[formula1]

As someone who has suffered from depression for my entire life I can say the truth sets me free in a lot of ways. My life is a weird struggle between the feeling of hopelessness, paranoia makes me feel like I am worth taking care of and overall confusion of my emotions and what my best path.

Today I believe that I am a dog, to be trained as a dog. Find what good things reward me and reward myself for doing good. Avoid what hurts me or rewards me for doing bad. Additionally I have almost always sufferred from dellusions of granduer, believing I can do more than I can. These delusions have always brought me joy and purpose, as if I am worth life.

Sometimes depression comes up again, now adays I rationalize it. It is my brain telling me my current path is unrealistic, I will fail and that I am a burden to society. Time/practice of a skill is the ultimate determination of realism. Failing is the reault of not preparing for obstacles and not looking for opportunities. Being a burden is only official when I stop thinking, stop talking, stop bringing emotions to other people and stop pushing for what I want.

To be homest, most of my interactions with depression are micro aggressions. Last month I got severely depressed. But that also comes about when there are promises I cannot keep. Which leads me to say, this may or may not be the correct road but It has helped me.

[InclinedPlane]

Are you sure you're not bipolar? I thought I suffered from depression for 20 years until I finally figured out I was actually bipolar. The portrayal of bipolar in the media and the zeitgeist about it are not reflective of what it looks like, or feels like, in reality. More so, the prevalence of "bipolar 2" (depression + hypomania, not full on mania) is much greater than bipolar 1, but poorly understood by the public at large. There are a lot of tropes about bipolar that just aren't true. That you have tons and tons of energy like you're on meth, that you act "crazy" when you're manic, that you're ludicrously "happy" when manic/hypomanic, that phases come and go at random. None of that bore a resemblance to my life, so I never knew. For me bouts of hypomania always just felt like periods where I had just found something to work on and somehow had managed to maintain focus on it for a while, they're periods of productivity or enthusiasm, often about new things. And only rarely would I describe them as periods of happiness, when you're depressed for so long it can be difficult to even know what it feels like to be happy, and you can spend time in a hypomanic state without being notably happy.

But I noticed that there are times when my sleep schedule is very different (easily masked because I have a sleep disorder as well which makes it difficult to maintain a consistent schedule), times when I am very chatty, times when I'm very focused on a project or game or activity (focus on goal oriented activities), times when I feel a sense of inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, times of increased risk taking, and so on. I just always saw these things as aspects of my personality, and things that I'd been able to leverage for my own benefit or, usually, keep under control.

Here's a list of symptoms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_II_disorder#Hypomanic_...

[formula1]

What you wrote and the article are spot on to my symptoms. I often pass off my intense excitement as a personality trait and have rarely met anyone similar. I often relate bi polar to uncontrollable changes while my changes are very reasonable and often predictable though prolonged and intense. I appreciate you sharing this information with me

[baus]

My belief is that the symptoms of bipolar ARE part of your personality. They aren't good or bad, they just are. But you can't let them get the best of you. You have to recognize them and work to negate them.