[eina]

So I've been told recently by several different psychologists/psychiatrists that I display traits of Bipolar 2. According to everyone I've ever seen I'm a difficult patient to diagnose because my symptoms are strange and atypical for everything and no one has been comfortable giving me a solid answer. I wanted to post and see if anyone here has been diagnosed Bipolar 2 with similar symptoms to me, or if you have any other thoughts.

All my symptoms came on really suddenly and seemingly out of the blue at 14, starting with a random school phobia that grew into severe general anxiety and depression. Everything spiraled from there and medication only seemed to make things worse, although I don't remember them making me hypo/manic. Some made me extremely depressed and foggy, some made me really agitated and paranoid, some just made me sick. None of them did any good for me as far as I can tell. I am 22 now and have been off medication for 4 years.

Nowadays my baseline mood is kind of apathetic and numb with no drive to do anything. I am prone to depressive moods. I have periods of time where my mood is unpredictable and I swing into very very dark weeks where I am so depressed I can barely speak and I move very stiffly and slowly. I've had two separate weeks in the last year where my mood was so high I felt agitated and had rushes of euphoria with giggling fits and was very volatile and suffering from horrible insomnia, but I didn't engage in any kind of risky behavior and apart from speaking very quickly no one else really noticed so I don't know.

The back and forth swinging and overall distress seems to happen much more severely during the winter, I've had a more stable (but still depressed) mood since around May when it started to warm up. Routine, sleep, exercise, healthy diet and getting out of the house frequently also help stabilize things a bit but never seem to make a dent in the overall depression or anxiety.

My sleep patterns are one of the things that always stands out to doctors. I cannot keep a normal schedule. My bedtime moves all around the clock but never in a predictable pattern. Some weeks it tends to crawl forward by a few hours every day no matter what time I go to bed. Other weeks I can hold it at the same time for awhile with a lot of effort, or conversely can't make it move no matter how hard I try and get stuck on a horrible 9am-6pm kind of schedule. Some weeks I just can't sleep more than 5 hours a night and I don't get sleepy for 20+ hours. Others I'm exhausted constantly and sleep like the dead for 12. Some weeks it's back and forth and a complete mess. It does not matter if I crawl into bed at 10pm every night and out of bed at 6am sharp- the sleep will come whenever it wants to and there's nothing I can do to coax it out. It makes it very difficult to feel normal.

I also have either severe social anxiety or avoidant personality disorder depending on who you ask. I suffer from very bad chronic derealization/depersonalization that tends to rise and fall with my moods and sleep, getting worse with depression/deprivation but never going away.

Everything just seems to naturally cycle without any obvious triggers. Sleep, moods, derealization, motivation, energy. So many times I've had 'false starts' where I put in massive effort and start to improve on something- getting out of the house, trying a new hobby, I even tried going to college for a while- but after a certain point the cycle changes and it crashes down around me. It's devastating. I feel useless right now, living with my parents at 22, unable to drive or work or move forward at all and no one can really tell me why.

Does any of this sound familiar? Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Thank you.

[lilypup]

I also started symptoms around the age of 14, but I was pretty standard hypomanic, brief mania, and then big depression. I only sleep too much when depressed otherwise my sleep is fine. Even if you can't get a precise dx, are you going back on meds to treat symptoms?.
Don't feel bad about being at home with your parents. My 26 is home to save money and my 20 year old is home because of school. And both of my boys took a year off before college and went back. You can always go back.
I consider myself in a fragile recovery and still don't like to drive. I think a lot of problems can be solved with the right meds and docs.
Many hugs and please hang in there.

[~Christina]

As lilypup said ... Are the doctors going to treat you with medications and or therapy ? You dont needs to be diagnosed with Bipolar or anything to start treating the symptoms. Most doctors prefer to wait a while to make sure that the diagnosis given is the correct one.

Welcome to PC You will find loads of support and advice here

[eina]

Thank you for your kind replies!

