?" I asked.

"Julie, you're bipolar," she said. Her eyes were bright, concerned, insistent. Since that moment, I have never looked back, except to see all the insane things I did in mania over the years, all the things that made me go, "Ohhhhh...that makes sense now."

If you really are type two, you may never have such extremes in your moods to convince you/ prove to you what you seek proof for. But maybe you will have the framework idea to hold onto. Maybe you will have the severity of your depression to help you accept. I think it's really hard to accept the diagnosis, whether you have what I call a "grand mal" mania or not.

Even though you "only" need a single episode of mania or hypo-mania--as "little" as a four-day period--to confirm the bipolar diagnosis, if you have "only" one, you will likely need a different type of treatment than if you did not have the type of depression associated with bipolar.

As far as "telling"? I don't think you need to tell anyone what your diagnosis is. It's nobody's business but yours. Right? There is also nothing wrong with choosing to be comfortable with what you are comfortable with right now, and not worrying about whether it is bipolar or atypical, severe depression. The main thing, at least in my head, is that you are compliant with the medications and therapies recommended for you, assuming they work, assuming that if they don't, you make changes only under medical supervision. You probably already know how important this to keeping you steady, and staying steady? What else matters in terms of your mental health?

Am I too laise-faire? I hope I'm actually addressing the question you posed. I think I may have wandered off the path a bit.

But, yes. I DO agree people are far "weirder" about hearing I have bipolar than they were when I told them I was "depressed. I think this is in part because they have no idea what "biplolar" actually means.