Extreme reactions

So I haven't really been depressed or manic or mixed lately but since I stopped taking the lithium (yes, with pdocs permission) I've been having lots of ups and downs, but it's not familiar cycling. Normally I get manic for a week or two and then depressed for a few weeks and then go normal for a while and repeat. Lately if something good happens I feel awesome and great and almost hypomanic-like, but then half an hour later something will happen and I'll be in a rage screaming and such, and then an hour later I'll be really really sad and even at points suicidal, but then something good will happen and I'm overjoyed.
Is this what normal emotions are like (that I have been too medicated to experience in the past) or what? I'm confused and need to make sense of it all.

I had a major breakdown after stopping lithium so I feel that emotions are deregulated once discontinuing this med for some people. Please be watchful. I'm currently having the all over the place emotions too, but I think it's a bad combo of life stress, medical abuse, springtime, pain, allergies, my period and now a head cold causing a mix of horrendous symptoms. I'm sorry you are struggling so badly and hope you find helpful answers to your dilemma.

You describe some instability of emotions.
Please be careful.
I hope emotions balance soon.


WC

This is emotional deregulation and sounds a lot like me. I live like that 24/7 and it can make bipolar cycles confusing or hard to track (actually confusing, in a textbook-conceptual sense). How can your emotions swing so much when you're clearly hypo/depressed?

Sometimes it gets blurry with the episodes, but I normally can tell them apart. Like, when I'm hypomaniac my reactions to stimuli are very different from when I'm depressed, but still extreme. My therapist said I "dress my feelings as a piece of clothing", which is pretty accurate.

Normal emotions don't include suicidal thoughts

This is something I really struggle with. I swear I can't believe normal people with normal emotions don't feel suicidal on a daily basis.

Really, whenever someone says this I'm like "whaaaaat?"