Consult With Your Doctor About Taking Medications That Could Help
People often describe depression as feeling stuck in a cycle thats hard to escape. Taking antidepressants can help break that cycle, according to Nicole Johnson, Ph.D.,3 licensed psychologist and associate professor of the counseling psychology program at Lehigh University College of Education. Seeking psychiatric, in addition to psychological, support can be really helpful, Dr. Johnson tells SELF. If you take antidepressants but feel like they arent helping, either because youre really irritable, feel very down, or have other depressive symptoms, then you may want to ask your doctor to try something else or to change your dose.
Its really important to talk to your mental health care team if you have bipolar disorder and think youre entering a depressive mood episode, even if youre currently on medication, says David Miklowitz, Ph.D.,4 director of the Max Gray Child and Adolescent Mood Disorders Program at UCLA Semel Institute. Typically, your doctor will prescribe mood stabilizers or antipsychotic medications to help you maintain more stable moods, depending on your situation.5 Your physician will reevaluate your treatment plan to make sure its the best one to help you maintain a stable mood.
Why Am I So Sad And Angry
When a woman reaches the menopausal stage in her reproductive life, it is likely that she will experience mood swings. These might be mild or severe, but either way, they can be upsetting, especially when faced without advice and knowledge of how to handle them. It is helpful to understand why you might feel sad and angry during this time below, you can find information about some of the causes.
Seeking Help And Support For Anger And Depression
If you are struggling with depression and anger, it is incredibly important that you speak to a health or mental health professional. They will be able to provide you with access to an assessment, diagnosis, and treatment such as medication and therapy so that you can deal with the problems that you are currently facing.
Many people choose to start out by speaking to their GP. If you are nervous about going to talk to them, do a little preparation beforehand. Write down a list of your concerns, examples of how anger and depression have been impacting your life, information on the intensity of your anger symptoms and any other symptoms of depression that you experience, as well as details of if and when these symptoms peak and trough throughout the day or week.
They will be able to provide you with support themselves, or refer you to a specialist treatment service, such as Priory, so that they can provide you with the help you need.
If you would prefer, you can also come directly to Priory. One of our experienced psychiatrists will be able to provide you with an assessment, a diagnosis and recommend world-class treatment for depression at any one of our nationwide hospitals or wellbeing centres.
Blog reviewed by Daniel Fryer , MSc, Dip. in Animal Assisted Therapy, Dip. in Clinical Hypnotherapy, Dip. in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy), CBT therapist at Priory Hospital Bristol
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Talk To People You Trust And Ask For Accountability
When youre in the thick of depression and your frustrations with the world around you are at a high, it can be very difficult to ascertain when your reactions may be disproportionate. This is where those you love and trust can be very helpful in supporting you as you work through your irritability.
Find someone you know can be honest yet kind with you about your behaviour, and ask them to help let you know when your irritability may be getting the best of you. Make a commitment to make amends with those you may have hurt, and reflect back on what might be underlying your emotions.
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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How To Cope With Being Angry
If it seems like you always feel angry, there are strategies that you can use that may help relieve your anger and help you cope.
- Find the cause: If you are not sure what is causing these angry feelings, consider keeping a journal where you write down when you were angry and what immediately preceded these feelings, including what you were doing and the events that occurred. Over time, you might start to spot patterns or specific triggers that are likely to lead to anger.
- Exercise: Physical activity can be a great way to channel feelings of frustration and potentially relieve angry moods. Getting regular exercise can also be great for your overall mental health. It can help you cope with stress and relieve feelings of anxiety and depression.
- Rely on relaxation techniques: When you feel anger building, look for ways to defuse these emotions before they get worse. Relaxation strategies such as deep breathing, meditation, mindfulness, and progressive muscle relaxation can help induce a relaxation response to combat stress and anger.
- Try cognitive reframing: Sometimes anger is the result of how you perceive a situation. If you are focused on negative thoughts or looking at a situation in a biased way, you are more likely to feel angry about it. Cognitive reframing is a strategy that involves changing how you look at a situation, often by considering alternatives or actively challenging your interpretations.
