new to bipolar disorder 2 (rapid cycling)

Man the mood swings are doing my head in (pardon the pun). I can't work out if they are 'normal' mood swings or bipolar mood swings. People without bipolar have mood swings too right?

My psychiatrist asked me to start a mood diary which I did about a month ago. He said to put a scale from +3 to -3. I use an excel sheet for my diary so I can graph my moods easily. But I've been using a scale of +5 to -5. When he saw my mood diary that's when he said I was rapid cycling. However the mood swing data would look quite different and less extreme if I used the +3 (Really good day) to -3 (really bad day) instead of the +5 (really good day) to -5 (really bad day). Very confusing!

Also, does anyone here take Lithium? Do you find it makes you slow or dopey? Or are you pretty okay on it?

Cheers