What is bipolar?

I was not feeling well. So went to ER here. At 12 a.m. The doctor checked me out. He said its all in your brain. He referred me to a psychiatrist. He said something like I am bipolar. Sometimes I am sad and then happy. I can't seem to sleep tonight with these thoughts. What is bipolar? Is it something serious? I will sleep late tonight. Don't have to go to work tomorrow anyways. I am seeing the psychiatrist first thing in the morning. But want to know now what is bipolar.

Sorry to hear you found out like that and weren't made aware of what bipolar is exactly or didn't realise you had it till the doc said. Bipolar is complex illness that involves periods of moderate to severe depressive and manic/high episodes with some times of more normal mood. It includes different symptoms both mental and physical. People can move from high to low or low to high dramatically. Bipolar is difficult to live with esp if you don't have much help and support. Most people take drugs for it and may get therapy as well to try to cope better.

Creative one gave a good synopsis of what bp is. All I can add is it is a life time disorder that does normally become worse with age. Sometimes the cycles come out of no where and can be very intense. I believe that most ppl have a tendency to demonstrate a particular mood more often then The other. At least I do and most I have spoken to shared they do. Sorry you found out that way. I would definitely have a pdoc to confirm and assess. Best of luck.

Glad you got into the psychologist quickly. I'm surprised an ER doc would diagnose like that. Try not to ponder too much until you hear what the pDoc has to say. Hang in there!

Glad you're seeing your pdoc.

See what he has to say first then take it from there.

I could point you out to a few links here on psych central about bipolar and it's symtoms but let's wait and see what your diagnosis is first before you invest your time in educating yourself about this.

Be well.

I know you're probably going to get alot of clinical definitions here so I'll give you my personal experience with BP because I'm caught in an episode at the moment and can't think too clearly. For me, everything is intense. Every emotion goes to the extreme. Love, hate, happy, angry, sadness, depression, you name it, it's surreal for me. And I have little to no control over how I react to them. But don't let me frighten you! I've also been unmedicated for most of my life with this. There IS help and things you can do. I just took the hard road trying to manage it myself. You're going to be ok. You've got us for support and your doc can help you medically. Here if you need to talk.

THIS is exactly what I thought! It seems pretty glib of him to just toss something like that out there!! I mean, unless you're super manic (or possibly seeming so on account of a drug reaction -- not saying that's the case, just speaking generally) how the hell could he know?! He might suspect, but responsibility should suggest he leave any potential conclusions to the psychiatrist who can look into things more thoroughly. Also, if they observed either of the above extreme situations, they'd want to keep you around for a bit (like overnight) for your own safety I should think.

Don't worry on it too much. What you describe could be any number of things. There are a whole lot of factors that go into diagnosis and sometimes being sad and sometimes being happy just really isn't much to go on (Not meaning to discount any suffering this may cause you, just that there's a WHOLE lot more to BP than that and I just think it's irresponsible of him with so little to go on AND it not being his field of specialty even(!))

Frankly, I think he made an irresponsibly rash "diagnosis". So really, don't worry about it. When you talk to the psychiatrist, just simply and honestly answer his/her questions of how it is in your life. All that getting frantic over symptoms is likely to cause is over-thinking and stress.

Hope you get some nice

BP is simple

it is rapid mood shifts with extreme highs or lows .........depression to hypomanic mode ....fast talking ...ideas are coming out none stop .....getting into a project and forgetting to eat or sleep ....u keep running problems of the day in your head over and over and over in a loop pushing u on one side of the scale or other ( think hulk but sad want to die and happy u are on top of the world )

basically just chemicals in the head are off ........so your mood/emotions are effected easily

as for having it can be a curse or a good thing some ppl in history have done great things with it driving them others when completely batty and ate ppl (they had other issues too)

Eeeeeeeeew to the last sentence

if that made u go ewwwwww.....u should really stay out of Canada they have the most cannibals in history ( snowed in with no food for several months at a time)

here is a list of famous ppl with BP
List of people with bipolar disorder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

hope it helps