Posted by Dragon Black on September 3, 2007, at 16:00:18
In reply to Re: Tianeptine appears to work. Now fix my brain!, posted by fuchsia on September 3, 2007, at 7:35:47
> Do you consider yourself bipolar?
>
> I have bipolar and will be trying tianeptine. It's interesting that you have had a 'minicycle'.
>
> fuchsia
>Years ago I considered whether I was bipolar and finally decided that I wasn't, just MDD. My brother is (schizo-affective, actually) and my mother and one of my sisters have both been diagnosed with bipolar. However, I've always thought that both were incorrect, and a Pdoc actually retracted the Dx for my sister. My mother tends to present as just a classic unipolar. Lately, however, I've begun to reassess whether I do in fact fall into the BPII spectrum. I do minicycle into and out of depression (several times over the course of 7-10 days or so) and I tend to be hypomanic when I come out of them. I've always thought that this wasn't true mania but rather represented the enormous relief that attends leaving a depressive episode. Of course I feel hypo - it's the "return of hope" - especially when I've been on the brink and feel that things needed to get better or else, I think that it would be impossible to come out of it and just be euthymic. Within a week or two I get habituated to feeling normal again and usually am no longer hypomanic. But ultimately I don't really know, I'm aware that I have a strong psychic bias against escalating the label I wear, and I definitely have times where I fit a lot of the symptoms of hypomania. Still trying to wrap my head around it. I also have conflicted thoughts about the validity of the entire categories of BPII, cyclothymia, etc. I mean, at some point, it's like the sphere of behavior being encompassed covers pretty much everyone....
poster:Dragon Black
thread:779832
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070831/msgs/780590.html