Friday, March 29, 2024

Do I Have Anger Issues Or Depression

Who Deals With Anger Issues

Do You Have Anger Issues? (TEST)

It’s easy to assume that it’s just men who have anger management problems. While its true that mens anger issues can be more obvious, women are just as prone to having problems with anger too.

Struggling with anger has less to do with gender and more to do with the psychological issues and life experiences that have shaped us. Often there can be unresolved problems, or even abuses, that have created an internal emotional struggle within a person. Overtime these feelings when left unaddressed can impact our ability to control our anger and respond appropriately to situations or other people.

Outside stresses can play a large role as well. People who are already vulnerable can find it difficult to let go of internal anger, or control their anger response when faced with even mild stress. This can happen equally to both men and women.

What To Do If Youre Concerned

If youre wondering if the irritability or anger youre seeing from a child or teenager could be a sign of depression, Dr. Allerhand has these recommendations:

Talk to them about how theyre feeling. If your child seems unusually irritable, something may be going on thats driving the behavior. A good place to start is having a conversation with them to see if theres something at school or at home thats causing them stress.

Start with something open-ended like, How have you been feeling lately? I know things have been tough, she suggests. See what the child says. If they are open to talking about how they feel, great! Parents should listen and validate without jumping immediately to problem solving unless the child is specifically asking for problem solving.

If the child is unresponsive to first attempts, Dr. Allerhand encourages parents to let it go and let the child know they are always available to chat. Id recommend doing this often even daily so they will come to you when theyre ready, she says. This shouldnt be a power struggle, or kids will never want to share.

On the other hand, do praise behavior you do want to see: So anytime they come down to the dinner table and sit down and grunt one word at you, you say, Thank you so much. I love when you have dinner with us. No sarcasm either.

And since parents have control over so much of a childs and even a teenagers life, theyre very easy targets for irritation and anger.

Determining Whether You Have Anger Issues

You may feel angry occasionally and that doesn’t mean you have an anger management problem, says Dr. Klemanski. However, he recommends tracking the intensity and frequency of your anger experiences.

If anger feels like it’s more of a personality trait or an ever-present mood, it would be best to talk with a mental health professional. Other warning signs might include physical aggression, chronic problems with your relationships or your job, and poor health as a result of increased anger and temper, says Dr. Klemanski.

These are some questions you can ask yourself, to help you determine whether you have anger issues:

  • You feel angry very often.
  • You frequently get into heated arguments that spin out of control.
  • Your family or close friends have told you they think you have anger issues, or have severed contact with you because of your behavior.
  • You have conflicts with your coworkers.
  • You are not welcome at certain stores or establishments.
  • You have had violent thoughts or behaved violently when angry.
  • You have been arrested due to an anger-related incident.

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Youre Hurting Others Or Yourself

No matter how angry you become, its never acceptable to harm yourself or others. If you find yourself ruminating on the idea of hurting yourself or the other people in your life, you may need to seek help. And its not only physical harm. If youre frequently putting yourself or other people down, you may be veering into the territory of mental or emotional abuse.

When your anger leads you to violent thoughts, its time to seek help for your anger issues.

Does Depression Cause Anger

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In mental health, its far too simplistic to assume that one condition causes another symptom or issue. Instead, its better to assume that there is likely a correlation, and many confounding variables may contribute to this relationship. In this case, depression may trigger more anger, and unresolved anger might exacerbate depression.

Read Also: How To Feel Less Depressed And Anxious

What Is The Prognosis/outlook For Patients Who Have Intermittent Explosive Disorder

Having intermittent explosive disorder can predispose an individual to depression, anxiety, and alcohol and drug abuse. It can also lead to severe personal and relationship problems. For that reason, it is essential to seek medical help if you feel you or a family member has intermittent explosive disorder. With cognitive therapy and medication, the condition can be successfully managed. However, according to studies, it is thought that intermittent explosive disorder is a long-term condition, lasting from 12 years to 20 years or even a lifetime.

Anger Can Be Linked To Depression & Anxiety

It can be challenging to acknowledge that you might have a problem with anger management and even harder to accept that there may be something deeper that needs to be addressed. But the anger you put out into the world or direct onto yourself is not intentional, which means awareness is the first step toward recovery.

Of course, increased irritability and anger are just one of the symptoms of a mental health disorder. If you are feeling off or more agitated than usual, give our team a call for a professional evaluation and diagnosis. We can help you learn to process your feelings and work through them. You dont have to do it alone!

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Moving From Maladaptive Anger To Adaptive Emotions

Emotionally focused therapy involves transforming your maladaptive emotions by addressing their root cause. One way to do this is by verbalizing your critical inner voice. For example, in the case of gaining weight, the critical inner voice might sound something like this.

