Disclaimer (??): I am not trying to self diagnose, I have been doing a lot of research and am planning on contacting mental health services to try to get some kind of diagnosis. However the services available to me would be CAMHS and if you are not aware of CAMHS they do not have a good track record so to make sure I can have the best chance of getting help I want to have a solid idea of what is wrong with me. Also if this could be something else please let me know.

Tw// self harm and suicidal thoughts. 

Also I apologise cause this is quite long so thank you so much in advance if you read this &lt;3

For reference I am 17f. And I have been mainly researching bipolar disorder in teens because of this and also because it fits better with what I’m dealing with. 

I have had mood swings for as long as I can remember but I never thought much about it because, being a teenage girl, I’ve always been told that it’s normal to have mood swings and I’m just a classic ‘moody teenager’. These mood swings used to just be fuelled by anger, again why I believed it was normal teenage behaviour. Because of this I always thought I just had anger issues because i would very quickly anger (and still do but to a slightly lesser extent) and have always been particularly irritable. And I have learnt from looking at bipolar in teens and children that these are symptoms. 

I also have always been an extremely introverted person even as a very young child I didn’t do well in social situations, an example is when I was in nursery and I went to a friends birthday party and I stood next to my dad for most of it because I was nervous lol. Ive always been referred to as a shy person in school reports and although I do also believe that I have some kind of anxiety disorder I also learnt that it is a trait in bipolar teens.  

Now onto the more commonly recognised symptoms. For the last 3-5 years the anger kind of mood swings shifted to be more depressive episodes. These episodes for me normally last from around 4 hours to a few days. And this is one of the main factors that made me look into teen bipolar disorder as this is more common with kids and teens and I have been through multiple episodes a day which again is common with younger people. However I had a very bad depressive episode from December to the beginning of March which led me to believe I had depression but I think that was just a more severe one. During these episodes I will lose all of my energy, have an overwhelming feeling of numbness, I’ll lose my appetite, I’ll go though every painful time in my life and psychoanalyse it and criticise myself for everything I did, I will be more anxious than usual, and I self harm anyway but I’d say there is an increase of it during those episodes and also with suicidal thoughts I get those pretty badly and I just feel this overwhelming sense of dread and hopelessness for my life. I can confidently say that during these episodes especially bad ones I genuinely see no point in continuing with life and feel like I’m worthless. 

For these episodes there usually aren’t any triggers they kind of just happen and take over my brain. But they can also be triggered I’m not gonna go into my triggers obviously, but they can start episodes they can be less severe than my regular ones though. 

Onto mania, this is a little more complicated to explain but please bear with me. I am very grateful that mania for me is less severe than it is for others, I also think this is party due to my anxiousness I don’t want to do anything overly risky. But I will have a massive increase in energy which will lead to me doing my college work that I tend o leave till last minute , however I will struggle to stay on topic and will switch quickly between things, making spontaneous plans with friends which I wouldn’t usually do, I get very over excitable over not particularly exciting things, which isn’t like me normally, my thoughts will be jumping around from thing to thing and I will be a lot more talkative than usual, I will also be more irritable and quicker to anger than usual because of my increased energy and I will usually be a lot more self confident. 

The self confidence is a big change especially because I usually have very low self confidence and very poor body image, I noticed this the other day as I was having an episode of this and I was taking lots of videos and photos of myself because I really thought that I was pretty. I even took photos of myself without using some kind of Snapchat or insta filter which is very unusual for me because they hide my insecurities. But at the time I really did think I was one of the hottest people alive which is a massive change to how I normally feel about myself. 

These kinds of episodes can differ in severity and they tend to be a little shorter than my depressive episodes.

These episodes are cut with periods of how I normally am like more regulated moods and whatnot. Also I apologise if these aren’t the best descriptions I’ve noticed I lack emotional permanence, so if I’m not actively experiencing a specific episode of depression or mania I can find it difficult to recall the feeling and what I do and behave like during those times. Which is another reason why my mental health sucks because I can truly believe that when the cycle of depression and mania is over and I feel normal again I just think it’s gonna last forever and ill think the cycle is finally over and then BOOM it happens all over again.