What is your process for deciding when to seek medical attention?

Whether it’s a physical ailment or a mental one, I think people often have difficulty deciding when it’s time to go see a doctor. For me, it’s about mental health. There are a whole range of symptoms for bipolar disorder, and it can be really hard to decide when those symptoms call for a trip to the shrink. Sometimes you find out about a new symptom you didn’t know about before, and realizing you’ve been experiencing that for a while now. It makes the case stronger, but does it make it strong enough?

There’s that gray area between thinking you can handle it on your own, and deciding it’s time for help. What are your thoughts like when you are in the gray area? How do you decide when it’s time to pick up the phone? Do you go back and forth about it in your mind? Or is it always pretty clear to you? Does it change as you have more experience with an illness? Do you think your gray area is pretty big, or quite narrow? If you are in the health care profession, do you think you have a harder or an easier time making these decisions? Why?