Hey everyone. I found this site while searching for answers. 5 years ago, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder during what I now know was a manic episode.I think it was bipolar 2, but I genuinely don't remember given my mental state at the time. My therapist at the time put me on Lamictal, but I hated it and the way it made me feel. It also made my already recurring nightmares more common and vivid. I was also more stable by that point, in retrospect probably because of the medication, so I stopped taking it. After I turned 18, my insurance changed and wouldn't pay for that therapist anymore, not that I even wanted to keep going.
I was stable for a long time, but went into a severe depressive episode last year. i sought medical help, but my therapist was literally the least helpful person on the planet, and the antidepressant they put me on made me a thousand times worse. I went from the worst depression I'd ever experienced with passive suicidal ideation to being actively suicidal and attempting to jump off a local bridge. I stopped the medication and the therapist because the experience scared me so badly.
I got better, and I've been stable for about a year now, but I think I'm getting worse again. My house burned down about 3 months ago, and now that I'm starting to get over the initial trauma of it, I think I'm starting to enter another depressive episode. But this is different this time. I think I'm having hallucinations. Well I know I'm having hallucinations. its little stuff, like shadows and movements out of the corner of my eye. There's audio hallucinations too. i keep hearing little things being moved behind me when nothings actually been moved. And there's this voice, male and neutral in tone. I can never make out what it says. its like hearing someone on the radio in another room when you know its not possible. I'm not sure, but I think I may have been having some delusions, too. I didn't realize it till I started doing research on the hallucinations that I started reading up on delusions. But how am I supposed to know for sure?
I don't have a therapist anymore, and because I live in a small town, I don't have options outside of the people I've already tried. And I'm terrified to try another medication. Every medication I've ever tried for anything that's wrong with me makes whatever its supposed to help worse. I don't know what to do.