Hi there, today I had a family doctor's appointment requesting I up my dosage of my bipolar medication because I've been experiencing some really low 'lows'. My doctor hesitated and told me she was pretty sure the psychiatrist felt I didn't have bipolar. And seemed convinced herself I don't have it. She told me the name of one psych who said that, and I told her the name of another one who initially told me I had it YEARS ago. She confirmed with the notes and agreed to up my dosage.

While she was reading her notes out loud apparently I was also diagnosed with BPD years ago. (I don't remember receiving this diagnosis but I was in a bad mental state so who knows)

A bit of background on me is I'm currently 30 year old transgender male married, kids, house, stable job. When I was between the ages of 13-22 I was very unstable. Extreme self harm, volatile relationships, failing school, risky behavior and many visits to the Mental Health Unit.

Throughout the years I was on several different medications but nothing seemed to do the trick. Once I got married and had kids I stopped the self harming, got a stable job but still had a lot of depressive lows and some occasional mild manic highs. My lows consisted of sleeping A LOT, anger outbursts, suicidal self harm thoughts but no attempts. Durring all this I was still able to maintain a healthy marriage, parenting role and be a great employee.

Eventually I got on the correct pill cocktail. 450mg of Wellbutrin and 140mg of Lurasidone. This seemed to even me out immensely. No more anger outbursts, no more lows or highs, just normal.

Recently I had massive house fire and that really affected my mental health. It's been 3 months and I've started experiencing very low lows again. (Hence why I asked my doctor for the Lurasidone increase)

This brings me back to today though, when I found out Ive had a BPD diagnosis for years. Could it be possible that I'm not bipolar? (The diagnosis was from a psychiatrist who i had seen once or twice before and i had told him I wondered if I had bipolar from my own research, I told him my symptoms and he agreed that day I had it and diagnosed me right there)

I use all this terminology of highs and lows etc but could this all be just signs of the BPD? I look up the symptoms and they very much match the "old me" but they don't quite seem to match the new me.

I hold a job just fine, I don't partake in risky behaviors, I had an issue with alcohol but fixed that, my relationships are all very very healthy and stable. I don't self harm but I will admit that when I'm in my lows I do occasionally get self harm or suicidal thoughts. I'm an extremely anxious person and have been my whole life. Even with the meds I'm still anxious but more leveled.

My psychiatrist had let me go as a patient a few years ago and now the wait-list to get on one in my city is over a year.

My question about all this is what should I do from here? I feel there's a lot of stigma right now around mental health disorders and people self diagnosing. I feel my family doctor thinks I'm doing that with bipolar. I don't care what my diagnosis is, I just want to know what I should be doing!

Any advice is appreciated.