For me the thing about being sza bipolar type is your bipolar won’t keep you guessing for long. What I mean is it will become obvious at some point that you are manic or depressed because you will fuc* up your life by way of not sleeping, not eating, not expressing your thoughts correctly, over shopping, gambling, doing drugs, sleeping around, or on the depressed side of things not be able to get out of bed to keep yourself fed and clean and to keep your house clean and laundry done. It gets really obvious at some point you won’t have to guess anymore.
Bipolar tendencies are a funny thing. For years I was on a mood stabiliser after initially being on APs. Then APs were added back into the mix. I lost the schizoaffective mixed type dx in 2005 and as a result was taken off meds. Just over a year later I was back on meds. A stand alone AD was rejected by my pdoc on the grounds of the possible negative effects on my mood. Back on the atypical APs. There is a fair strong line of argument that they have mood stabilising properties . My psych notes describe me as having ‘mood swings’ butmy mood is fairly stable. There are occasional mild swings mostly to the depressive side. This could be because the Consta is exerting a mood stabilising effect.