Dear Laelithia:

You shared yesterday: “I’m also meeting with my family doctor next week to go over the possibility of me meeting the diagnostic criteria for Bipolar 2 disorder.. over the last year, it became clear to me that I had several periods that would meet the criteria of hypomania.. I go through periods of time that indicate hypomania”.

Medicinenet defines Hypomania this way: “A condition similar to mania but less severe. The symptoms are similar with elevated mood, increased activity, decreased need for sleep, grandiosity, racing thoughts, and the like”.

Wikipedia: “a mood state characterized by persistent disinhibition and mood elevation, with behavior that is noticeably different from the person’s typical behavior when in non-depressed state. It may involve irritability, not necessarily less severe than full mania; in fact, the presence of marked irritability is a documented feature of hypomania and mixed episodes in Bipolar type 2. According to DSM-5 criteria, hypomania is distinct from mania in that there is no significant functional impairment; mania, by DSM-5 definition, does include significant functional impairment and may have psychotic features”.

What stands out to me in these definitions is the “racing thoughts” “disinhibition” and “marked irritability” features, fitting with what I remember you sharing over the years.

Let’s look at your first post, May 9, 2017, at 28, quotes and my comments (three periods “…” follow my comments, indicating that I am bringing up possibilities as opposed to facts, since I am not a professional and this is not a professional context):

“I met a man online.. Eventually we did meet, and it was wonderful. I have never felt so strongly for someone so quickly in my whole life.. We spent the weekend together.. he came back to see me and we spent another few days together. This time I was really devastated when he had to leave”-

– hypomania when you met him, lasting through a weekend together, and through a few more days, then mood changing into depression when he had to leave..

On the same thread, in June 2017, you wrote about that very brief relationship: “My heart longs for that ‘love’ again, to feel so special, to have so much hope for the future.. In my dreams, I fantasize about a reality where we continued being infatuated/ in love (whatever it was)”-

– what if what it was, was hypomania, a mood state that is not a side effect, so to speak, of a quality- relationship, but a mood state (hypomania) that happens to you independently from the objective quality, or lack of quality, of the relationship.

Continued quote: “It’s the dream I miss.. I miss the excitement, the thrill of wondering when I see my ‘dream guy’ again”-

– the dream is really hypomania, strictly a biochemical issue.

The month after, July 2017, same thread, you wrote: “I feel so stuck, so damaged, and hopeless about my future romantic prospects. Anyone I meet, I cannot imagine them being as wonderful as he was at the beginning”-

– the wonderful was the mood state, the hypomania.. not the man, not the relationship. The stuck, damaged, hopeless- is the depression following the hypomania. When depressed, you terribly miss the hypomania, the gap between hypomania and depression, and the fall into depression is devastating.

Continued quote: “any time I have alone, I am reminded of the emptiness I have always felt, only now it is even larger without his affection”- the depression was even larger when compared to the hypomania, the gap is too big.

Fast forward, August 3, 2020, on this thread, you shared: “I met someone.. I felt somewhat alive again!“- hypomania…

“I unfortunately, uninvited him from meeting my brother and became short and cold to him”- this is the  marked irritability feature of hypomania/ bipolar 2..

Continued quote: “As if that wasn’t bad enough, I proceeded to have too much to drink that night and ended up sending some really odd texts that I now regret”- the marked irritability and disinhibition features of hypomania were exacerbated by the disinhibition feature of drinking alcohol…

I wrote to you back on August 6: “the pattern has been, you meet a man you like and.. you lose your senses, you lose your mind, basically. You place the man on a pedestal, you fast forward the relationship in your mind, running fast without looking, imagining he is running with you, but you are running alone, and, not seeing what’s in front of you, you crash into a wall and bruise your head, once again”-

– fits with hypomania: losing your mind, so to speak.. running fast (racing thoughts), crashing into.. depression.

I continued: “This is a form of insanity”- specifically then, bipolar 2…

You replied to my input at the time, the above quotes (not including my comments regarding hypomania) on August 11: “I’ve read your last reply over and over, and I am truly in awe of your gift of observation and insight… I believe everything you have written here is spot on… I do completely lose my senses”.

My input today, Nov 28, 2020: I think that the reason you were not able to act reasonably so far in the context of relationships with men (at least ever since that long-term relationship you had with a man, now a woman), is that you have been suffering all these years from a mood disorder, and the hypomania was too intense to allow you reasonable thinking. I am very encouraged by you mentioning this diagnosis possibility for the first time in your threads, and having a visit made with your family doctor so to check your fit with this diagnosis. I am encouraged  because a diagnosis will allow the planning of a treatment plan for you that will include the necessity of quieting down the hypomania so that you can think and choose reasonable in the future, in the context of relationships with men.

anita