As a disclaimer, this will be quite lengthy but it is necessary in order to fully explain the situation so I recommend reading through the OP before you post so you know what you are actually responding to:
I have recently been diagnosed with depression though of no particular kind, just general chronic depression. I am 26 years old and have suffered this condition since I was 6 years old. My pretty much life-long depression is likely the result of experiencing constant trauma though initially onset by the death of my mother when I was 6 which I never processed. As such, I don't think I have ever truly felt happy in my life as I think my depression is so pervasive that I have integrated parts of my depression as a part of my personality; that is, the traits associated with depression have become traits I have begun to think of a part of my own personality e.g. laziness, melancholia, extreme social introversion etc. I think the depression has become such an integrated part of who I am I have lost complete illness insight because this is the only normal way for me to be like. I don't know anything else. Unless on days where I feel very bad and can't even leave my bed, I don't feel depressed more than perhaps often feeling overall very tired of life, lacking motivation, low energy in general etc. but I don't feel unhappy/blue/depressed per se either. I have described as living my life as a kind of a haze to others and this is exactly what it feels like. I am living but I don't feel alive. I simply am and everything just seems kind of dreary, bleak, grey and lifeless.
Anyway, my illness aside, I was prescribed antidepressants to help me cope alongside getting therapy to help me resolve my problems and what happened today was that when I took my first pill though it began even prior of that, I began feeling this sense of euphoria. Interestingly, I left a very serious episode this weekend where I could barely get out of bed or motivate myself to do anything more than just lie down and feeling lethargic, and one thing I began noticing today was that I began acting as if I was and in fact felt that I was in a very good mood. It was exactly that - euphoria.
It reminded me of what it said in my medicine booklet about bipolar and how I had a period of major depression last year where I had extreme mood swings between feeling extremely euphoric one moment to deeply depressed another. While I overall would say my mood level as in, just feeling overall lifeless/mildly depressed is stable from what I can recall, it does seem that when I do experience deeper or more serious forms of depression it does tend to follow with an euphoric or for the lack of a better term, manic period.
I am therefore seriously considering whether I would fall into the group of people who do not classify as suffering from actual bipolar but those who experience symptoms of bipolar but not to such a degree of severity where it meets the actual criteria for bipolar. I know there are several people on this site who do suffer from bipolar so essentially I'm asking for your input. Should I be concerned and mention this to my psychologist next time we meet in about two months? (Yes, long wait, but she unfortunately saw me just before she went on vacation.) Are my suspicions warranted at all or is this normal for someone who suffer from depression to experience states of euphoria after a more serious depressive episode?
