Please help me understand why I am cyclothymic?

So my psych thought I was bipolar and today she changed her mind to cyclothymia because I have not been depressed for a while.

Thing is I thought that cyclothymia was a disorder where you experienced mild to moderate depression and hypo manic episodes. Correct me if I'm wrong?

I definitely have experience mild to moderate depression and hypo mania. However I have also suffered from sever depression. I have had two depressive episodes that landed me in a psych ward, one of those episode ended with me being sectioned because I had tried to commit suicide so many times in the days before.

Am I miss understanding? Can you get sever depression and still be diagnosed as cyclothymic?

My psych knows about theses episodes?

Also my psych explained cyclothymia as 'more of a personality thing than a mood problem' so does tha mean it is a sort of personality disorder?

I'm really confused?

I regret nobody has tried to answer your question sooner here. I'm way less than qualified to tell you the difference between the types of bipolar and cyclothymia. Unfortunately, even people who are qualified would have a hard time saying why you have one and not the other if they haven't spoken to you about it professionally. That is a roundabout way of saying you should talk to the psychiatrist who told you. Understanding what you have is an important part of managing it.

I think there's a disagreement about whether cyclothymia is a personality or mood problem. You'll hear about something called the cyclothymic personality. I don't know how that's different from a person with cyclothymia. I can tell you cyclothymia is not regarded as being as bad as bipolar disorder. I've never had severe depression. That's one thing that kept me from finding out I even had cyclothymia. My symptoms weren't anywhere close to those of people who had the big problems everybody knows about. So I told myself to get over it.

Thank you for your reply.

May I ask, as a cyclothymia sufferer, do you ever feel like harming yourself or ever have suicidal thought?
What do you feel is the difference between moderate and sever depression?

Thing is I don't really know about levels of depression. I'm just either depressed or not.

Never had a thought of cutting myself or other self harm. A very long time ago, I didn't feel like life was worth living. I probably got as close as a person can get to being suicidal without making plans for doing it.

I don't know severe depression from my own experience. One thing that kept me from even finding out what was wrong with me was how mild the depression is when it happens. A week or two, I feel sad and without any good reason. But the feeling lets negative thoughts brew and they reinforce the feeling and more negative thoughts brew. I always got up and went to school or work. I just told myself to get over it. When I read about depression, I read about people who couldn't get out of bed or eat or take care of themselves. I never had it that bad, even during the aforementioned gloom of the near suicidal days. So I figured it's not depression and I just needed to get over it and quit whining about a bad couple of days here and there.

I'd have to say it's the same with me. I'm either depressed or not. But I know that for some people the depression is far greater than anything I've experienced. I don't feel completely right expressing what I'm going through because mine is so mild in comparison to what others have. I don't know if that's quite like your experience. I suppose severe depression could switch on and off for some people with no mild zone on the way in or out of it.

All that said, I can see how my ups and downs have had negative effects on my life. One thing that gets said here in these forums somewhat often is about understanding how what you have affects you and not getting too caught up in textbook definitions. Kind of like a pet owner needs to know the dog he has and not rely too much on generalizations about dogs. Your cyclothymia can be different than mine just like a chihuahua is different from a dalmatian.

Thanks you dark in the light, your reply was helpful too me.

By the way you explained your mild depressive stae I think I just think of that as a bad few days. I usually experience what you do when you are mildly depressed for a few days and then it spirals in to A worse depression.

I feel that way now, like for 2-3 day I was just feeling a bit rubbish; slow, lethargic, negative. where as now, a few days on, I think about suicide every day. I have several plans. I am not bad enough to do anything yet but I think if the feeling persists for more than a few weeks I will follow through with my plans.
^this is pretty typical for me.

This is why I was confused because I didnt think people with mild depression suffered from consistant suicidal idealisation and attempts.


Do you take medication for your cyclothymia? What do you take and does it help?

Facts:
Your doctor is probably right.

