I'm not bipolar

I'm not bipolar. I am extremely depressed and have been for a few years. I come to the bipolar forum because the depression forum can be very grim and make me feel worse. There is always a drama or an excitement in this forum. I always feel better when I've been here. My son is bipolar, so I feel quite comfortable mixing with the bipolars. It is true that a parent can feel guilty when a child is bipolar. I thought back over everything I did and everything I ate when pregnant with my son. Now that I'm older and wiser, I only have to look back at his father to see where it came from. It is obviously genetic. I must say I love the way you lot are so kind to each other on this forum. I am 47, female, in Australia.

I'm glad you came to our forum Kelpie.
Even though you aren't bipolar I think we'll accept you. You just don't get to learn the secret hand shake.
I've never visited the depression forum and I'm sorry to hear that you find it so grim. Maybe you could inject a bit of excitement or at least a little ray of sunshine in there once in a while. A funny signature line perhaps? Who knows? It might just catch on.

Hi Kelpie, Welcome to the forum, a bipolar son definitly qualifies you---and so does the depression. A lot of depressed people also have what some medical people are calling 'soft bipolar' and since you have a bipolar family member, you might too.

One of the reasons the Depression side gets so grim is we Bipolars often post there when we are on our depressed "swing". Especially for those of us, like me, with Bipolar II, most of our illness is spent being Depressed and you are right, it gets pretty grim at times. See my mood chart below. I am all over the map, sometimes all in one day. That is called ultra-radian cycling and it is a pain to live with.

This is a good overall site--you might want to do some of the mood tracking forms for yourself and your son (altho, I think you would have to open an account for him too--ask in the Technical Forum).

I'm suspecting or open to the fact that I may be as well. I've medicated for depression and anxiety for years. I'm noticing an "angst" inside...a sense of urgency on the good days with some irritability. On the bad days, just sad and lathargic. I just discovered this site so we'll see what it looks like. I appreciate seeing your chart. Does the lamactal med help? It seems that people posting still suffer. I get confused about what is normal to get "irritated" with and what isn't?

Mahalo, there are two reasons why it is appearing that Lamictal does not help. In my case, it is because I just started on it and the dose has to be increased very slowly because of a rare, but serious side effect of a bad rash that can happen if you have a high dose too quickly.

A therapeutic dose that actually works is usually about 250mgs, I am now all the way to an entire 100mgs a day--I am just not at a high enough dose yet. Sometimes I feel almost normal, but that fades out to my usual ultra radian (very fast) cycling between moods.

The other reason is no med works for everyone--for some people Lamictal just doesn't work.