Feeling like the floor keeps giving out/dealing with depressive swings

Hello all,

This is my first post here -- I've been looking for a supportive community for bipolar folks and have benefited from what I've read so far.

I was rediagnosed with bipolar II rapid cycling earlier this year. I was first diagnosed when I was 15 and in the throes of depressive and mixed episodes. I made the classic teenage decisions to say f you to medicine and try to make it on my own for the next several years (ah how predictable it seems now!) College was hard and full of murky mixed moods, depressive spells, and a general sense of having to do all of this work just to be base-line functional. Once I entered the working, I realized that these things weren't as simple as an ambivalent/idealisitc personality and partying. I'm trying to understand my moods better and am just on my first real regimen of medicine since I was 15 -- lamictal and risperdal.

I'm currently having a lot of difficulty with depressive swings that make even the evener, more pleasant times seem fleeting and empty. I feel like I can reach out and feel solid ground, but only in bursts of a day or two or three, and then I'm back in low energy agitation, punctuated by some clarity and happiness, and then back up with a surge of confidence, and down again. My "true" personality, if there is such a thing, is pretty relaxed and appreciative of the world, but also anxious, especially socially anxious.

I'm starting to despair a bit about this pattern, and starting to feel like I'll never really have control of my life. I know I shouldn't wish for any kind of crisis, but part of me wants to get that low (or that high?) so that I'll at least have some objective proof of this constant struggle, which feels like this constantly lurching machine beneath my generally-functional front of working-world-and-social-person.

Should my medicine be doing more? Do I need to get used to this feeling of instability? Any advice you have would be wonderful. Thank you and I look forward to being part of the community!

It sounds like you're struggling a lot with rapid changes in mood. Have the meds helped at all? Are you still having the same mood difficulties, but less intense now since you started on meds?

I guess that's what I would look into, in deciding if maybe you need to switch meds, because they're not really helping, or if maybe you need higher doses, because they're not helping enough. Probably more complicated than that, but maybe a place to start.

Do you have a pdoc appointment coming up? Maybe you could bring in a chart/journal of your moods, differences between before and after meds, and see what he/she thinks.

Good luck!

Oh, and Welcome!