[the beginning]

I've read on more than a few websites now that for some people the mood swings/shifts can occur much more quickly than what's normal if you have rapid cycling bipolar, it's already 4 or more shifts in a year but all of these websites said for some people there's a possibility of your mood changing within a few days or even hours

If that's true that describes me perfectly because my mood just goes up and down rapidly, sometimes over the course of a few days, other times daily and even within a few hours at times, and other times my mood just stays balanced. The highs and lows are like a roller coaster for me and to the point now where i just can't deal with it anymore and i plan on going to my pdoc in a few days to talk about this.

If you think this can't be possible and disagree what could explain the mood swings? Its not just the daily up and downs of the average person its definitely more severe than that. My aunt actually has bipolar, not sure about any of the specifics but i know she's diagnosed with it.

[comicgeek007]

Welcome to PC!!!!

Weeeeelllll, we can't diagnose you here but I can say that that sort of mood swinging is supposed to be like, super rare in bipolar, but it's much more common in borderline personality disorder.

Hope this helps!

[IndieVisible]

No stranger to mood swings. It has caused me to be incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar II a long time ago. For me, my mood changes by triggers not a chemical imbalance. For me it's not really a mood disorder, but more of a personality disorder. I can on some days experience the whole spectrum in just one day! I even get really super elevated hypomania and some times even grandiose feelings, but I am not bipolar. I can go from deep depression to anxiety to anger to paranoid to argumentative to quite to talkative to suicidal to homicidal. For me it's a personality disorder. Usually I only cycle thru 2 to 3 a day but can and do go all over the map some times. I hate it. I don't think more rapid then this is possible nor would I want it any more rapid. I'd like to stay at my baseline, always.

[the beginning]

Originally Posted by IndieVisible

No stranger to mood swings. It has caused me to be incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar II a long time ago. For me, my mood changes by triggers not a chemical imbalance. For me it's not really a mood disorder, but more of a personality disorder. I can on some days experience the whole spectrum in just one day! I even get really super elevated hypomania and some times even grandiose feelings, but I am not bipolar. I can go from deep depression to anxiety to anger to paranoid to argumentative to quite to talkative to suicidal to homicidal. For me it's a personality disorder. Usually I only cycle thru 2 to 3 a day but can and do go all over the map some times. I hate it. I don't think more rapid then this is possible nor would I want it any more rapid. I'd like to stay at my baseline, always.

Well know that i think about it there are different things that would trigger my mood to change, it's not just something that's randomly occurring, there actually always seems to be something to trigger it. Borderline personality seems spot on now that i look at it
but what do you mean how it's not really a mood disorder for you? what would be the difference between this all being a personality disorder or a mood disorder?

[ultramar]

I don't know what websites you've been reading, but unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to 'rapid cycling' bipolar disorder. It really does refer to 4 or more episodes a year, and cycling as rapidly as a few times throughout a given day, or day to day, is extremely unusual --not entirely impossible, but super-unusual.

Great difficulty in regulating emotions on an on-going, continuous basis, when faced with environmental triggers (and if you're interacting with people throughout the day, the triggers can be many) tends to point towards something else. Sometimes Borderline Personality Disorder, sometimes, perhaps, a mood dysregulation disorder that doesn't neatly fit into any diagnosis -I'm not sure about this, but I would think it's possible.

A bipolar mood/episode can be initially triggered by something, but at some point it 'morphs' into something else (or this is how I experience it sometimes) where it becomes divorced from the initial trigger, and continues on and on and on, for weeks, even months. It's a situation where, you could resolve the initial trigger, work that out, and yet this continues to morph and get worse and stay with you -it becomes something else. And doesn't involve, switching, meanwhile, from this mood to that.

Granted, no episode is entirely 'pure' and there will be other emotions involved, but it *is* continuous, pervasive, in a way that the moods you describe are not. It's all very hard to explain and it's different for everyone and different for the same people at different times.

I would talk to your pdoc about the intensity of your moods, how often they change, what triggers them. Maybe you can keep a mood chart over a period of time, with this information.

