[bbTofu]

Hello,
How would you describe your cycling patterns?
When you're leaning down, you have times (hours, days, weeks) that you gradually feel bit different (better/worse) ? and When you're leaning up feeling hypomanic.. do you have times you feel bit better (less hypo.. more normal..) ? Like.. can u be hypomanic for couple days and then have couple days of "normal".. "stable"..and then flyy up back again?

I hope you know what I mean, this breaks out of the so called "Episode" dichotomic psychiatric patternization. I feel like it's more complex than that. When you're in the higher part of the scale, u move in there, like between 5 to 10, u're not always 8-10, u wake up feeling 5 or 10 and can end the day somewhere between that.
Do you know what I mean? What do you think based on experience ?

[Jim62]

a typical cycle for me is to wake up normal, become hypo-manic, manic then crash into depression. so, the cycles last hours. going to sleep seems to end the cycling. this happens about three times per week.

[bbTofu]

Really? I started thinking that it's not bipolar cuz it's not typical.

"How is this possible to be super high and hours later I crash. EXHAUSTED. TIRED. Craving sleep.. honestly maybe I don't have it.. I'm not bipolar. It doesn't fit"
"It does. You're rapid-cycling. In fact, I read your file and it seems like you've been needing Lithium for years now..."

It's like .. suddenly it's official, it's real. I must be happy that finally some parts of the puzzles complete. But I'm terrified.

So that's why I've been asking about cycling patterns.

Anyone else can share please? Thank you Jim62.

[raspberrytorte]

I tend to have depressions starting in late spring and through the summer and feel normal or up in the fall and winter. If I'm going to have an episode.

[secretgalaxy]

This mania that I am in now started with a couple days hypo, back to normal, higher hypo, back to normal, etc. to now where I am very manic. This is the first time that my cycle has done this. I have had it switch in the middle of the day before, but that is not common.

There is no certain cycle yet. I cycle every few months, with depressions being longer than mania.

I don't consider my mood changes during a day to be cycling. To me cycling is about transitions from depression to hypo/mania several times or more in a year. My own cycle is connected to the changes of the seasons. Low during winter, high during spring, low during summer, high during fall.

As for mood changes during a day, they can be frequent.

[jacky8807]

Time has to pass feeling a certain way and out of the norm for me to consider it a cycle
If I feel down one day good the next....that's just life. Can you really call a couple hours to days of a mood an episode?
My depression last months and gets worse as time goes on
My mania last weeKS to months

[BeyondtheRainbow]

I don't have much that is predictable although I always get hypomanic/manic in June and will get depressed somewhere between Nov. and February nearly every year from SAD.

Otherwise who knows? I know that my episodes often contain periods of mania and depression (this last year several times although depression has prevailed) and I have to hit no symptoms for a bit before an episode is done. Until time passes without symptoms I still can head for an extreme and the episode goes on.

The last 11 months have been non-stop. I've had long episodes before but they usually were a few months with a short period of improvement between and not one continuous episode. I think. My memory of these things isn't very reliable so I trust my therapist to tell me these things. This period has just been different from my usual. Even then I went up a few weeks ago and it was pretty obvious I was going to crash down again which I did. I don't think I usually come out of mania and bypass depression. But I'm sure at some point I probably have. Cycling for me is confusing and makes mood charting hard.

I do, however, highly recommend mood charting. If I hadn't done it this spring my drs. never would have understood what I was going through and things would have gotten even worse. I use iMoodChart app which is available for iOS and android. There are other apps as well as paper and pencil charts. I like imood because you can enter 10x/day if you want and not at all if you want.

[CopperStar]

There's not a whole lot of predictability with my episodes. I seem to have one major, horribad mixed episode per year that involves psychosis, occasional off/on depression and very rarely over the years a brief mania adventure here and there.

I also believe that it has changed over the years. When I was younger, I seemed to get more pure depression and more pure mania symptoms. The depressions would last a long time, and the mania symptoms would be rather short-lived (like 2 weeks). Then as I got into my 20s I started getting a lot more dysphoric mania.

I guess I just roll with the punches and am used to it by now. Like over this past Winter I became extremely depressed and then extremely mixed towards the end of Summer going into Autumn, had to go on medication. Now I have been off my meds for weeks and am having no real BP symptoms, mostly just PD/anxiety problems, if anything. I am sure it will be back to say hello eventually.

[bbTofu]

Originally Posted by jacky8807

Time has to pass feeling a certain way and out of the norm for me to consider it a cycle
If I feel down one day good the next....that's just life. Can you really call a couple hours to days of a mood an episode?
My depression last months and gets worse as time goes on
My mania last weeKS to months

When I get depressed, it's mostly pure depression. While there are days I feel I'm capable of more than I could the day before, it's not linear but rather dynamic.
Last 3 months I was depressed, and maybe once in 2 weeks I had a day where I was able to go out and have fun.

Now that I'm hypo for 2 weeks +-, there are days I'm blasting energy, but still would crash exhausted in the evening or something.. maybe wake up bit tired, but then get fired-up in the evening.. this is what makes it confusing to me, psychiatrist clearly stated few times I'm hypomanic now but I just don't get it how dynamic it is even in the hypomanic stage/episode/period/watever.

Thank you guys for sharing your experience with your patterns.

[jacky8807]

Got ya!
Well I think this is why they say "having this mood every day for MOST of the day " ect in the psych books
I definitely think we can be hypo / depressed but switch around a little in the mist of it
I think that happens to alot of us BP people
I think the predominant mood swing is what's important
Unless you are mixed than hell.....you are outta luck lol

[Unrigged64072835]

I tend to get seriously depressed twice a year--once around this time of year, and again in the spring. My mania tends to come at any time, and I get depressed after that, too.

[bbTofu]

Fharraige, do you have days during mania that you would feel like some depression symptoms are crawling, u r no longer manic .. for half day or 1-2 days and then fly up again?
** needless to say there are no apparent reason for the depressive symptoms

[CycloMary]

I have rapid cycling BP triggered or made worse by BPD.
I had 2 days of major mixed episode, extreme agitation, revved up w negative inexhaustible energy.
Then like a switch, it abated. I was normal for 2 days,not high or low.
Now, 2 days of hypomania feeling ecstatic, overly optimistic, etc.

I look back & 2 weeks ago I was googling the most effective ways to commit suicide.
That lasted 9 days or so.

I don't have a pattern, just all over the place.

i don't really have a pattern, (at least not for the entire year)

the only thing that's really for sure is that my depressions are always during the summer, and if i end up in hospital at all, it will be during the summer months.

other times it's random.

headed in to a mixed now i think