I think I have always been. I even remember feeling different from all the other kids on the playground in kindergarten and just never could pinpoint it. I never remember a time when I didn't have anxiety or outright panic.

In college, I got an eating disorder (common in people with bipolar) but was diagnosed as major depressive with panic disorder. The depression meds made my manic stages worse until I showed up at a pdoc appt. in a super manic state; then, she re-adjusted my diagnosis.

I always have (from elementary school on), struggled more with the depressive than the manic phase.