Expert: Jennifer - 3/16/2009

Question
I think i may have bi-polar disorder. I have periods of depression, sadness, crying and where I feel disgusted with myself and feel like i have no friends and that i am worthless.

And then I have periods where I am happy, excited, i feel that i am important, special, that i am intelligent and I get impulsive and think about doing things like emigrating to another country or something or I talk and think and plan about moving out when, really, I can't afford to, but at the time I REALLY feel like I can.

And, whether I'm very depressed or happy I get obsessive about things - like work or what someone has said to me and i just can't stop thinking about it or worrying about it. And also i overreact - big time - at the littlest things or if someone gives me a funny look.

Bi-polar doesn't officially run in my family but my dad gets mood swings and he can have really unrealistic ideas - like he's going to buy my a flat or something - but those ideas never last.

I think my tearfulness and depression may get worse the closer it is to my period but I still swing back and forth all the time between happiness and depression - for no real reason at all. But when I'm depressed everything in my life seems like its hopeless and I just can't remember how it feels to be happy and when I'm happy all the things I were upset about don't seem important anymore.

But the thing is - maybe I'm just imagining things and i'm not bi-polar. my boyfriend says i'm imagining it. I experienced symptoms of Obsessive compulsive disorder a few years ago but they were quite mild and i managed to work through them and now i'm almost fine (although I do get a bit of OCD type symptoms occasionally -usually when I'm anxious.) Also I may not be bi-polar because although i get periods of happiness, excitement I wouldn't say I'm ever EXTREMELY happy because I can swing so quickly back into depressive thoughts and feelings or just pure rage. And when I'm happy I wouldn't say that I've got LOADs more energy. Maybe I'm just seeing bi-polar because i know the symptoms and I'm seeing what I want to see?

I don't know. But what I do know is that I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of my own emotions - each wave keeps knocking me back down. I don't want to go to a doctor because they won't believe me and even if they do i don't want the stigma of being ill and I don't want drugs

Answer
The best way to find out what's going on with your mental health is to make an appointment with the appropriate health care provider for an assessment.  I would suggest that you not give a specific disorder as the basis for the visit, but rather, describe the symptoms that you have been experiencing and ask for the doctor's professional opinion and suggestions for treatment.  That way, you can get a much more objective basis for any potential diagnosis that you may be given.  Sometimes people have been so over-exposed to hearing about a mental illness (usually through commercials for medications, news stories about people who have the condition (which are usually only on the news because of some terrible thing that the person has done, and suggest that the condition is to blame, when most people with the condition are not likely to do anything dangerous should they be allowed around the general population!) that it can lead to identifying with some of the symptoms and thus causes them to believe that they may have the illness themselves.  Some of my friends who are also bipolar have had lengthy conversations about the media's role in determining which mental illness will be put at the forefront during a period of time lasting from 1 to 5 years (typically).  Some examples would include major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and ADHD.  
 This is not to say that you may not be suffering from a mental illness, which is why the best course of action is to seek the opinion of a professional, in this case a psychiatrist and preferably one who specializes in the treatment of mood disorders.