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Do you think you were born with bipolar disorder?

We know that bipolar is a chemical imbalance in our brain, most likely inherited, but time and time again, I hear people say, "I wasn't bipolar as a child.".....  I feel pretty certain that I was as far as I can remember.

There are triggers that cause our episodes - given.  

Do you think YOU were born with bipolar disorder or it developed?  

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574118 tn?1305135284
People always think they are different than others, because they watch them from the outside, how they appear or behave only, but can't tell what is in their inside. They conclude from what they see, that they don't suffer like we do bipolar ones.

Again everybody has a "mental" problem. People are supertitious (my father), paranoid thinking that others mistreat them, jealous, greedy to the extreme, feeling unsafe. All these words exist in the dictionary therefore natural.

What i call mental is someone who can't differentiate between right or wrong. But someone who struggles with his own handicap is not mentally ill. He is only disabled.

Bipolarity like in other illnesses whether kidney, heart, etc... strikes you suddenly. One is predisposed i.e. not immuned enough from withstanding stress like others, so the brain has a self mechanism of defense. The latter can be depression, or mania or an alternation between both. Call it perfectionism, resentment. Once this happens you are CLINICALLY BP. Because everybody can tolerate stress somehow but not like us. Usually BP are honest people, true with themselves, sensitive so they succomb to their own straightforwardness.

Once the brain develops this depression/mania cycle it's finished it's like an insulator which becomes a conductor, like they teach us in electromagnetic theory under a high surge/voltage. From there on you need something to lessen these fluctuations.

It's bad but if you think of the others and consider that everybody's problem is the end of the world to him then you will be contented and carry on with your life. After all we don't live forever, you try to maximize your happiness subject to these limitations called constraints in mathematics.

Everybody (believe me) has constraints. Non BP commit suicide (Onasis daughter) nobody is perfectly happy. Happiness is beside being a state of your own mind occurs at a limited periods.

Enjoy your life as much as you can. Think little about your illness. The more you forget about it the more it will forget you.

have a nice day
ezz    
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I commented in a different post about nightmares and night terrors, this will be a double but it applies here also. I have read a few excerpts out of the book The Bipolar Child, I know it's controversial but I wondered if my childhood was symptomatic. But when I was young around 4 or 5 I had night terrors, which is a symptom, my night terrors were awful, every night, no one slept, my siblings thought I was posessed. By the time those were gone, I started having nightmares, which were were even worse for me because I remember them and they were recurring. Horrible morbid dreams about things happening to my family, another symptom for bp kids morbid thoughts and dreams, and dreams of natural disasters, bomb and missile filled skies. I remember being terrified to sleep, and on atleast one occasion after waking from a nightmare my parents were in my room and I remember seeing little seethrough men running around in a circle in my hallway. I may have still been in a dream state...who knows, I still remember, I can still remember what they looked like to this day, they were very jolly scary little fellows. My siblings still thought I was posessed, I didn't know any better at that age, I thought maybe I was too. What kind of little girl would have those kind of thoughts about her family, see things and etc. That is my earliest memory of something being different than my siblings and others that I knew.

I have always had a preoccupation with the number 4. Never knew why. My mother told me I had a high fever when I was 4 where the hair in the back of my head fell out. Maybe that was a trauma? Maybe that was why it started at a young age?

I don't know, what kind of therapy am I supposed to have to work through all of this stuff? The therapist I have know is just talking to me about stressors I have right now, I'm bored w/ it, I don't even want to go, we just talk about my step-daughter the whole time. Shes a family therapist, what other kind of therapy can I go to work through my BP stuff?
Helpful - 0
691509 tn?1251614354
yes indeed!  only recognizable in retrospect but the sensitivity, emotional lability, differentness, delusions of grandeur, self-hatred, other family members including son and mother...........and I was not diagnozed until my 55th birthday after a prolonged depressioon caused by family trajedy and personal stress.  A "breakdown" you could say.

Also, my pdoc told me so.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I am absolutely certain that I was born with it.  There are so many similarities in the comments I read here and in that regard - we can take comfort in numbers.  I have always felt, "not right" and MAN, in my early teenage (I guess puberty) times, I was completely out of control - it progressed off an on through the years.  FINALLY diagnosed at last year.   I can even remember having hallucinations as early as 5 - my oldest sister was crawling toward me playing like a tiger or something and she transformed into a devil and was chasing me.  I ran all the way to the barn to find my mother (keep in mind my "devil" sister was running behind me - so that freaked me out!).  It is still talked about to this day!  

Truly, I believe that my BP was inherited from my father - and I believe that is a strong reason my mother has strayed away from me after my diagnosis.  She just doesn't want to see it in me (they had a very strained relationship up to his death - he was never stable in this life).  Sad, but true.

My Mom also believes that my "issues" are caused in part by me drowning at 4 or 5 (I can't remember).  I actually drowned and was brought back.    She says the lack of oxygen messed up my brain (nice comments from a Mom, huh!) and makes me get depressed....

An interesting question about the stable loving household issue - I wonder if that support is something that could lessen the severity?  I do truly believe it's genetic, but I wonder if the support of a stable household limits the effects?

HMMMmmmmm.......

Racheal
Helpful - 0
539549 tn?1315981662
I think I was born with BP I was fussy as a baby and as a toddler I was extremely hyper and had poor social skills...even as a preteen I had lots difficulty focusing in school...
my mood swings started happening once I hit junior high It must have been the stress involving peer pressure and hitting puberty....
Helpful - 0
505907 tn?1258369340
You're right. I was writing without thinking. I meant the onset of symptoms which I think is all we are talking about. After all, why wouldn't there be larger population of BPs in third world countries or among victims of torture if it were true that tragedies brought on this disorder on their own?
Helpful - 0
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