[Rosie23]

I knew all week that I was going to crash. Friday and Saturday were just horrible days. I hid myself away and fought off the depression as best as I could. Bad emotions are so darn painful at times.
But this afternoon I could feel the black cloud lifting and now I have the energy to do all of the housekeeping that I had to force myself to do yesterday and earlier today.
I am just so over having my moods shift like this.
I'm not really sure if I know what my normal is anymore.
Good grief.

[stern]

Sometimes we have been depressed from such a long time that we began to consider it a normality. Such mood swings does occur that gives us courage to remain alive. Don't you think that if we remain entangled in our painful thoughts it will lead us all to suicide? If we are alive it's because of these mood swings.
Are you in therapy? If not then try to identify the reasons of your depression. It's the first step of cure.

[GothGeisha]

Honestly if it wasn't for the shifts to mania, I would've killed my self a long time ago. I hope things get better for you.

[AniManiac]

I struggle with not knowing what's normal either. I've been untreated for a long time, just started mood stabilizers, and was hypomanic for long stretches beforehand. So now I basically feel like hypomanic is normal, and everything else is a pretty massive disappointment by comparison.

[Beebizzy]

Almost the same for me. I have no idea what's normal. It often seems to me that people expect a lot more for themselves feeling-wise than I do - in other words, I don't question things, and think of them as normal, whereas other people complain about the same things and find them unacceptable.

I was also un-treated for a long time and also just started a mood stabiliser again and an AD. I had depression before for about 4-5 years and thought it was totally normal. I had no idea I could be feeling better.

I still have no idea. I have days of what I now think of as hypomania (based on my recent episode) but maybe they're not? Maybe they're just happy days? I don't think so, because I have normal 'happy days' in between.

Sigh. There's an element of looking back and re-evaluating everything in light of all of this. Now that I'm on meds again and feeling better, I look back and think 'Jeez, I didn't need to be feeling like that' but I honestly thought it was all normal.

[Secretum]

I can relate to not knowing what "normal" is. Sometimes I wish I could spend a few minutes inside the head a neurotypical, a bipolar person experiencing mania, and a bipolar person experiencing depression so that I could directly compare experiences and know exactly where I stood, symptom severity-wise. But that would only be touching the surface, as I would be observing static states, and so much of my bipolar experience involves fast cycling. Yeah, I'd also like to peek inside of the heads of people with uncomplicated borderline disorder and ADHD....

Can the term "normal" even be applied to something that cannot be directly measured, like subjective psychological experiences?

[Rosie23]

I will settle for not changing moods as often and not such a big swing on the darn pendulum.

[~Christina]

I have no idea what " normal " is ... absolutly no idea! what it would feel like to not feel like I do daily up and down and everywhere in between .

I even looked up normal in the dictionary ,, didnt help me understand it