“Look at how much weight you’ve gained. You have no self-control and you’ll never be able to lose it now. You might as well accept that it’s hopeless and you’ll be overweight forever. Nothing you try ever works and you just don’t have any willpower.”

Thus, the idea is to put the critical inner voice into words as though they are being spoken by someone outside of your head. This involves expressing feelings behind thoughts and making sure to use “you” statements so it sounds as though the critical inner voice is coming from someone else. This allows you to separate yourself from those thoughts and see them as coming from outside of yourself.

Once you are able to step outside of your thoughts and view them as an external critical voice, the next step is to develop insights into where that critical voice might have developed. This is the process of transforming the maladaptive emotion.

The next step involves responding to the critical inner voice and answering back against the criticisms. In this way, you are essentially “taking your own side.”

For example, in the case of the critical inner voice that talks about your weight gain, you might respond to that voice in the following ways.

Research Regarding Depression And Mental Health

Anger as a Depression Symptom: I’m Constantly Angry

As of late, it may seem like the world is in turmoil. Likewise, it appears as though empathy and patience have taken a back seat to intolerance and anger. So what could be going on?

MentalHealthAmerica.orgprovides us with numbers regarding mental health issues year over year. Below are just a few of the alarming statistics:

  • 9.7% of the youth in America have severe major depression.
  • There was a 93% increase in the number of anxiety screenings from January to September 2020.
  • There was a 62% increase in depression screenings over the 2019 numbers.
  • 8 in 10 people who took the depression screening scored in the moderate to severe category. These numbers have been consistent since the pandemic started in March 2020.
  • 60% of youth who are depressed are not receiving any mental health care.
  • 24% of adults with mental health issues report an unmet need for treatment.
  • 19% of adults, or over 47 million Americans, are experiencing mental illness.
  • Over the past year,13.84%of youth experienced at least one major depressive episode. Without treatment, childhood depression is likely to carry into adulthood.

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Depression Presenting As Anger

Not knowing that youre dealing with depression can make the sudden presence of anger problems all the more confusing and frustrating. Maybe you dont understand that anger can be the dominant emotion in depression, especially for teenagers and children. In that case, it may never occur to you that depression could be the underlying issue.

As we mentioned already, you might direct anger from depression outwardly, for instance, at situations or other people, or inwardly, towards yourself.

When To See A Doctor

If your anger issues are impacting your day-to-day personal or professional life, you may need to see a professional. Goff says to look out for the following warning signs:

  • Repeated conflicts in relationships due to anger
  • Loss of relationships due to anger
  • Increased frequency, intensity, or duration of anger symptoms
  • Increased frequency, intensity, or duration of underlying emotions that trigger your anger

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Anger Symptoms Causes And Effects

According to a study conducted by the Harvard Medical School, close to 8 percent of adolescents display anger issues that qualify for lifetime diagnoses of intermittent explosive disorder. Anger issues arent limited to teens, and its important to understand anger symptoms, causes and effects if you suspect you are, or someone you know is, suffering from an anger disorder.

How We React To Anger

Coping with Anxiety &  Depression

How you react to feeling angry depends on lots of things, including:

  • the situation you are in at the moment if you’re dealing with lots of problems or stress in your life, you may find it harder to control your anger
  • your family history you may have learned unhelpful ways of dealing with anger from the adults around you when you were a child
  • events in your past if you have experienced events that made you angry but felt you couldn’t express your anger, you may still be coping with those angry feelings

Some people express anger verbally, by shouting. Sometimes this can be aggressive, involving swearing, threats or name-calling.

Some people react violently and lash out physically, hitting other people, pushing them or breaking things. This can be particularly damaging and frightening for other people.

Some of us show anger is passive ways, for example, by ignoring people or sulking.

Other people may hide their anger or turn it against themselves. They can be very angry on the inside but feel unable to let it out.

People who tend to turn anger inwards may harm themselves as a way of coping with the intense feelings they have. Young people are most likely to self harm.

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Does Anger Cause Depression

An older article in the journal BJPsych Advances linked feeling angry with the development of depression.

The authors of the article suggest that this anger stems from narcissistic vulnerability, which is when a person is extremely sensitive to any perceived rejection or loss.

Experiencing rejection may cause feelings of anger, which can lead to a person fearing that their anger will damage their relationships.

They may then turn this anger toward themselves, which can lead to low self-esteem and depression.

However, there is little research available to support this theory or show that anger can cause depression.

People who experience anger and depression may have some of the following symptoms:

  • irritability
  • Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors : These include fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, paroxetine, and escitalopram.
  • Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors : These include venlafaxine, duloxetine, and desvenlafaxine.

