Shifting moods

I'm finding it more and more difficult to verbalize what I am thinking in my head so bear with me...

~When your mood changes does it do so gradually or seemingly overnight?

~Do you notice a pattern - always going from mania into depression before leveling out stable (or any other pattern thereof)?

~Can you tell a strict difference between your moods or are the lines blurry?

I'm still in the process of accepting my diagnosis and what to expect (first therapy appt tomorrow finally). I'm struggling with feeling like maybe I'm just overreacting to stressors in my life and therefore not bipolar but just having some really good days and some really bad days. From what my husband and friend tell me though my good and bad days are too extreme to be considered "normal" but maybe it's just my personality that I was born with and can't be changed?

I feel very consumed every day of trying to analyze my mood every other minute of the day. I want to just give up and take my meds and not think about it...but then how will I describe to my pdoc how I've been feeling when he asks? If I feel better how will I know if it's due to the meds or my finally giving up the task of thinking about it constantly (not sure that is even possible for me).

I feel the need to strictly label my mood each and every day so that I can keep track of my patterns, but it is so mentally draining to do so. I know many have suggested to do this but I give up so easily because I'm sick of thinking about it. But ultimately that's probably the only way to conquer this.

I'm looking forward to therapy tomorrow but afraid I won't be able to find the words to accurately reflect how I'm feeling.

I'm trying not to give up hope but it's becoming very challenging not to...

Sounds like allot of rationalizing.

For instance, if you continue to feel better due to the meds, that should tell you something. And your therapist is interested in how you felt in the past, not how you feel now. Also stressors frequently help cause bipolar mood cycles.

I am still trying to understand my mood changes. My mood cycles without much notice. Frequently, I go from depression to hypomania. Stressors can flip me over to either depression or hypomania.

I've done the same and can empathize. I was diagnosed when over fourteen years ago, and it wasn't until this year where I finally accepted it and started therapy. It's weird, I too notice how my mood changes from one to another and I do over stress for no reason at all. Therapy does help. To have someone there to listen openly to what you have to say is very helpful. I thought that friends and family would do it, but to have a third party from a different point of view does help. It does take a while to become of aware of your emotions without overheating to things. There are the good and the bad that comes with this illness. Calming down the emotions is what I find tricky, but it last for a short period of time and you overcome it.

It's overnight for me, but I'm ultra-rapid cycling, so it makes sense that the changes are very sudden.

There's no real pattern other than stress making me decompensate and meds improving things. I'm not really sure how to identify 'level', since I usually only notice I'm hypomanic looking back.

I can tell when I'm depressed or mixed because the feelings are so overwhelming and negative. I think there's a fine line between happy and hypomanic, though, and that one is definitely harder to notice.

I would suggest that you not spend too much time obsessing over your moods and diagnosis, because this adds a lot of stress and I find that when I spend too much time thinking about bipolar disorder it really depresses me. You could maybe set aside a few times each day to do 'mood checks' where you spend a few minutes considering what mood you're in, then maybe record it in a mood journal and move on to something else. Obsessing over it all can really interfere with living as normal a life as possible.

What I do.
ONCE per day I track my mood on a mood tracker. There is one right here on PC.
Great, good, mixed, bad, horrible.
ONCE/day!!!
Then just chill out and live.

Looking back, I must have had this since I was a teenager. But I always just thought of myself as a huge drama queen, with a tendency to be scattered brained. Who knew?

I have flip switching mood changes every week or so. All though it's slower to come out of one and go base line. That takes a day or two.

I think Pawn offered good advice. Track your mood daily and then move on. It is what it is.