Over the past few years I've seen roughly a two-month pattern to my moods. It tends to be 2-3 weeks of normal mood followed by 1-2 weeks of hypomania, then crashing into depression for about 1 month. There is some variation; sometimes I get a mixed episode thrown in, sometimes I tend more towards hypomania, and maybe there's some seasonal variation, but overall the pattern is pretty stable. My sleep cycles along with my mood (or is it the other way around?), and there's pretty much a constant undercurrent of anxiety mixed in, although that's worse during depression.


I'm wondering whether this is similar to other folks' experience of rapid cycling. My PDoc knows about all of the above but he's never explicitly used the term rapid cycling with me (my official dx is bipolar 2 without any specifiers). IIRC the DSM-V says that rapid cycling means more than four mood episodes a year, which I think does apply to me, but sometimes the episodes are so close together that it can be hard to tell them apart.


Should rapid cycling change anything treatment-wise? I'm currently off meds, but I am in regular therapy and unless some sort of miracle happens I'll be starting lithium soon.