Hello! I recently spoke to my psychiatrist about suspecting I have bipolar, and after a very brief discussion, he told me he couldn't start the process of diagnosing me because of my answer to one of the first questions he asked me about how much sleep I'm getting. I said that most nights I fall asleep around 3am but I sleep in afterwards in the morning, and he told me that if I actually had bipolar I wouldn't be sleeping at all for many nights due to manic episodes so there's no chance I have the condition. 

I feel dismissed, though, because I have so many symptoms present since childhood that are severe enough that it's upsetting my entire life and he never gave me the chance to expand on them. My mother is diagnosed with bipolar and took prescribed medication for the majority of her life. I strongly believe that I inherited that. Depression has plagued me since I was very young to an extreme extent, I've been hospitalized for suicide attempts several times and my lowest lows have been paralyzing in their intensity. The issue I'm having beyond depression, though, is that my mood fluctuates so dramatically and with little to no warning. I have weeks where I'm overcome with energy, I make rash decisions and don't consider the consequences, and I believe I no longer need treatment because everything is better than it's ever been. This is always followed by a crash after enough time where I'll return to feeling worse than ever, to the point that I'm nauseous with how bad everything hurts, and at very high risk of relapsing after the initial drop. I'll remain in these depressive lows for many weeks at a time. While I believe that I just experience hypomania during my highs, I also suspect that I've had episodes of true mania before. 

TW for dangerous behavior:
There was one main example in my life where I completely detached from my usual perception of reality, decided to spontaneously escape from the site where I was camping with my family for the week, and swam across a river and spent hours climbing a near vertical mountain on my own so I could wait there for police helicopters to find me once I was reported missing. I recorded myself with my phone at times and I was laughing the whole way, no realization (or care) that I was directly putting my life in peril. Even after being safely brought back, I stayed in that state for a while longer before coming to my senses much later and realizing what I had done. In present day, the sudden and dramatic flips in my mood is hurting my relationships with people in my life and causing me to question who I am and whether I'll ever have some sort of stability. 

Was my psychiatrist right to rule out bipolar, or is it worth it trying to find another qualified professional to see if I could get a diagnosis? He told me I likely had some other form of mood disorder, but refused to go further and look into other potential diagnoses so that I could have an answer. Right now I'm only being treated for depression and I don't think it's helping since my main problem is the lack of stability due to switching between two complete opposite modes of function rather than the depressive episodes alone. I'm genuinely scared of losing touch with reality again, and while I can't say that I hate the weeks where I'm feeling energized and untouchable, I would do anything just for stability. I'm sorry this was so long, I just want an outsiders opinion!