Where Negativity Stems From: Why Am I So Negative
Negative thoughts occur in a variety of forms, including:
Catastrophizing: Always assuming the worst possible outcome is inevitable.
Black and white thinking: Also known as polarized thinking. Seeing everything as either one extreme or the other.
Personalizing: When you assume that you are to blame for everything that goes wrong.
Filter thinking: Focusing only on the negative sides of a situation and ignoring the positives.
According to LiveScience, negative thoughts are classified in the medical field as cognitive distortions. These distortions reflect the ways that our mind convinces us of untruths. They will not only generate negative thinking and emotions, but they will also reinforce negative thinking by repeating them on a loop. Cognitive behavioral therapists often refer to these as sticky thoughts.
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Alcohol Tobacco And Other Drugs
The misuse and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, and prescription medications affect the health and well-being of millions of Americans. SAMHSAs 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that approximately 19.3 million people aged 18 or older had a substance use disorder in the past year.
Depression Makes Us Different
When depression is at its peak, we may not be participating in the things we normally love to do. Lack of sleep, irritability, and general feelings of disinterest can rob us of the joy that activities usually bring us.
Things that used to be exciting and fun such as going on dates with your partner, hanging out with your friends, or going out to dinner may have a grey, rainy cloud over them. It can be challenging to do even the most simple of tasks, such as grocery shopping, when depression has us in its grasp.
This works to aggravate our anger in a couple of ways. First, it can start to get very aggravating to continue to have to decline when you are invited out, and you may begin to grow a sense of disappointment or even hatred toward yourself because of it. This can cause you to be feel chaotic inside, which will more than likely lead to an outburst as these feelings cannot be held inside forever.
Secondly, if you let this go on too long, you may look back and see how much you missed while you were buried in your depression. This can make your current problem even worse, especially if significant milestones such as a child’s graduation or birthday, or a family wedding are missed. This can lead to extreme animosity toward your condition and yourself.
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Why Am I So Angry
Is anger healthy?
Everyone has experienced anger. The intensity of your anger can range from profound annoyance to extreme rage. Its normal and healthy to feel angry from time to time in response to certain situations.
But sometimes people experience an uncontrollable anger that often escalates, especially when the provocation is minor. In this case, anger is not a normal emotion but a major problem.
Anger comes from a variety of sources and can vary widely. Some common anger triggers include:
- personal problems, such as missing a promotion at work or relationship difficulties
- a problem caused by another person such as cancelling plans
- an event like bad traffic or getting in a car accident
- memories of a traumatic or enraging event
In other cases, an anger problem may be caused by early trauma or events in a persons life that have shaped their personality. In some cases, hormonal changes can also cause anger, as can certain mental disorders.
Some signs that your anger is not normal include:
What Does Irritability Look Like When Its Part Of Depression
There are many things that can prompt irritability and anger in young people. What are the signs that these negative moods might be associated with depression?
If the irritability is constant rather than conditional. We expect some level of irritability from teenagers in general, especially when theyre being asked to do something they dont want to do, like put down their phones and join the family for dinner. But that typical kind of irritation or anger is intermittent, and its provoked by something specific.
However, if irritation is the main way that a teenager is throughout the day, says Dr. Allerhand, and not only at home but also at school or in other environments, it may be related to a mood disorder rather than an environmental circumstance.
If the irritability is accompanied by other symptoms of depression. In addition to depressed mood or irritability, to be diagnosed with depression a child would have to have at least four of these symptoms:
- Losing interest in things they once enjoyed
- Feeling worthless, saying negative things about themselves
- Lacking energy, feeling tired or seeming lazy
- Trouble concentrating or making decisions
- Gaining or losing weight, changes in appetite
- Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
- Thinking about or attempting suicide
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What May Depression And Anger Outbursts Look Like
A person with depression may experience anger in a number of different ways. It can present itself in the following ways:
- Sensitive to criticism
- Verbally and physically violent to others or themselves
A person with depression may turn their anger in on themselves, rather than displaying visible outbursts. This can result in a person carrying out self-sabotaging or self-harmful behaviours.
