[skip to the last paragraph for a tldr, this is just me talking about why I’m making this post]

I (F19) have had depression since I was 13, and I think it started as pretty traditional depression (i.e low mood low energy). Recently I was re-diagnosed with depression with mixed features (low mood high energy), though I can remember experiencing mixed features as early as 4 years ago. Bipolar was always ruled out since I don’t experience mania on its own.

Or at least I didn’t. I had a really bad depression w mania episode in Feb/March, then felt depressed for a week or so after it ended. That was all pretty normal for me, but after that, I started to feel weird—I was no longer tired and stopped sleeping, had racing thoughts and would not shut up, and did weird things like deep clean the bathroom at 4 am (waking up my housemates in the process, honestly a dick move but they were happy the bathroom was clean). Besides the not tired part, those are all things I feel w mixed features… except I was not depressed. Honestly it was the best I had felt in a while.

I still meet the criteria for unipolar depression—although I felt pretty much  all the symptoms of hypomania, it only lasted 2.5 days, not 4. And maybe I’ll never actually have a full (hypo)manic episode! But it seems like the amount of manic symptoms, initially at the same time as the depression and more recently on their own, are increasing. I talked to my therapist about it and she wants me to keep track of it—I kind of thought she’d just say not to worry about it but she talked about how people often have their first (hypo)manic episode later than their first depressive episode and that w the way my depression presents it would make sense. Again, i still currently fit the depression label better, but my therapist (and me) are worried about my increased (hypo)manic symptoms progressing to full blown (hypo)mania. 

So I guess my question is, has anyone experienced having their unipolar depression become (or be re-diagnosed, anyway) bipolar? What was it like for you? This has just been kind of scary and confusing, so I’d love to hear from someone who has experienced this.