Hi all, my girlfriend has recently started therapy and her psychiatrist is leaning towards diagnosing her with bipolar disorder. I've enveloped myself in research over the last 6 months to understand and how to proceed in the relationship. My understanding is BPD often gets misdiagnosed as Bipolar. From my interpretations of the knowledge I've digested... it would seem they share the same symptoms in terms of mood swings and extreme highs and low low's. The biggest difference would seem that BPD has the mood swings, but stems from a psychological standpoint. With that being said I would say my girlfriend checks all of those boxes. I believe the therapist and psychiatrist see the more calm version of herself speaking on her breakdowns and temper, however, they do not see the breakdowns and what they actually are. Often times the breakdowns stems from a stressful event that leads to an unnecessary blow up. Her emotions always lead back to how she feels and views herself. Example, today I'm on the phone with her after she saw her psychiatrist and she gets home and realizes her family ate her food she planned on taking to work. That turned into her screaming at the top of her lungs and punching the wall. The biggest thing she said was that if they don't care about my food and space than they do not care about me, nobody does, nobody cares about me. I tried my best to reassure her on the phone that I do care about her and they should respect her space, however there is no way to really speak or communicate with her in those moments. With a situation like that and it leading to her not feeling like anyone cares about her leads me to believe it's BPD and not Bipolar Disorder. It's just an example of a list of many things that have been said. She suffers from a lack of self value, trust issues, and sexual assault ptsd. Between a shitty family, past relationships, and sexual trauma it has created a perfect cocktail of a mental spiral. I'm not going to go into the specifics of what has happened in our relationship, but there have been some pretty major events where I should have left her. I'm fighting for her because I've had my fair share of past traumas and can understand where her mind has gotten to. Moving forward I need to ensure she is getting the proper treatment and don't want her to get misdiagnosed so we can tackle this as a team. Her therapist doesn't impress much and I'm not certain what to think. Am I wrong questioning if she has BPD or Bipolar Disorder? Thanks all!