Anxiety causing huge mood swings

[spiracle]

One of my major problems with anxiety is the mood changes it seems to cause in me (other than anxiety itself.) I've had people think it was something else - bipolar, or borderline personality disorder, etc. and I'm not sure, but I doubt it. I think it's probably caused by anxiety. Sometimes after being anxious for a while I get extremely down, to the point of wanting to withdraw from everything and suicidal thoughts.

Other times I get irrationally angry, sometimes very giddy and driven (actually yes, euphoric sometimes, I think it can occasionally lead to being caught in an enjoyable rather than awful rush although it's mostly horrible and not in any way pleasant), and my emotions go all over the place, crying and laughing and acting and feeling like several different people until eventually I zone out and go numb because it's too much to deal with. Whatever state of mind I'm in, it tends to be intense, and I don't see outside of it -- it's all there is and there will never be anything else. A similar thing when I'm less anxious and my emotions level out; never mind that it keeps happening every so often; this time is different, this time it never will again.

Except it always does. Anyone else experience major mood/emotional changes of the kind with anxiety? Does anyone have any tips to manage it? Thanks.

[jessed03]

Lowering the anxiety is the only thing that will help here, really. I too suffered from intensely extreme mood swings, so bad that I was actually bed-ridden for around a month. I'd go from high to terrified or suicidally depressed in minutes. That wasn't fun.

Not getting involved in the mood changes is important; let them come and go. Imagine they're washing over you, like waves. That will shorten the length of them and reduce their intensity.

Don't even bother entertaining ideas that you may have another mental illness, such as bipolar or BPD. Not at this point. Anxiety is having to extreme an affect on your mood to try and diagnose anything hidden within it.

If you want to try meds, that's up to you. Personally, I did, because the feelings went on for far too long. I also didn't have access to good psychotherapy at the time. The general rule of thumb is they're worth trying when life becomes increasingly hard to manage for a period of longer than a month or two. I fell into that category at the time.

Daily relaxation will take some of your stress away. It can take a while to work, but even 15 minutes each day has a cumulative affect that you'll start to feel after a few weeks. Meditation and PMR were my two favs.

Diet is a worthy mention. Sugar, preservatives, caffeine, etc. are all likely to make your problem worse. Some find a diabetic diet very helpful, however I can't endorse that as I've never tried it. It's worth trying magnesium. It's a cheap supp, and works for quite a few people. No harm if it does nothing for you.

I would say the mood swings are a symptom of the problem, so rather than try and fix that symptom alone (which is difficult), work instead on the problem. You will see progress over time if you do all of the right things. I don't know if you have any anxiety triggers or make regular cognitive thinking errors, but if you do, pinpoint them and go to work on them.

[spiracle]

Thank you lots for the reply. It does seem likely that they are primarily due to the anxiety. Some of my thoughts on considering that it might be some other mental illness were similar, but it helps to hear it from someone else. I am trying to work on the cognitive aspect of things and hope to perhaps get some help with that at some point, and I would be willing to try meds. Your other suggestions are good, also: I've tried most of them to some extent, but there are certainly things in those areas that can still be worked on.

Hopefully the mood swings really will abate at least to some extent if I can learn to better manage the anxiety.

[Peak]

Yeah I can identify with that. When I'm not feeling anxious I can almost feel like I'm on a high, just feel really buoyant and positive but when the anxiety kicks in my mood can drop through the floor and I feel really down.

The 'secret' I found is realising that when you feel down you feed into your anxiety i.e. the lower you feel the more anxious you feel, the more anxious you feel the lower you feel and so on. This is where CBT really helped with me. All of us when we suffer from anxiety adopt methods of coping which we believe protect us from the thing that we fear. In actual fact they are just a negative re-enforcement of our fears and don't protect us at all but ensure that we perpetuate our fears even when they are ungrounded. Put it this way, lets say you have anxiety over health and fear that you will have a heart attack. One of the things you may do in order to protect yourself from this is to not exercise or do any activity that may increase your heart rate for fear that such activity will trigger a heart attack. Now the reality is, the less exercise you do the chances are the more unfit you will become, the more weight you will put on and the more strain you will put on your heart. CBT makes you take a look at your coping strategies and challenge your preconceptions about them. You would, for example, start doing gentle exercise and monitor how you feel afterwards. As you realise you can actually be active without any health risks you begin to realise that your preconception was wrong. The further you progress the more you realise your coping strategy was just keeping you anxious rather than protecting you.

But back to mood. I have also found that sometimes it works both ways in that feeling down can trigger anxiety. I am now very aware of my triggers and so I try to do the following:

Eating a healthy diet - Fatty foods just make you feel lethargic and then I feel unmotivated and that can lead to feeling down
Avoiding certain TV/Films - This may sound silly but I've found that films and TV programs that are depressing or are about things that I'm anxious about can send my mood through the floor and now I not only turn them off but deliberately then watch something funny or inspiring.
Plan your day - Our working lives can get on top of us and when we are saturated with work we can feel like we can't cope and start to feel down. By planning your day you can set targets that you can achieve and even if you don't get everything done you can feel like you've achieved something.
Sleep - Very, very important. Make sure you get plenty of sleep. Each person is different but really 8hrs a night

Hope that helps