what is bipolar 2 exactly and what is the difference between bipolar 1 and 2?
August 3, 2009 by Depression and Anxiety Tips
Filed under Anxiety, Bipolar, OCD & Schizophrenia
Can you answer *DixieGirlBryana*’s question about Depression?:
I have been diagnosed with bipolar and whenever people find that out, they ask me if i have bipolar 1 or 2. i don’t know what the difference is so i don’t know how to answer… please help.
Treating Bipolar Depression
I have been diagnosed with bipolar and whenever people find that out, they ask me if i have bipolar 1 or 2. i don’t know what the difference is so i don’t know how to answer… please help.
Treating Bipolar Depression
Sounds to me like you may be mixing with some very knowledgeable people who have loads of personal experience of mental health issues.
Or else they know very little about how to be helpful to someone with such issues.
Or both.
You only speak about labels: the one you’ve been given by someone in the medical profession and one’s others would hang on you.
Hopefully you’ll focus on experiencing your self and understanding what it means to be you. Be your most wonderful friend to yourself.
Knowing so little of the riches that are you, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting what else you might do to help yourself.
Thanks very much for being there.
Paul
Depression Feedback: With bipolar 1, you’ve had at least one manic episode. With bipolar II, you have not experienced any manic episodes, however, you have had at least one hypomanic episode.
~Dr. B.~
Depression Feedback: ASK your shrink.
Get a support group.
Read all the info. you can get in the library.
Your mental health is no ones business except maybe your parents and or sibs.
Depression Feedback: This is what it is like to have a true manic episode - hypomania is similar but not nearly so extreme. Hypomania can be very pleasant as it just feels like you are happier, more alert, have more energy, are more sexual….. just not this extreme.
If you have had an episond like this you are bipolar 1, if not you are bipolar 2.
* FEELING EXTREMELY HAPPY OR IRITABLE* Like you just won the lottery or like your boss just cut your pay in half so he could give his daughter a raise but the feelings go on and on for weeks or months.
*INFLATED SELF ESTEEM* Believe that everyone loves you, everyone knows how smart, funny, pretty, sexy, you are. Think you are so good you can do anything.
* REDUCED NEED FOR SLEEP* 2 to 3 hours of sleep a night for weeks or months and you are never tired.
* TALK FASTER AND MORE THAN USUAL* Ramble on and on but the talk may be disjointed because thoughts are going by so fast you can’t get them out fast enough. It’s called pressured speech.
* BE MORE ACTIVE THAN USUAL* Needing to run 10 miles a day when you never used to even jog. Taking up 5 new hobbies.
* RACING THOUGHTS* Can be seen as confusion. It’s very confusing because your thought go by so fast and you have no control over them it’s like having 10 people all shouting at you at the same time.
* BE EASILY DISTRACTED BY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS* Ohhhh bright and shiny things.
Because you have ceased to even try to listen to your own thoughts.
* ACT IMPULSIVELY, DO RECKLESS THINGS, REDUCED INHIBITION, SPENDING SPREES* Spending the mortgage money on furniture, buying 25 books about penguins because wouldn’t it be cute if they could be a colony,* DRIVE RECKLESSLY* 120 mph down back roads with the radio blaring and not really paying attention to the road because of all the bright shiny things, *GET INTO FOOLISH BUSINESS VENTURES* cashing out your 401k to invest in a worm farm or going deep into debt so you can gamble because you know you will win, *HAVE FREQUENT, INDISCRIMINATE, OR UNSAFE SEX* like sex with strangers (without a condom) or with your sisters husband or your husbands sister. Suddenly decide you are gay because the opportunity for twice as much sex is there…… Oh my I didn’t know I was into BDSM before… tie me up and flog me baby.
I am Bipolar 1 and these are all things I have one while manic and that’s just a few of them.
Depression Feedback: Bipolar 1 has full blown mania. Bipolar 2 has hypomania…a mider form of mania…..never had a full manic episode.
You could also just be diagnosed Bipolar NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). That is my currant official diagnosis.
Doesnt matter so much which the diagnoses is as long as you are treating the sympoms. If you want to know your official diagnosis either ask your Dr or look at what diagnosis code the write down on the sheet you usually have to take back to the front desk when you make your next appt….and look it up. (NOS is 296.8)http://counsellingresource.com/distress/dsm-codes/dsm-code.html
Some Drs will only diagnose NOS and worry more about treating it then trying to classify if it is 1 or 2, which makes since because it is really a disorder that is a spectrum, and the line between type 1 and 2 is not entirely clear. Its not like diabetes type 1 and 2 where cause and fuction and treatment of it are completely different. Its more just a measure of severity of the manic end
Depression Feedback: You have to have suffered some sort of psychosis or repeated manic phases. Hope you don’t have that one. I do and it sucks.