According to a 2019 systematic review , sertraline can be effective in treating both depression and anger.

The majority of the studies concluded that many of the individuals who experienced high levels of irritability and anger responded well to sertraline. After roughly 2 weeks, the sertraline appeared to have improved their mood and reduced their feelings of anger.

However, the authors note that not all of the participants responded to this treatment.

Your Anger Is Intense Or Explosive

Maybe you dont feel angry all of the time. Maybe its rare, but when it does happen, its explosive and extremely intense. Ask yourself these questions. If the answer to any of these is yes, it may be time to seek some professional help to get your emotions under control.

  • When you get angry, do you damage property by throwing or punching things?
  • Do you black out while angry and have difficulty remembering what happened?
  • Do you feel completely overwhelmed, anxious, or powerless due to your rage?
  • Does your anger often cause you to seek out substances like alcohol or drugs?

When you cant find an adequate outlet for your anger, or it feels so big that its out of your control, it means it might be time learn some positive ways of expressing a normal human emotion in a healthy way.

Its normal to feel angry now and again. Frustration and irritation are aspects of our everyday lives. But if youre finding that your anger is lasting too long, resulting in harm to yourself or others, taking over your life, and ruining your relationships, its time to seek help. Ask yourself, Do I have anger issues? And if the answer is yes, look into receiving anger counseling. If youre ready to take control of your anger and emotions and work on positive coping mechanisms, contact us today at Real Life Counseling.

Resources:

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Anger Issues Test: Understand Your Mood Better

Do you often find yourself feeling angry? Are your moods swinging from one extreme to the other too quickly? Do you want to know what is triggering these outbursts? If so, there are anger tests that will help. However, there are four different types of anger tests: the mood swing test, anger issues test, the angry picture experiment, and your brain on anger. Further, each test uses a different approach to uncovering underlying causes for your anger.

The Causes Of Anger Issues

How To Know If You Have Anger Issues | Tips For Dealing With Anger And Frustration

Anger is a secondary emotion, Goff says, which means it’s important to take a step back and evaluate what the underlying cause of the anger is and what triggered it.

Usually, she says anger is caused by feelings of:

  • Hurt, like when you’re going through a breakup
  • Fear, like if you’re experiencing financial troubles
  • Disappointment possibly from getting stuck in traffic or missing the train
  • Betrayal like if you discover you’re being cheated on
  • Sadness like while dealing with the loss of a loved one
  • Unmet expectations from a spouse or parent who shows up late to an important event

Anger issues occur when one repeatedly, consciously or not, avoids examining what initial feelings truly sent one down the path to anger,” says Goff.

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Using Awareness Of Anger To Understand Panic

  • What does anger look like to you?
  • Did you grow up being able to experience and express it?
  • Are you able to express it now? How, when, with whom?
  • Whats the relationship between when you feel angry , and your struggles with anxiety?

They aren’t easy questions to ask, or answer.

There’s a great deal we don’t know about how an anxious mind processes anger but I do know not dealing with it, denying it, increases the chances it’ll wreak havoc with your life, maybe even stop you finding ways to treat anxiety.

Dealing With Anger Issues

There are several ways that you can deal with anger management. Some of them you can do on your own, while others can include the help of friends, family, or mental health professionals. Strategies for managing your anger issues include:

Think Before Speaking

Anger frequently rises in the heat of the moment. It is easy to say or do the first thing that comes to mind. Take a few moments, however, to take a deep breath and think about the situation and what you should say or do. Encourage others in the situation to do the same.

Express Your Anger in a Constructive Way

Once youâve taken a moment to calm down and can think clearly, try to express your feelings in an assertive but non-confrontational way. You can state the concerns and frustrations you have clearly and directly without hurting the other people involved.

Identify Potential Solutions

A lot of what drives anger is focusing on the problem in a situation. Try instead to direct your efforts to resolve whatever it is that is causing your anger. It is helpful to remind yourself that anger won’t fix anything and it might actually make it worse.

Stick With ‘I’ Statements

Anger drives people to find others to blame, which naturally leads to finger-pointing. A constructive way to address a situation that is causing you anger is to frame it as an âIâ statement. For example, “I’m upset that you left the table without offering to help with the dishes” instead of “You never do any housework”.

Let Go of Grudges

Use Humor

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Do Antidepressants Help With Irritability

Medication can help with the symptoms of depression, including irritability.

A 2019 study found that treating people with major depressive disorder with antidepressants lowered their irritability levels. And those who experienced the most significant reduction in irritability in the first few weeks of treatment were more likely to experience remission.

This suggests that antidepressants may be a vital part of treating depression-related anger and irritability.

A mental health professional can help you figure out the best treatment options. This may include medication but may also involve therapy and, in some cases, anger management.

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