**psa that i’m not looking/asking for a diagnosis, simply want other people’s experiences and thoughts. i have a therapist and a psychiatrist to do the diagnosing for me**

i (19m) am diagnosed already with (C)PTSD, severe persistent depression, and anxiety although that can also be part of the PTSD diagnosis. i suspect i have autism and/or ADHD but my therapist doesn’t think so as it’s too many diagnoses.

my therapist believes that there is something else going on affecting my moods, besides PTSD and depression. i deal with a lot of mood swings, and a constant cycle of being genuinely ok for a couple weeks to a couple months, back to being mildly to severely depressed

the cycle sounds normal writing it down, but in reality it’s exhausting to go through. i do ok and feel good in life, feel good about my future, all of my mental health issues lessen a LOT (such as overthinking, PTSD, breakdowns), things dont affect me as much as they usually do. things are looking up. 

but then for the 50th time in my life, it all comes crashing down and i’m back to my “normal” state– being depressed, unmotivated and apathetic. 

i have really intense emotions, every negative emotion i feel is way too intense, this makes me severely overreact to things. instead of being irritated i’m destructively angry, instead of being a little down i’m so depressed i can’t get out of my bed. etc etc. this is to the smallest things too. 

the most i’ve experienced (hypo)mania would be in very short bouts. as in i beome extremely energetic and hyper, dissociated and impulsive, super happy, no consequences. but for 5-30 minutes. *maybe* an hour. one time in one of these “bouts” i spent $300 on pokemon cards on amazon, which overdrafted my bank. 

my psychiatrist also used to think i had bipolar 2 and had me on mood stablizers, but they didn’t do anything as my mood shifts weren’t as intense yet. my therapist believes i have cyclothymia despite the severe depression and lack of hypomania because she theorized that *my* baseline isn’t the “average” baseline that would be considered in a diagnosis. meaning my average mood is ‘OK’ at best, mildly-moderately depressed at worse. my “high” would be the average person’s good mood, my “low” would be suicidally depressed. 

i relate to cycothymia in terms of the mood swings and ur overall mood being a constant up and down, but i don’t experience hypomania and i have severe depression. 

i want to clarify that i am NOT looking for anybody to tell me whether or not i have cyclothymia, or anything like that. i’m just not really sure what to think. i only wanna know peoples thoughts/opinions, how u relate to it if u do, ur own experiences, blah blah. anything is appreciated, thanks if u read this far