Firstly, thanks to the admin for approving my membership status so quickly.
I'm not really sure where to start, or how to word all this, so please bare with me.
My name is Jamie, I'm a 33 year old male in Hampshire. I guess I'll start by describing "what is wrong with me" for lack of a better word (symptoms?). Ever since I was young, my mood has been very up and down, mostly, I'm happy, I have allot of good friends, and quite often they will tell me nice things, that I'm a good person etc..... and although I can be shy/nervous in social situations, I'm quite outgoing, like to have a good laugh and a joke, particularly with my friends at work. But sometimes, and usually quite suddenly, my mood can change and I will get very low, I will distance myself from those friends and people I care about, become very quiet and I feel very lonely, worthless and quite often I really feel like crying, for no particular reason, and although I only rarely actually do cry, it has happened recently, I really have a hard time motivating myself to do the things I enjoy, gym, swimming, playing football and mountain biking. This low feeling usually lasts about a week, maybe longer, then I will gradually come out of it and be ok for anywhere between 4-6 weeks or so and then something will trigger a low mood again. I have identified that my low mood can be triggered easily by those close friends, they may say something that I may take out of turn, or just something really simple and silly, like for instance last week I really went out of my way to help 2 close friends at work with a situation that was causing them stress, one of them was very grateful and thanked me for my help, and the other just acted very dismissive of the fact I'd helped them out and didn't even say thank you to me, and it really triggered a low mood and I now feel totally depressed and worthless, and wonder if that person even cares about me. I found myself distancing myself from that person the last few day's. When I think back to my childhood, I've always been like this, I can remember times where I would distance myself from friends and not take part in particular activities and I really don't know why I did it.
Although I do feel that this has been going on for allot of years, I guess I should add some of my more recent background too. In 2008 I left my wife, she was abusive and hurtful to me in the last year of our relationship simply because her dad moved back to Liverpool and while she wanted us to move up there so she could be close to him, I didn't want to move away and leave all my family and friends, we went through counselling but nothing really changed and we ended up getting divorced, and although it was my choice to divorce, I took it hard for awhile, and was off work for a month with stress. At this point I moved back into my parents home to help my mum look after my dad, who was an alcoholic. He was a nice man, we all loved him, but he just couldn't beat his alcohol addiction which really got a hold over him when he was made redundant and had trouble finding another job. We had a very rough time with him for the last few years, he lost his driving license, nearly went to prison, and could quite often be verbally abusing and unkind, although we realise this was "the drink talking" it was hard to take for both myself and my mum. My dad eventually passed away in August of complications from alcohol abuse. We were all very sad at losing him, but also had a sense of relief that the suffering was over for him and us. He was 64 years old.
I recently spoke to my doctor after a particularly bad low period, and he put it down to grief from my dads passing, which I accepted. But if I'm honest, these up and down moods have been ongoing for a long long time. I always shied away from talking about it, as I was worried if I started to tell people I felt depressed, they would just think I was a hypochondriac, even my doctor, but now I really think I need to face it. I am going back to my doctor on Monday afternoon.
I have looked into Bipolar allot online, but didn't really think that the "mania" part reflected when I was feeling good. I was happy, outgoing and loud at times, but not what I would describe as manic. It was only recently that I learned about Bipolar II, with less severe symptoms, and while I really don't want to be someone who reads about something and thinks they have it, bipolar II really does make sense to me now. I took a test online and it came back with the result that I am more than likely Bipolar.
Well, I don't know if any of that makes sense? But if you're still reading, thanks. I'm off now to check out the rest of the forum and maybe join in some conversations, I'm really hoping that being a part of this forum will help me find some answers.
