I wanted to circle back around and see how it is going. I hope you are hanging in there and want you to know that we are here to 'talk' if you need it. Sometimes it is nice to have an outside person to bounce things off of. hugs
Hi! I hope you come back and talk to us. Bipolar is so different now in terms of how doctors talk about it and how it is assumed (and not assumed) to look. There is bipolar 1 and bipolar 2. My dear friend was diagnosed with bipolar 2. She didn't fall into the typical pattern of highs and lows that people associate with bipolar. But had enough similarities that she received a bipolar 2 diagnosis. She started medication for it and it has been a blessing. Lamectal I believe is what she has been prescribed. Here is her issue though. She will take it, feel 'recovered' and good. And want to stop her meds. Sigh. It's a repeat thing she does over and over. And it wreaks havoc on her life with every interruption in treatment. Her husband knows immediately when she's not taking her medication.
Try not to self diagnose. Münchausen syndrome is very complex, for example, and to meet the criteria of having that disorder would be more than a 'touch'. Are you harming yourself to look ill for attention? If so, then yes. Please talk to someone immediately. No judgement. Mental health is a moving target sometimes.
Anyway, let us know how you are doing!
Bipolar disorder comes in different flavors these days, but if you had true bipolar, you would be alternating manic phases with depressed phases and you don't describe that at least on this post. The other bipolar diagnoses are just the ways particular people manifest depression and are mainly used for drug patents and insurance reimbursement, they don't really affect how treatment will go. The problem with your different diagnoses is a problem with psychiatry, not with you. Some docs are quick to label you so they can get you on a drug and be done with you. Diagnoses also are subject to the same fads as everything else in life -- the diagnostic manual psychiatrists use is written by docs paid by the pharmaceutical industry and are very controversial within psychiatry, which leaves us lay people really confused. If you see enough psychiatrists one of them will eventually give you a questionnaire and make a diagnosis based on it despite barely having ever spoken to you. What it appears to me is that you live a very unsettled internal life. You hunt for diagnoses instead of examining the day to day moments of your life. Because you're so confused, I'd recommend that before you label yourself something or other, and because you say you're an anxiety sufferer, get into therapy with a good psychologist and give it a few sessions to see what that therapist says about you. You seem to function pretty well in life -- you have a job you're able to get to, you work hard, you're able to travel, you have a relationship -- and we all have relationships we're unsure of, that's not unusual or a symptom of mental illness, that's a symptom of your personality. So slow down, talk to a therapist, and see then whether there's a diagnosis or a conclusion that you're just scattered right now, settled in to a job and a relationship but perhaps not ready to be settled in to that particular person or that particular job. Don't know, just saying, try talking this out with a professional talk therapist first and then decide if you need to go a medical route. But if you truly had bipolar, you'd be much more disabled by life than you seem to be, and would be alternating between periods of hyper active productivity and crippling depression. If you don't have that, you probably don't need antipsychotics, which if you are bipolar you would need to take. But nobody on here is an expert or can diagnose you, and if you keep looking for a diagnosis, a label, you'll end up talking yourself into a place you don't want to be. All the best.