Anger Management Vs. Cyclothymia and BPD

I was recently diagnosed with BPD after being treated for ADHD most of my 35 yr life. My wife thinks I should look into Anger management, but are the severe mood swings just a byproduct of the disese?

Matt-CO

Is your BPD bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. Sometimes people use the same initials for both. I don't know anything about borderline personality disorder but severe mood swings are what bipolar disorder is all about. I do know that many people with bipolar problems have to work on anger management as a byproduct of the bipolar disorder.

Mooky

It is actually Bipolar Disorder. Thanks for your input.

This subject came up at my DBSA Support Group. We seem to all have general consensus was that we all spent a lot of time in Anger Managment Therapy without success. What we all agreed (at least the ones with Bi-Polar & Anger) was Anti-Convulsive/Psychotic drugs like (Depakote & Tegratol). So next time you go to your Psychiatrist you might want to bring up the issue.
Off course different people experience different side effects with them.

Hopefully you have insuarance. They are pretty expensive. (or try Canadian Pharmacies). Good Luck

I am not a very angry person normally, but I started seeing a shrink because of the anger(manic) episodes where I was totally out of control. Stupid little things sent me into a rage. My husband was about to leave me and told me to get things straightened out. I was so scared, I finally decided to see someone and the moment (I mean the very day) that I was put on Prozac my mood just evened right out. I felt like myself and was normal and laid back. It was such a relief. My husband now thinks that I magically learned to control my temper, but I think actually there was no basis for the anger in the first place - it was completely an effect of my disease. I either have BPD, the lesser version, or PMDD, which is just a fancy acronym for excessive female bitchiness. Anyway, I don't think anger management would have helped me. I wasn't angry in the traditional sense, I was manic and irritated. I wish that I had a better answer, but it appears to me that medication is the only thing that helped. I don't fly into rages anymore and I'm still the same person with the same circumstances that I had before. I blame it all on the disorder.

Many times when I was raging I would think in the back of my mind "What in the hell is going on here? This isn't me and I don't know who it is that's taking over, but they are straight out of hell." There was a couple of times that my husband accused me of being possessed, and that's exactly how I felt sometimes. Anyway, I finally found the right drug (for the moment) and I haven't had a problem with rage in over a year.

Depakote is a $4 prescription at Wal Mart Pharmacy. It's not that expensive. I am on a reasonable dosage and it works well for me. The only side effects that I have are bloating/weight gain, and getting tired early. Both of these effects can be mitigated by exercise and a good diet.

The good parts are they keep me from "going over the edge" when it comes to my irratability or anger. My highs are not as high, and my lows are not as low.

I do consume about 2 glasses of wine about 2 or sometimes 3 days a week, which most people will scream about, but my labs always prove my liver (and everything else) to be quite healthy.

As far as controlling anger, what depakote does for me is that it slows down my thinking enough to allow me to see the situation for what it really is and then I have a better chance of reacting like a "normal" person. I still get mad, I still get angry, but I don't go to extremes and stomp around like a complete a$$h0le.

Chris