Like spikes and HALLIEBETH, my bipolar disorder has no set way of presenting itself. In fact, more often than not, I go from stable to hypomania/mania (or mixed) and back to stable then back to hypomania/mania (or mixed) to stable to hypomania/mania (or mixed) and only occasionally really become bona fide purely depressed. I've spent much more of my life in elevated mood states than in purely depressed ones. However, I have experienced a couple doozy purely depressed ones in my past. Sometimes I only become mildly to moderately depressed and don't reach severe. Even with my bipolar type type 1 (history of full blown manias), I sometimes only reach hypomania before becoming stable again. My illness course has varied a bit throughout my life, including before being medicated, and after starting medications.

I'm in my late 40s now, but from my early 30s to about 37 years old, I was mostly experiencing severe manic episodes that sometimes became severe manias w/mixed features. I had also been psychotic during many of those episodes. At the end of that period, I had a major league crash into pure depression that required ECT. Then some mixed stuff happened again. Then a bit more depression. Then I was struggling with hypomania and full blown manias again for a while. Only in recent years have I been mostly stable for very long periods.