Bipolar Vs Borderline

What you all think is Bipolar... really isn't bipolar.  Its Borderline.  There's a difference between the 2:

"Borderline personality disorder and bipolar patients both experience mood swings that may involve violent outbursts, depression, or anxiety. However, while bipolar patients typically cycle through these moods over a period of weeks or months, borderline personality disorder patients may have bursts of these moods lasting only a few hours or a day."

Bipolar Disorder requires that you experience a given mood for at least 1 week and if it's a depressive episode, 2 weeks. Many people I am working with tell me that their moods change "by the minute" or they "suddenly go 'off'".  This is not Bipolar Disorder.  Manic and Depressive episodes last at least one week and often much longer. 

A cycle is the period of time it takes for a person to go through one episode of mania and one of depression. The frequency and duration of these cycles vary from person to person, from once every five years to once every three months. People with a subtype of bipolar (rapid--cycling bipolar) may cycle more quickly, but much less quickly than people with BPD (shifts can even last minutes/seconds).

According to Dr. Friedel, director of the BPD program at Virginia Commonwealth University, there are two main differences between BPD and bipolar disorder:

1. People with BPD cycle much more quickly, often several times a day.

2. The moods in people with BPD are more dependent, either positively or negatively, on what's going on in their life at the moment. Anything that might smack of abandonment (however far fetched) is a major trigger.

3. In people with BPD, the mood swings are more distinct. Marsha M. Linehan, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that while people with bipolar disorder swing between all-¬encompassing periods of mania and major depression, the mood swings typical in BPD are more specific. She says, "You have fear going up and down, sadness going up and down, anger up and down, disgust up and down, and love up and down."

Although bipolar disorder and BPD share some similarities, there are some fundamental differences that separate the two. For example, bipolar disorder is a mental (or brain) disorder, while BPD is an emotional disorder. Both disorders are characterized by mood swings, but the length and intensity of these mood swings are different. While a person with bipolar disorder typically endures the same mood for days or weeks at a time, a person with BPD may experience intense bouts of anger, depression, and anxiety that may last only hours, or at most a day. Bipolar mood shifts are distinguished by manic episodes of elation, but BPD mood shifts rarely involve feelings of elation. The cause for these mood shifts also vary. BPD mood shifts are usually a reaction to an environmental stressor (such as an argument), while bipolar mood shifts seem to occur out of nowhere.