What You Need to Know About Bipolar Anger and How to Cope

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. This means it may cause a variety of symptoms, but that it mostly affects your mood: how you feel and react to your environment, your attitude and temperament, and how you relate to others. The main symptom of this condition is a cycle of mood changes, between depression and mania.

Depressed moods cause feelings of sadness, hopelessness, guilt, and worthlessness. They make you feel fatigued, apathetic, and disinterested in normal activities. You may become withdrawn and struggle to find pleasure in things you otherwise enjoy. It can also affect you physically, causing changes in how you sleep or eat.

Mania as a mood is in many ways the opposite of depression, but it is still not healthy. During a manic mood, you may feel jumpy, wired, agitated, and even euphoric. Your confidence will soar and you feel energetic and like you can’t stop moving or doing. Your thoughts and talking may race, and you will probably sleep less. Mania causes you to get distracted easily and to make poor decisions. Some people experience a milder form of this mood, known as hypomania.

Mania and Anger

Anger is not a symptom that everyone with bipolar experiences, but it is not uncommon either. Mania in particular tends to trigger aggressive emotions and anger. The racing thoughts and high energy levels you experience can leave you feeling angry, irritable, and frustrated.

Those angry emotions, in turn, can cause aggressive and inappropriate behaviors. When things don’t go your way, or if someone tries to rein you in, you may lash out. A manic mood can make you yell at people, blame others, and even start physical fights.

Depression and Anger

During depression you feel down and sad, but it’s also possible to get irritated and experience intense anger. With depression and angry, aggressive emotions, differences are typically divided by gender and age.

Children, teens, and men are more likely to experience anger as a sign of depression than adult women. That said, it is possible for women to get angry or irritable when depressed as well. And anger with depression is more common than people once realized. A study that surveyed thousands of patients found that two-thirds experienced some degree of anger and irritability, and half of them described these feelings as moderate or severe.

Most importantly, you need to get professional treatment for bipolar disorder. This is a serious mental health condition that is also chronic. To improve symptoms and stabilize moods you need ongoing care. A good option is to start with a stay in residential treatment, which will give you the ability to focus on treatment and learning strategies to use once you leave the facility.

Residential treatment is especially beneficial in the treatment of bipolar anger because, in addition to intensive psychotherapy and medication management, it allows you to focus on specific ways to manage anger, outbursts, and aggression:

• Figure out triggers. Although it may often seem like it, your anger doesn’t come out of nowhere. Certain things trigger this emotion, and if you can determine those individual factors for your anger you can learn to better manage and control them. Keep an emotions journal. Describe how your mood and feelings change and what is going on around you at that time.
• Keep stress in check. In keeping that journal, you’ll likely find that stress is a trigger at least some of the time. Anything you can do to reduce stress, like changing your job, adjusting your living situation, or giving up some responsibilities, will help. For things you cannot change, learn strategies, like meditation or exercise, that help you cope with stress in healthy ways.
• Practice immediate calming strategies. As you become more aware of your moods, triggers, and emotions, you will be able to feel anger building. Take steps to stop it before it erupts into rage or aggression. Try different strategies until you find the ones that work best for you: deep breathing, calming mantras, visualizations, taking a time out, listening to music, a quick walk, stretching, paying attention to your senses.
• Talk to your doctors about medications. Medication is an important part of long-term management of bipolar disorder. There are several drugs that can be used, and some may work better for you than others. Sometimes a medication that worked well for you in the past no longer does. If you can’t seem to manage anger, talk to your psychiatrist about the possibility of trying new medications.
• Increase therapy sessions. Medication is important but just one part of managing bipolar disorder. If mood changes and symptoms like anger are still disrupting your life in spite of your best efforts, you could benefit from additional therapy. Ongoing behavioral therapies will help you learn and practice the strategies that will make managing your emotions and outbursts easier.