A wise therapist I saw for many years once mentioned—almost in passing—that I was “cyclothymic”. I didn’t really grok what he was saying at the time and I’m not sure what made me think to look it up now, but I think he was right.
From the Greek, κῦκλος (“kyklos-” meaning “circle”) and θυμός (“thymos” meaning “mood” or “emotion”), cyclothymia is marked by periods with symptoms of depression and periods with symptoms of hypomania. In retrospect, that must have sounded too much like bipolar disorder (formerly called “manic depression”) for me to have identified with it, which is probably why I didn’t give it much thought.
But hypomania is distinct from true mania in that it doesn’t negatively impact someone’s ability to socialize or work and lacks psychotic aspects like delusions or hallucinations. In fact it can provide “increased mental, physical, and social behavior that typically enhances overall functioning”.
In the context of depression, I often reference what I think of as my Antaean ability to “bounce back”. And I’ve recognized that I periodically have bursts of organization, productivity, and creativity only to falter or feel derailed or discouraged or demotivated after a time.
I think I may have been blindly identifying the contours of my cyclothymia.