I'm so sorry.

No, it doesn't gotta be bipolarism. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Many depressives are able to maintain a happy, cheerful exterior, all while being depressed. They do it for various reasons: they don't want people fussing them over them, or they don't want to inflict their unhappiness on others, or they don't know how to communicate their inner pain, to name a few reasons.

In addition, getting hit by a wave of depression doesn't make you bipolar. It just means you're susceptible to depression.. possibly because of a chemical imbalance, possibly because you've led a hard life and haven't been able to make sense of the shit that's happened to you. Or maybe both!

In short, please keep your Psychology 101 diagnoses to yourself. You're fucking ignorant, and you're not helping anybody by spreading your ignorance.

I am bipolar, thanks. Dick.

Also, I did say the same thing as you. Notice where I write "Calm, lovable exterior, shambles private life" and then you wrote "Happy, cheerful exterior, all while being depressed".

I struggle with manic anger with depression on my downswings. I try and try to keep things together and oftentimes fail. Why? Becasue, just as Stphen Fry said, there is no reason. No trigger or event. It just comes, likely through chemical imbalance.

Listen, I'm not in the mood to get in a fight with you, but I'd just suggest you not go into attack mode for anything you disagree with, because it turns out we said the same thing.

Being bipolar doesn't make you a clinical expert on all forms of depression.

Sorry, champ.

Attacking people on the internet doesn't prevent suicide, ether. I'm not threatening that, but bear in mind, disagreeing and attacking are separate things.

Aelric: There's only surface similarity between the statements you're calling 'the same thing'. You both have valid points, but coming from different premises, which leaves them still at odds with each other.

Unless you're of the mind that all symptoms share a common cause, which is obviously incorrect. Definitely not aiming to attack you on this one, I think what Anaxagoras is getting at is that symptoms don't tell you much about the disorder. Think of the similarities between food sickness and influenza or hay fever and the common cold (which is actually a couple of hundred different viruses).

So I'm throwing my hat in the ring and saying that this guy was actually a Pleiadian and he's gone back to his starship to be in communion with the soul mother of the universe.

I likely shouldn't have used the term "gotta be" and instead used "could be". I was never intending any of it to sound absolutist, just using a fairly common term of speech. The similarieties in conditions and the common result of suicide was all I was meaning to bring to the table. Discussion, not insults, is what I was after.

He's probably just got Narcissistic Personality Disorder characterized by Sudden Terrible Furry Urges. Don't sweat it.

I don't know if you meant that on purpose, but "Sudden Terrible Furry Urges" made me laugh out loud.

The comedy! It comes in layers!

Meant as a reply to this pissing match I got suckered into with Anasgoras, above.