emotional trauma and bipolar

For those of you with bipolar, I hope you can help me out. I have a lot of questions about it, and reading articles isn't really helping. I would like to get first hand perspectives of how the disease progresses.

I want to know if you had an emotional trauma, I realize that it will probably trigger a manic/hypomanic or depressive stage, but does it cause you to cycle quicker? Is it temporary, or are you on a new more volatile level. If it's temporary, how long does it last?

Well I hope I can help you out here. I believe I was meant to be BP all my life but the death of my mom triggered my self harm. Then as I grew into my teenage years, I believe that a tough upbringing brought on my BP and full on mood swings. It started out with major depression with small phases of mania. By 18 I was diagnosed and medicated but didn't take it seriously. I would stop my meds and through my 20's I abused drugs and alcohol with very few times of sobriety inbetween. Things like a break up would trigger my BP or BPD and I would start self harming again and self medicating. During these times I didn't believe I needed meds. But I did. So yes personal trauma did bring on mood swings and BP episodes.

Now my current stressor is work and substance abuse. Work causes major mood swings and fatigue causes me to abuse my meds which bring on mixed episodes. I work ten hour shifts in a stressful environment. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone with BP.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

Trileptal 600mg BID
Buspar 45mg
Seroquel 150-300mg for sleep
Ativan 1mg PRN
Vyvanse 70mg
Risperdal 4-6mg PRN

I don't get msgs unless the other person using tapatalk app!

It doesn't always progress. In many cases it can get better and learning everything you can about yourself helps. Breakups, Deaths they can trigger me.

I have experienced severe traumas both in my childhood and as an adult, and yes, they do often (but not always) trigger episodes. This is why I also have PTSD. It has a wonderful array of its own features for me to deal with along with the BP. I also rapid cycle but I cannot say whether that is related to trauma or just part of my version of BP. The trauma and BP do seem to feed off each other at times. For example; while experiencing one of the worst traumas of my life (that went on for months) I stopped sleeping and began acting very unusual, going from wild and upbeat to suicidal. For a long time I thought it was all just the trauma but my psychiatrist believes it was a mixed and/or manic episode. There are also many times when I am just normal, like now, and I relish them.