We're in the process of trying to find a medication but it's difficult because I'm so sensitive to them and have tried so many that had bad effects for me. I've been in therapy for years but it's very slow, minimal progress, even with my current therapist who is very competent.

My pdoc just wanted me to do psych testing before she prescribed anything, and the person I saw for the evaluation put bipolar 2 as a note in her analysis so it's pretty freshly on my mind. Everyone seems afraid to put a solid label on me and give an official diagnosis of something, it makes me feel a little helpless to know even the professionals are still confused! I was just kind of wondering if anyone else had had similarly odd symptoms.

[muller1209]

Originally Posted by eina

So I've been told recently by several different psychologists/psychiatrists that I display traits of Bipolar 2. According to everyone I've ever seen I'm a difficult patient to diagnose because my symptoms are strange and atypical for everything and no one has been comfortable giving me a solid answer. I wanted to post and see if anyone here has been diagnosed Bipolar 2 with similar symptoms to me, or if you have any other thoughts.

All my symptoms came on really suddenly and seemingly out of the blue at 14, starting with a random school phobia that grew into severe general anxiety and depression. Everything spiraled from there and medication only seemed to make things worse, although I don't remember them making me hypo/manic. Some made me extremely depressed and foggy, some made me really agitated and paranoid, some just made me sick. None of them did any good for me as far as I can tell. I am 22 now and have been off medication for 4 years.

Nowadays my baseline mood is kind of apathetic and numb with no drive to do anything. I am prone to depressive moods. I have periods of time where my mood is unpredictable and I swing into very very dark weeks where I am so depressed I can barely speak and I move very stiffly and slowly. I've had two separate weeks in the last year where my mood was so high I felt agitated and had rushes of euphoria with giggling fits and was very volatile and suffering from horrible insomnia, but I didn't engage in any kind of risky behavior and apart from speaking very quickly no one else really noticed so I don't know.

The back and forth swinging and overall distress seems to happen much more severely during the winter, I've had a more stable (but still depressed) mood since around May when it started to warm up. Routine, sleep, exercise, healthy diet and getting out of the house frequently also help stabilize things a bit but never seem to make a dent in the overall depression or anxiety.

My sleep patterns are one of the things that always stands out to doctors. I cannot keep a normal schedule. My bedtime moves all around the clock but never in a predictable pattern. Some weeks it tends to crawl forward by a few hours every day no matter what time I go to bed. Other weeks I can hold it at the same time for awhile with a lot of effort, or conversely can't make it move no matter how hard I try and get stuck on a horrible 9am-6pm kind of schedule. Some weeks I just can't sleep more than 5 hours a night and I don't get sleepy for 20+ hours. Others I'm exhausted constantly and sleep like the dead for 12. Some weeks it's back and forth and a complete mess. It does not matter if I crawl into bed at 10pm every night and out of bed at 6am sharp- the sleep will come whenever it wants to and there's nothing I can do to coax it out. It makes it very difficult to feel normal.

I also have either severe social anxiety or avoidant personality disorder depending on who you ask. I suffer from very bad chronic derealization/depersonalization that tends to rise and fall with my moods and sleep, getting worse with depression/deprivation but never going away.

Everything just seems to naturally cycle without any obvious triggers. Sleep, moods, derealization, motivation, energy. So many times I've had 'false starts' where I put in massive effort and start to improve on something- getting out of the house, trying a new hobby, I even tried going to college for a while- but after a certain point the cycle changes and it crashes down around me. It's devastating. I feel useless right now, living with my parents at 22, unable to drive or work or move forward at all and no one can really tell me why.

Does any of this sound familiar? Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Thank you.

def does sound familar, everyone has different symtops for bipolar, if u read online almost all of them say something about spending money but my finances are always kept in order. i am bipolar 2. i tend to be more on the depressive side with very occasional hypomania. I was diagnosed major depressive for a long time. i would have bouts of not sleeping or all i would do was sleep. i think the main thing is to be as honest and open as possible. thats the only way to really get help.