I know most of you are not mental health professionals and I don' take this as an official diagnosis. I'm just interested in your opinion as people who know what it feels like to be bipolar. I've been diagnosed with something else than bipolar, but I think my doctor might be wrong and I'm thinking about getting a second opinion.

I've gone trough phases of various psychological issue and most of them took few years to solve. None of them actually lasted longer than few years and they change according to my moods and state of mind. The same for my visits at mental health professional's. I have years of being good and stable and then years of being totally ****ed. I'm currently in my more or less stable phase. but there is one thing that never completely goes away, and now when there are no other related symptoms to disrupt it, I'm being more and more aware of them.

I know that to be bipolar you gotta experience both the highs and the lows. Well, I'm not sure about this, because my "highs" are somewhat different than what the books say. I don't ruin my life being spontaneous and impulsive and I don't do crazy manic stuff that destroys my life. My high states are actually very good and beneficial for me and my environment as well.

I do experience feelings of high self esteem, I suddenly feel good in my own body, feel sexy and attractive. There's something inside of me telling me that I can do anything I want and I'll be GREAT person one day, fame, glory, attention it all will be mine. I put my ambitions and aspirations really high, constantly daydreaming about how amazing my life will be when it will all turn out for the good. I make daily plans, when I plan every second of my day to be productive, effective and hard working. I'm creative and I make so many plans about what to do to make my life better and achieve everything I dream about. I usually get involved in zillion activities and get extremely busy to the point I sometimes have no time to sleep, but I still sleep normally well when I do have the time. I just get so excited and energetic thinking about all the possibilities that can happen and I feel like the success is right within my reach. The future feels bright and I'm so open, and good at what I do. This also makes me less emotional, more practical and I feel like I'm still on the go, I feel like I can't stop or relax and I have no patience with people. Everything seems too slow and like it's just not enough.

This usually lasts for a month or so, sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit shorter (never shorter than few weeks) and then suddenly there's a drop.
I start to feel like all those plans are too high and idealistic and I'm not as good as I think. My self confidence starts to drop and I feel ugly, fat, worthless, ordinary. I get flashbacks of everything mean that has been sad to me in the past and I completely lose faith in myself and my abilities. I feel like I'm trapped in stereotype and everything is grey and sad. It often hits me so hard, I almost literally feel a heavy weight landed on my body. It feels sickening and paralazying. I can't do the activities I so enthusiastically threw myself into just a few weeks ago and I lose all the motivation and interest. I feel empty, numb, guilty, hateful towards my own self for being weak and inconsistent. This in the past lead to self harm, but I haven't done that in a decade. Now it leads to abusing alcohol and dwelling in self pity. It more than often gets to the point when I think about suicide. My life feels completely meaningless and worthless.

Mostly during the low periods, I can feel an extreme anger towards myself and the anger and the guilt for feeling like I'm not good enough to reach my goals often starts it all. I've learnt to manege the self destructive anger and don't self harm anymore, but it still leads to numerous problems like alcohol abuse and eating disorders.

My moods also predict how I eat, when I'm experiencing the high, I restrict and lose weight and it had lad to anorexia in the past. When I feel down I often binge eat and it had lad to bulimia in the past.

The fear of losing my **** and not being able to be consistent at my work, e.g.
not being able to stay extremely busy and productive all the time had lad to fear that I'll never achieve my aspirations so extreme it developed into panic attacks and derealization.

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and while I see where my doctor is coming from, I think it's based on shallow diagnoses and generalizations of my symptoms since no further analysis has been done from his side.