Kicking it back to page one! Why? Because it IS an interesting topic, and something a lot of us struggle with. You are SO not alone in this, Naynay...

Some of it can be chalked up to lack of insight, which is part of the disorder. We may think we're one place, when others can tell we're at another. You will see that a lot here on the boards. People can, say, describe definitely manic behavior they've got going on, but not believe they're manic. We can help each other reality check that way.

Another thing that might be playing into this is trauma. Happy to have someone more knowledgeable chime in on this because I am JUST starting to learn about it and how it affects things. But I *think* it can create reactions that seem bigger or more irrational than they "should" be -- because there is more behind it than what is on the face of it. Maybe one has stuffed down their trauma and it comes out with something like a cheese grater incident. But it's not *about* the cheese grater. And there it is, throwing you for a loop that's not necessarily congruent with with where your overall mood is. That can definitely confuse the issue and make it hard to sort out!

A lot of folks -- though certainly not all -- with BP also have trauma.