This isn't a comment on the diagnostic capabilities of my mental health team - I understand that all their evidence points to Bipolar Disorder.  I have read my discharge papers after each inpatient stay, I have gone over the DSM criteria with my therapist, I get it.  Objectively, I understand why I am diagnosed Bipolar.  


BUT when I think about it, when I think back to what I was thinking and feeling, my erratic behaviour... well, it just seems utterly **ridiculous!**  I cannot fathom the idea of my ever being like that.  I am not saying that it never happened.  Rationally I know that I am not imagining those incidences of crazy, but I don't understand or believe that I could have been that out of control.    


Does anyone else struggle to integrate the opposing ideas of knowing your past behaviour was so  completely irrational and crazy that you couldn't possibly have been faking it while at the same time knowing that your behaviour was so absurd that you must have been faking it in some way?   


Like I know it happened to me, I have the first person memories, but at the same time it feels like it happened to some other person.  It seems unbelievable that it actually occurred and I don't know which reality to accept as true.