I see you already have a pdoc --what have you discussed so far, as far as what's going on with you? Or are you just starting out? Best of luck!

I think there are variations of rapid cycling, in my case I don't cycle so much in a day but I can in a week and most definitely over months. I've already had a 2 month episode of hypomania which morphed into a mixed episode for a month which then morphed into 2 months of depression fueled by high levels of anxiety just this year, and my fall cycle hasn't hit yet. That was while taking medicine. I am now on 6 different meds to calm the beast since April of this year. I'm hoping I won't have a fall cycle this year.
Usually I get hyper and have hypomania in the spring followed by a depression, then I'm pretty good all summer, then I deal with depression and mixed moods until the following spring. I haven't been full blown manic since 2010 which was followed by a mixed mood that morphed into a depression fueled by anxiety. That earned me a stay at the psych hospital for 2 weeks. That is how it is for me.

Honestly though, the only person who can really answer if you have rapid cycling bipolar or something else is your pdoc. Ask the hard questions, be an informed consumer.

[the beginning]

It's hard to even explain all the emotions and feelings but for me the most noticeable changes on a day to day basis is that I could feel generally energetic one day, and drained the next. I wouldn't say 'hyperactive' but just more enthusiastic and that energy might last a few days, but not always. And then what could be the next day, I just feel exhausted and irritated the whole day. Usually would start with be not being able to get out of bed and even if i oversleep, i'll still have no energy. Days like this I can be more 'unstable' emotionally and could easily get into a really depressed kind of mood with the right trigger but whether or not that happens, the exhaustion/irritation will stay with me the whole day. Being drained like that would probably last at most, 2 days, i never exactly recorded my moods but all of this is an educated guess

On any given week I could have a few days of being energetic, a few days being down and then the rest could just be a generally 'balanced' mood, when any of these happens is random for the most part but it all happens often. I've noticed though on 'balanced' or 'energetic' days with the right kind of trigger my mood can still plummet into one of those depressed moods, minus feeling exhausted, but I would be really irritated/angry, silent, and even have these racing suicidal thoughts. It won't usually last the whole day, only a few hours because i'd bounce back eventually but it's still definitely a noticeable change, and almost always was triggered by 'something', and what happens seems to be blown out of proportion.

Some other info is that -even if- I feel energetic or in a generally 'balanced' mood, i'll still be irritable and easily angered if that makes sense, i might even say slightly sad, and this is almost constant, possibly could be the environment i'm in. Energetic or not i'll still feel like this and even have outbursts (verbal) a few times a week at family, whether it's over a small issue or not the outbursts are magnified and more intense than they have to be. If I was in one of those depressed moods all of this would basically be intensified.

And I actually just started seeing a pdoc just last week and we just started going over everything briefly and the whole possibility of this being bipolar was because when I started talking about my moods he mentioned how maybe there was a chance I had it, even more so because my aunt has it. But there was a lot to talk about so hopefully in the next few appointments we can get more specific about things. I'll try to keep a mood chart to record everything and someone else mentioned BPD too and it actually seems a lot more possible for me to have it, more possible than having bipolar disorder

[BipolaRNurse]

I'm a rapid cycler myself, having had half-a-dozen serious mood episodes within the past year, including a couple of mixed episodes that were near-disastrous for me personally and did pretty much kill my career. But while my episodes are pretty extreme, they last anywhere from a few days to a couple of months---they don't change several times within a day, or even within the same week.

I've heard of people who do experience this---it's called "ultradian" cycling---but they are few and far between. A majority of folks with this mood pattern wind up being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, not bipolar, because of their extreme difficulty with regulating their emotions. BPD mood swings also tend to be triggered rather easily by an obvious stimulus, while bipolar episodes often seem to come out of nowhere.

However, a significant number of patients have elements of both illnesses, because they overlap in many ways and share many of the same features, and are thus diagnosed with both BP and BPD.

Of course, none of us are psychiatrists and we can't diagnose you; your best bet if you are concerned about a mood disorder issue is to seek professional mental health help. Hope this is at least somewhat helpful to you. Good luck.