Assumptions (they are not to be taken for a fact):
Not having a "fully blown" episode for "awhile", together with whatever else you said to the doctor, certainly convinced him/her it doesn't match DSM IV bipolar disorder criteria very well, but rather DSM IV cyclothymia.

Search in google:
DSM IV cyclothymia
DSM IV bipolar disorder

and see for yourself

tmpacct wrote:Facts:
Your doctor is probably right.

Assumptions (they are not to be taken for a fact):
Not having a "fully blown" episode for "awhile", together with whatever else you said to the doctor, certainly convinced him/her it doesn't match DSM IV bipolar disorder criteria very well, but rather DSM IV cyclothymia.

Search in google:
DSM IV cyclothymia
DSM IV bipolar disorder

and see for yourself

I think it is obvious I have an awareness of the criteria for each diagnosis other wise I would not have made this thread.

My last fully depressive episode was 4-5 months a go and my doctor knows this..... The criteria states that you could have had cyclothymia if your last fully blown episode was over two years ago.
4-5 months and 2 years is very different. Hense my confusion of a cyclothymia diagnosis.

I'm on generic Paxil, which is an antidepressant, not a mood stabilizer. I started taking it just two months ago. It's generally said that antidepressants given to someone in the bipolar spectrum without mood stabilizers can launch them into manic states. But I haven't had that happen. That would seem to contradict either the presence of cyclothymia or cyclothymia's categorization as a bipolar spectrum disorder. Or maybe it just means cyclothymia and bipolar really are part of the same spectrum but they can have more than one cause and therefore treatments that affect chemical reactions in the brain will work differently in different patients. That last sentence seems to explain a lot more about the variety of symptoms and why different treatments work well in some, somewhat in others, and not at all in still others.

Yes, it helps. Along with regular exercise, cutting out a lot of sugar from my diet, and talking things out with myself on long walks. The extra dream time I'm getting because of the drug is probably helping too. I seem to be dreaming a lot more and sooner when I fall asleep than before I started taking it. I think I'm still having ups and downs, but they're taking longer to happen. I used to go from up to down or back every ten days or so. Lately, I'm having my first down in two months. It's not far down at all. More like a low spot I can feel after coming down from hypomania. It's going on two weeks. I have less energy and enthusiasm for things than before, but it's still fun to go to work and get things done. So I don't lack energy and enthusiasm. This is probably what normal people feel like all the time.

That's probably more of an answer than you bargained for, but I hope it gives you the insight you want.

If you are thinking about suicide and making plans, please talk to someone about it. I hope you have a relative or friend you can trust. You can also call a hotline, go to a hospital emergency room, or a police station to get connected to help. You know how fast your feelings change. You can argue with the feeling. Tell it you know it's just a feeling and it will go away and you will be just fine. You don't have to make permanent decisions for a temporary feeling.

I am pretty sure I am cyclothymic. The criteria for a diagnosis of Bipolar 1 or 2 does not fit me. I do not have severe depression that prevents me from doing things and I do not have manic episodes where I do things totally out of the ordinary. I do however, have mild swings of both - often within the same day, although lately it has been a consistent swing toward depression.

I want to seek professional help but I am uncertain of how to approach my husband with this desire. He once made it quite clear that he was against anti-depressants, and somewhat against psychiatrists. Personally, I do not wish to take an anti-depressant but would rather try a mood stabilizer although I have to avoid lithium because I have APKD.

We have had numerous arguments over various things and I know that many of them are because of my emotional turmoil. I have tried to explain how strong my emotions are to my husband but he doesn't quite grasp it. Only just recently did I even think to consider that these emotions might be a symptom of bipolar disorder. As I do more research it seems to be more and more clear that it most likely is cyclothemia. I do not know if it would help my husband understand me better if he found out the emotional whirlwind was caused by a medical condition. I am hoping so.

Any tips on how to approach him with this?

What is his argument for not believing in psychiatrists or anti depressants?

I see how some people don't agree with psych drugs because we are not 100% sure how they help, or in some cases don't help.

But psychiatrists went to medical school. They have intelligence and rational. Maybe you could say that.