[Capriciousness]

I was wondering if anybody else deals with this. I am pretty stable on my meds but I feel like I cycle around a lot. Not necessarily in an awful unmanageable kind of way but it still impacts my life ya know. Like I'll be energetic and motivated for several hours or days and maybe even ramp it up to something like (I have to see a psychic right now! What a great idea! NOW! NOW! NOW!) and then several hours to days of low energy and more negative like thinking and ugh i cannot make dinner. Maybe some ADD type stuff, some hollow feeling, some anxiety and panicky fears flying around all in different ways at different times. Just that off weirdness I know and love and don't really think of as down or up necessarily. And these cycles seems to happen fairly regularly and with no pattern. But they don't last long and are manageable so pdoc wants to leave things as they are meds wise.

Bipolar is just always spoken of as "episodic" and for sure I have had true blue episodes and I lean towards rapid cycling anyway but as my awareness grows I realize I experience bipolar as more of an all the time kind of thing in terms of feeling 100 % normal. I just don't think it is so that in between episodes my brain is similar to my husbands or my friends. I still feel very much Bipolar.

Thoughts, experiences, ideas?

[Capriciousness]

Oh no am I the only one

Nope, not the only one!
I think to be honest it's hard to pull out which parts of my daily thinking/behaviors are the bp, adhd or gad...there's so much overlap and for sure my day to day-ness is different. I"m never the same person every day I get up. For the most part I have so much OTHER stuff in my head I'm not paying much attention to how I really am. Sometimes it comes up and bites me in the butt.

[littlemiss44]

I can totally relate to the rapid cycling. One hour I may be up for anything then the next hour I just want to rest. This is a big reason why I don't like to leave my house. I never know how I'm going to feel between a couple hours sometimes. I can wake up happy and feel alive...have a great day. Then the next day I'm down in the dumps. It's all unknown. When I'm down which is most of the time I get easily agitated and.overwhelmed. it just comes with the territory. I also don't do the best self care. I don't eat three meals a day. I usually am not that hungry so I just don't eat. I agree with you that it may not be a solid episode but that's where the cycling comes into play.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using Tapatalk

[Secretum]

You're not the only one. I call this phenomenon "cycles within cycles". I have depressions that last for months, and at any given time within that period, I am most likely to feel horrible. But there is also a chance that I will be normal or even hypomanic, because on top of the month-long depression I also have moods that change much faster.

My pdoc says I have a "cyclothymic temperament",which means that my baseline mood is labile.

A few years ago, I asked a question similar to yours on this very forum. Someone described it as "messy bipolar"; I quite like that term.

[Capriciousness]

I feel better. Thanks guys.

I relate to all of you.

Cycles within cycles....messy bipolar...

Great new words and concepts to further help me manage this

Much appreciated