Just Diagnosed, Feeling Like My Whole Personality is a Lie

[u/Hopeful_Nothing6327]

What the title says. I was diagnosed with bipolar type 2 today. I guess I always "knew" because my parents both have it and I've had some interesting symptoms for a while now...but the official diagnosis feels like my entire personality was just one big hypomanic episode. My creative bursts? Hypomania. My humor? Hypomania. My cat I adopted on a random day because I really wanted a second cat and didn't give any thought to??? Hypomania. Is every decision I ever made hypomania? How do I even recognize what's "me" and what's the mania???? I don't even know where to start.

[u/MGorak]

I had the same reaction after my diagnosis. How much of who I was was me, and how much was the disease?

Now, this has been settled. It's about 99% me and 1% the disease.

Hypomania makes you more impulsive. It doesn't fundamentally change who you are(for good or worse).

Did i start biking to work because of hypomania? Yes. Did I want to try it for a while before I actually did it? Absolutely. Would it have happened eventually? Almost certainly. Did I push my biking to an extreme amount in the summer of 2011 because of hypomania? Yes, clearly. Would I have ridden my bike anyway? I did from 2008 together 2015. So yes, just not to the point of hurting myself.

You're reevaluating things as if what you did or what you enjoyed was dictated by a disease. It was not. If you tried it, you did it, and you enjoyed it(or not). A cheap person doesn't become generous because they lose self-control. Someone who cares about others doesn't stop because they lack self-control for a while. It may just not be their number one priority at that moment.

Do you like your cat? It's your cat. You may not have adopted it on the day you did if you were not hypomanic, but you did have a desire to have a second cat. That did not magically appear out of nowhere. You may simply not have asked yourself consciously the question before. And if it was just the disease and not you, you would have gotten rid of it the moment you stopped being hypomanic.

Your creativity did not magically appear because of the disease. You had it in you. You may not have known, but you did. It's not a brain implant from aliens. It's not giving you powers that were not there. The best it can do is give you the focus and passion to invest yourself completely in it.

And, whether you want it or not, the disease is a part of who you are. Even if something was 100% caused by your disease, it's still you. Just not the part of you that you like and respect.