I'm curious. I had my first bout of depression in my late teens which lasted about three years and now it's returned for the past two years. My official diagnosis has always been dysthymia with concurrent major depression.

My main reason for posting is that my depression seems different from what a lot of other people describe. I have a general low mood thats characteristic of dysthymia but I also have acute dysphoric episodes that last several hours per day and tend to recur each day for a week or so. During these episodes I don't necessarily experience a melancholy type of sadness per se. It's more a painful feeling of boredom/emptiness and a general lack of ability to entertain positive thoughts. Yet the way I describe it in the previous sentence is an understatement. I don't think there's any good descriptive word for this feeling. It can grow to such a degree that it feels acute, as if at some point I might need to take action to alleviate it. I usually notice a feeling of pressure behind my eyes and a really nasty sinking feeling in my chest. I also become extremely bitter and feel full of hostility and rage. It's like a black hole of negative energy descends on me.

It also seems to occur in the late evening or at night. Instead of the normal feeling of sleepiness there's an all encompassing emotional weariness with no access to rest or peace. The emotional flatness is so terrible that all I can feel is the negative energy. I start thinking about all things unjust in the world, people getting tossed about and neglected, about how I really want to bring all the people "on the top" down. I have fantasies about equaling things out by mass-slaughtering all people with too much money. I just start seething with hate. It's like I need to feel all this negativity because it's the only thing I can feel to avoid the emptiness. It isn't until I reach a point of utter exhaustion that I can begin to rest. I'm often kept up late and lose sleep because of this and the more sleep deprived I become the more likely it is to keep occurring from one day to the next.

Is this bipolar related or what? What's wrong with me?

This post has been edited by frostfern: Jul 11 2009, 05:36 AM