Bipolar Disorder Forum - Minor Bipolar? Effects At School.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ MY STORY!
Please do not prioritize my case; other people probably need help more. Only read this if you have spare time!

Hey everybody,

I think I have Bipolar Disorder, but I’m really not sure what’s going on… so I was wondering if you could help me out. I'm a senior in high school.

A couple of weeks before school started this year I got depressed for a number of reasons. First of all, I had girl trouble… and that always does the trick. On top of that, I quit football and just sat around all day until school started. I went to a party or two, which were fun, but they only made me more depressed because when I went home/woke up in the morning, I was very sad that it was over and I had to sit on my ass again.

As soon as school started, however, my mood COMPLETELY changed. I LOVED the feeling I got. I’m a senior this year, and I immediately had a feeling of monumental importance and that I was “destined for greatness.” There was no sign of depression whatsoever. I had no inhibition, I was making friends with more popular kids, and I was smooth with girls and made people feel good about themselves—I swear I was like James Bond or something! This level of confidence is something completely unprecedented for me. At one point in my Journalism class, maybe after receiving a complement or two to boost my mood, I felt DRUNK. The class was spinning a little bit and I was so eager to make friends with the people next to me, and I did not plan out things to say like I may have normally done, but I would just say the right things at the right time. I flawlessly handled the situation I was having with the troublesome girl. I never feared being judged b/c I knew I was doing the right thing and I could see it in the eyes of the people I was talking to how impressed and happy they were. The feeling was incredible and I just what I need for my senior year. I want to make as many friends as possible—I want to enjoy my final year of high school, go to prom with a girl, and have fun!

Unfortunately, the next day, the feeling was quickly fading. And the day after that, I returned to my normal, shyer self. I have a good amount of friends, some of whom are only a couple of steps above the “loser” category, and others who are very popular and well-liked. Suddenly today, I feel neglected by the more popular kids. I remember on the first couple of days of school everybody was being sociable with me, but now people do not seem to be as open. More than likely though, they are just as sociable as they were on the first couple of days of school, but I make it seem like they are closing me out.

Today I was a wreck at school. I’m still not afraid to speak loudly when spoken too, and I will talk to people I don’t know, but I was much more self-conscious. I became very saddened when my friends would not listen to me or laugh at a joke I made or go out of their way to talk to me. But that’s what brings me to my suggestion that I have bipolar disorder.

Before the summer I was thrown into a depression that lost me over ten pounds. When school started, I entered a hypomania stage because I was finally out in the real world and had much less of a reason to be depressed (especially since I fixed the girl trouble.) I was also a senior and it gave me a great feeling of power. However, that hypomania stage melted into slight depression when the rush of being back at school as a senior was counterbalanced by reality—I am more reputable as a shy kid than somebody who would likely be so smooth and outgoing. You have to know that I’ve been at this school for five years and I’ve pretty much been in the “couple of notches above the loser group” group.

When I told my brother about how great my first couple of days at school were, and how completely unjustifiably proud and euphoric I felt, he said that I should hope I don’t fall into another stage of depression, because that would mean I could be bipolar. Suddenly I realized how much sense it made. I went online and the symptoms of bipolar disorder matched EVERY SINGLE THING I had felt in the past weeks. The person I was in school on that first day was NOT me. It was a completely different person. It was the person I’d hoped every day to be. Outgoing, funny, entertaining, inhibition-less. I made people HAPPY, I made myself HAPPY. It was one of the greatest days of my life. But it’s all because of a mental illness?

My sister has bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. My mother had a mental disorder as well… I’m not sure what it’s called medically because I’m not even supposed to know about it, but she thought she was the messiah and that there were fifteen disciples looking for her, and that there were messages in the bible calling her. We went to Rome so she could give him a letter pertaining to this. My older sister also has something going on, I’m not sure about it though. So, mental illness does run in the family.

So that’s my story, I hope it was entertaining because it was sure as hell long! I’m posting this article not because I can’t deal with the depression, but because I want to find a way to "have more" hypomania. I can handle depression, believe me. I believe that depression isn’t unrelenting pessimism, but rather a state of NOT ignoring unappealing aspects of life and unpleasant truths. Because all that happiness is is ignoring such things. I have my ways of coping with this.

I know it might sound selfish, brash, even disrespectful to people on this board to come on and ask for a way to dwell in the hypomania stage, but I LOVE people and that stage helps me express that. I have always loved people. Everybody has his and her own stories to share, his own quirks, idiosyncrasies, and tendencies… and we can’t have lived life until we have experienced them.

I am sure that there is so much I don’t know about this disorder, and that even the thought of “dwelling” in a certain stage is probably absurd. So if you would, please just answer some questions for me!

1) I have experienced depression, hypomania, and then depression again. My depression lasted for a couple of weeks, hypomania lasted a couple of days—will this depression last a couple of weeks… will I ever have another hypomania stage??
2) I am 17 years old and weigh 162 pounds. (I weighed around 175 before the depression.) I have a failure of a sister (the mentally ill one) who I had a big fight with 3 years ago and haven’t talked to her since. She went off to college, got someone else expelled for stupid reasons, felt proud, came back for a hellish two months of summer, went back to college for one day and dropped out and is living back with us. She treats everyone like sh*t, and tears our family apart. What does that mean for me in terms of the disorder and myself?
3) The last time I drank alcohol at a party after convincing myself I had the disorder, the regular amount of alcohol had no effect on me whatsoever. I was very eager to return to an inhibition-less state, this time with alcohol, but it had no effect! I was sober as a monk! Do you think that it was just because I had eaten dinner or something or it was different alcohol that did this, or is it related to the disorder?
-- (By the way, if you’re wondering how I go to parties if I’m so shy, I have a popular friend who takes me to them. You know, I’ve always had so much potential, and I feel like hypomania is the only thing to unlock it!)

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING TO MY STORY!

- Don