Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, like Major Depression Disorder or Anxiety. When you are diagnosed with Bipolar, that means the mental health practitioner has, through reviewing your history and observing you, determined that your mood goes really "up" in energy and emotional state, and for most people with bipolar disorder, it also goes really far "down" in energy and emotional state.
Here is the wide range of mood states people with bipolar might feel, depending on the type of Bipolar they have. A typical person will spend most of their time in the "green" emotional states (happiness, sadness, somewhere in between). On occasion, they may move into elation or dysthimia. Past that, you are possibly experiencing a mood disorder.
Keep in mind, Bipolar is about MOOD not emotions. Mood is like the climate, and emotions are like the weather. In bipolar disorder, the climate is extreme, and switches between extremes with occasional times of stability... so like living in the Antarctic for a few months, then in the Sahara desert for a year, and then in Spain for the winter months. It is not angry one minute, ecstatic the next, and depressed for the last hour. The mood states are measured in days (four as a minimum) to months or even years. So that drama queen you work with? Probably not Bipolar. The four year old with the temper tantrums? Probably not Bipolar. That guy at work who seemed really down everyday for months, but lately has been finishing more projects that anyone else could handle? That could be Bipolar.
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