[TheatreKid]

I've just been thinking and reading, and what I want to know is, does depression ALWAYS follow mania for you? Is it possible to come down from mania into a euthymic state?

I'm just interested in other peoples' patterns. Seasonal, episodic, whatever. What's yours?

I tend to be manic in the summer with a little bit of rapid cycling and mixed, every October I end up manic for about a month, and then depressed. For the past two years I required hospitalization in November. I end up depressed again in January, this year it lasted for 2 or 3 months. My first textbook manic episode was in April 2008.

Pretty much every manic episode I have is followed by a depression of sorts, but when I rapid cycle in the summer I can go from manic to euthymic or depressed to euthymic without completing the pattern.

[pawn78]

I hardly ever get depressed. I kind of stay with "mixed" or hypo all the time. It's weird.

[BipolaRNurse]

You know, I think of it as like having a fever.....you're hot and sweaty, then when your temperature drops to normal it feels like you're freezing to death. IOW, not feeling "high" anymore feels like depression when it's really just returning to baseline.

Then there are the episodes where you plummet straight into the basement without even being able to wave at "normal" on the way down. I hate those.

[~Christina]

There is no logical reason for my episodes ... Im up and down and middle ground at random ..I do not always hit depression after a manic trip.. I have gotten better at body surfing them as they hit... I still have very scarey episodes where I am literally 5 mins away from a trip to the ER and Inpatient.

One very important thing I have learned through Therapy is I no longer hyper focus on what mood I am in... I have regular mood shifts just like everyone else on the planet bipolar or not.

[wildflowerchild25]

Without medication I cycle very rapidly. I have two to three week cycles of depression and mania with sometimes a couple of days of normal in between. Medicated I still seem to cycle but the time is lengthened.

Winter is a bad time for me. I cycle into mania but it's usually more of a dark mixed episode. I seem to be able to barely make it through and end up hospitalized in spring around late April.

Depression does always follow hypomania for me. Usually the hypomania turns manic then mixed pretty quick and then crashes down. But I get new surprises every cycle. Like surprise, psychotic break this time! Surprise, month long mixed episode! Yay! Yeah it's messed up.