They may also experience other symptoms of depression, including intense sadness, guilt, an inability to concentrate and indecisiveness.
Should You Vent Your Anger
While venting anger, which refers to expressing anger in various ways, has often been touted as an effective anger management tool, blowing off steam might actually make your anger worse.
Venting aggression using actions like yelling, stomping your feet, or punching a pillow reinforces the angry outburst. It essentially trains your brain and body to respond to feelings of anger with violence.
So instead of “venting” or “letting it out,” a more effective way to deal with being angry all the time is to walk away until your feelings become less intense. Utilizing relaxation techniques can also be a more productive way to cope.
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Decide How You Want To React
For many people dealing with irritability or their strong reactions to certain people or incidents may seem entirely justified. We are often irritable with those closest to us our partners, family members and good friends and despite their love for us, constant anger or criticism can weigh heavily on even the most solid of relationships.
An important question to ask yourself is, in general, how would you like to handle situations that make you feel angry or irritable? If the way you answer that question is different than the way that you often react to your frustrations, then that is a good place to start. It is important to remember that our initial feelings dont have to dictate how we act, and that taking a pause to get in touch with our mind can help us align our actions more closely towards who we would like to be in our interactions with others.
Knowing How Anger And Depression Interact Can Be Essential For Your Well
Devin reported a variety of complaints about his significant other regarding finances, in-laws, and parenting. Raphael described anger with his coworkers and supervisor, mostly with regard to his belief that they were inept. By contrast, Greg recounted pervasive angerwith friends, loved ones, and with strangers. He cited the many ways in which they led him to become agitated.
These men were participants in one of my anger management classes. After hearing their concerns, I shared the perspective that anger is most often a reaction to and distraction from inner sufferingfeelings such as sadness, powerlessness, shame, anxiety, inadequacy, and isolation. It was when I detailed the connection between anger and depression that the entire group became silent. Whereas previously they were physically animated, they suddenly became still, even physically turned inward with their eyes averting direct contact with others.
Almost all participants indicated that the anger-depression connection seemed to resonate with them. They realized, and fully experienced, that their anger was both an outgrowth of, and meaningful distraction, from the intense pain of underlying depression. This is often the case for many individuals who seek my help for anger.
Anger as an Outgrowth of Self-Compassion
Symptoms of Depression
- Fatigue or loss of energy
- Poor concentration or indecisiveness
- Recurring thoughts of death
Depression as Anger Directed Inward
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Referring Yourself For Therapy
If you need more support, you can get free psychological therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy , on the NHS.
You can refer yourself directly to a psychological therapies service without a referral from a GP.
There are many different causes of anger and it’s different for everyone.
Some common things that make people feel angry include:
- being treated unfairly and feeling powerless to do anything about it
- feeling threatened or attacked
- other people not respecting your authority, feelings or property
- being interrupted when you’re trying to achieve a goal
How you react to anger can depend on lots of things, including:
- the situation you’re in at the moment if you’re dealing with lots of problems or stress, 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 people who experience traumatic, frightening or stressful events sometimes develop post-traumatic stress disorder which can lead to angry outbursts
- substances such as drugs and alcohol which make some people act more aggressively than usual
Some of the things that make you angry may not bother other people at all.
You might find it hard to explain why you feel this way but talking to someone could help you find a solution.
Find out about the 5 steps to mental wellbeing.
Research Regarding Depression And Mental Health
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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Be As Honest As You Can About What You Need
How you communicate your feelings to someone will largely depend on the relationship you have with them. Depression can affect your relationships, and depending on your comfort level, you might just tell someone that your mood is low and ask them not to take it personally if you do appear irritable. If you live with a partner, family member, or close friend, maybe you feel more comfortable asking them to help you with managing your irritability, like by giving you space or by helping you stay more active, Dr. Miklowitz says. Or you might set boundaries so you engage only in specific activities or conversations that arent frustrating for you. And while you want to do whats best for you right now, its important to be as thoughtful as possible in your approach. You want to try to be as sensitive as you can to other peoples feelings and not alienate them, Dr. Borrelli says. In the future you will likely feel grateful for maintaining relationships with the people who supported you when you needed it.