Did something trigger your first experience of bipolar?

was told 20 years ago I was bipolar while being treated for depression , but two years ago after a trumatic event at work and turning to ad's I wound up inpatient and accepted taking meds,, I still don't believe my dx but my pdoc is 100% certain my first documented mania was at 55 during the inpatient..during my earlier years I was "like a ping pong ball in a hurricane" I guess hypo .. during my religious days I truly believed I was God's gift to mankind.. was so depressed at one point attempted suicide,, guess I have been this way a long time..

I'm only one in my family..

I'm the only one that would admit that something's wrong. The other 4 are in denial.

I really am the only one I know of in my family history. Guess it has to start somewhere

I have childhood trauma; but, my first hypomanic episode came at 15 and with no known trigger. It was swiftly followed by severe depression. I have been on the rollercoaster ever since. Stress makes the episodes worse now.

I was in college. I grew up in a fairly hellfire and brimstone type of environment. The Image of the Beast films were a considerable part of my childhood as a young christian. I went to christian school and finally met some 'normal' christians, it was nice. I got into psychology & theology, philosophy, early christian history it was a blast for a while. I kind of settled into it a bit, then I got news that my folks may divorce, I was also taking abnormal psych and research methods that semester.
I had a bit of med student syndrome for a while, and eventually a student counselor suggested I may have the early stages of schizophrenia. I was floored. I was falling apart, yeah, but it just hadn't occurred to me. I left on greased marble tears and hid in my dorm for a few days. A friend of mine heard me crying from the parking lot, and thought the idea was a bit off. I soon went back to the counseling office and spoke to a different counselor. She agreed that i was definitely having a bout of depression with some psychotic features but didn't see much reason to speculate further. Her quick dismissal felt cold, at the time, but I came to know her a bit more and realized she was actually really trying, quite hard actually, at keeping me in a safe place. She gave me the names of a few people I could talk to.

I always wished that the content of was different, that I could perseverate on something else, so that I could have parts of that life back, but it's like having certain colors always mean something, it's like being a pilot who doesn't like blue.

I have only been diagnosed for a few months, but I was told the same thing.

I lead a very high stress life. At the time of my diagnosis, I was in the middle of a bad case of mania, which I believe was likely spurred by relationship issues I was having at the time.

Prior to this, I was being treated for depression, but I do believe it is possible that I would never have been diagnosed bipolar unless it were for this stress snap.

Yeah, my first severe and prolonged depression (20) came out of nowhere. I was having a GREAT time prior to that (Hypo? Maybe, who knows?) and it totally sideswiped me. I was completely mystified, thinking there MUST be a reason, a situation. But there wasn't. I derailed. It was all swept under the rug.

Despite living a textbook BP II life, I wasn't dx'd for many years. It was only then that I realized that there WAS a cause for that first big depression, that I wasn't being stupid for not being able to point to anything situational triggering it. It was the BP.

I had Childhood sexual abuse but that lead to classic PTSD and depression with Sui idealization. Although I had serious depressive episodes and dissociative periods it wasn't until I was 25 and being abused by my husband when I was hospitalized the first time and they gave me antidepressants. Those AD are what pushed me over the edge from PTSD and depression into mania.

It started with no particular trigger, but all my major/severe episodes have been triggered by extreme periods of stress. I told my pdoc that i thought maybe it was all a stress reaction, and not bipolar. She said lots of people go through stress, but they don't end up in hospital because if it. True, but maybe i'm just more emotional, passionate, and intense them most people... Maybe that's what bipolar is? We just feel everything so much more

Me too. I'm the only one who will own up and seek treatment. Everyone else just drinks.