I always thought bipolar was just something I had pretty much all of my life from age 4 to 5 or on. I also had an incident of sexual abuse occur around that age. But I also have a ton of mental illness on my mother's side of the family. I think my late grandfather was bipolar; he was always up and down. My great-grandfather on that side killed himself. My aunts & my mom too have mental issues (but they also had a brother & sister drown (at about the ages of 17 & 19), while my mom & one aunt were in their early teens (13, maybe 15), and those 2 witnessed the drowning; my youngest aunt on that side was not present then. My grandmother (still alive) is always very anxious, but she had such a hard past and losing 2 children like that especially at once and so young couldn't be easy; plus the boy even shared her birthday. But there are siblings of my grandfather (from a huge family, a child of 9-11 kids, 2 cousins later taken in when their parents died, I think in a car crash). My sister did a huge genealogy on that side of the family for a recent family reunion, and she found out a lot of things, heard lots of stories (though people told her not to mention them at the reunion), persistent alcoholism, lots of family members in jail for things like theft, repeated DWIs, edler abuse (by forfeiting money while taking care of elderly financial bills & money accounts), and drugs, mental illness, a sibling of my grandfather who killed all the family chickens by stuffing corn cobs down their throats while the rest of the family was away from home.

This morning, I awoke from a dream starring the uncle who abused me, and it was so real even though I was college age in the dream, and the incident happened when I was 4 or 5. I woke up in a full-blown panic attack. I lay there for 2 hours trying to calm my breathing and couldn't go back to sleep.

I had another traumatic incident occur in a massage parlor when I was an adult, but this happened after I was diagnosed with bipolar. And again, I had a very traumatic incident by being a nearly unintended gunshot victim, balcony glass door shot out while I was asleep, bullet wedging in a book in the bookcase across the living room, if I had been sleeping in the living room or had a studio apartment at the time, I would surely have been shot because it was very small, the guy was aiming for the patio door of the girl living below me (his girlfriend or ex), who was out of town at the time, I am not sure if he knew this or not. I was in grad school and already mis-diagnosed with major depression, and correctly with an eathing disorder & panic disorder). The police tore my life apart since they thought I was involved, going so far as to accuse me of shooting out my own door from the parking lot for attention when I didn't even own a gun. They saw prescription psych meds out since I never had company over & agreed they could search my apartment as I had nothing of alarm there & never thought I'd be part of a police investigation. Later, after they caught the guy, the police "reassured" me the guy was aiming for the apartment below mine, I should feel safe, but how safe would anyone feel living above a girl who associated with men like that? It led to a hospitalization for severe panic disorder. My father was verbally, mentally, and physically abusive growing up. I never had good male role models except my grandfather on my dad's side, but he got Alzheimer's when I was in middle school, and he passed away when I was in 10th grade. Plus, he had had a rough life and was a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. Even though he spoke & understood English fluently, he preferred to speak his native language (Czech) with my grandmother on that side. I don't have many memories of him except him reading picture books to my sister and me and loving to pick up fallen pecans from the pecan tree and shelling them. They had the variety of pecan tree that grew the longer pecans, much easier to crack & shell than the smaller, common ones. The long ones even I could crack as a child wearing hard soled shoes and that he loved watermelon and cherries. I later found out on a trip to the Czech Republic that cherry trees are abundant there, which is probably why he liked to eat them so much.

I wonder though...is trauma strongly linked to bipolar, or was I just borne with the wrong genes to start with? Is it a combination, or would I have ended up with it anyway?

Has anyone here ended up with bipolar without a traumatic life incident?