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This was precisely my wife's symptoms when we were first married. She was angry nearly all the time. She could hold it together in public, but at home it was mi

This was precisely my wife's symptoms when we were first married. She was angry nearly all the time. She could hold it together in public, but at home it was miserable. She would go a full day at a time, alternatively not speaking, stomping around and throwing things, and yelling. It took a long time for her to be correctly diagnosed. It wasn't clear to me that depression was the issue, because as discussed in the article, anger isn't usually associated with depression. And it wasn't clear to her either, because in her mind all of her anger was justified. Most of it was my fault. I had to keep telling myself that, no, it wasn't my fault. I wish I had had a support group or something but I didn't know that such things existed. Happily, she did eventually find a doctor who worked with her to get a correct diagnosis and figure out the right meds (in her case, a specific SSRI. But everyone is different). She is a thousand percent better now - she's back to being the woman I married. But without diagnosis and treatment, we would not be married today. If you have frequent anxiety attacks accompanied by anger, violent or not, definitely consider depression as a possible cause. If you are living with someone with these symptoms, get yourself some support. If your partner's anger turns to violence, for your own wellbeing, leave. Even if you are a man, abused spouse centers should help you.

magduf 8y ago
My last girlfriend was a lot like this. She ended up dumping me because I changed my mind about moving in with her, because I wasn't very happy at home with her. I think she's probably seriously depressed, but hides it with anger. I have no idea, unfortunately, how to help her, and don't think I can; she refused to even communicate with me after the break-up (which was by text message).
vinbreau 8y ago
My wife put her foot down eventually and told me she wasn't going to be able to live with me any more after too many verbal angry outbursts. I received an ADHD diagnosis as a child but was never treated. I lived with the extreme anger all my life and only recently sought treatment as an adult. Doing that was really hard after a lifetime of people telling me it was simply a matter of adjusting my attitude and that I brought all my troubles on myself. I'm finally on treatment after 45 years of that unending anger. It is definitely depression mixed with ADHD and anxiety. I'll have to see a therapist about potential PTSD issues. Adult depression can be a nasty mix of various issues and treating only one pillar can leave the rest to continue. Seeking the help from a doctor was almost impossible. It took me years to get up the nerve to mention it. Why? Because it was all my fault, I had been told this so for long that I was embarrassed. What if he tells me it's just a matter of eating right and that I'm just a regular guy? I was mortified of being rejected for treatment. Thankfully that didn't happen. It can be very hard for people to seek treatment, the stigma of not being able to perform like everybody else around you, all the while being told to just cheer up, think positive, be happy, you can do it! It's crushing.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.
    - zepto 8y ago
      It would be nice if that analogy worked, but there is no psychological equivalent of antibiotics and although psychological and psychiatric treatments can be helpful, they often aren’t, and equally people actually do frequently recover from mental health issues without treatment.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Well, with at least some mental illnesses, e.g. hearing voices, the illness in part is that you think the voices are real. It doesn't occur to you that you might need the help of a psychiatrist. The whole thing develops out of trying to make sense of what you assume are real voices. Which is impossible, and drives you nuts making the attempt. [That happened to me, for a couple of years.]
    - jhayward 8y ago
      > If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure. No. Mental illness directly impinges on the executive functions of the brain, which are what one uses to discern reality, weigh options, make plans, and motivate action. You are simply calling mental illness a moral failure.
  - renholder 8y ago
    >But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure. See? That's that shit - right there - that makes mental health so stigmatised that people won't seek help.
criddell 8y ago
If in her mind all of the anger was justified, why did she ever go looking for a doctor and a diagnosis?
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  Two things. What she says was the most motivating one is oddly prosaic. She is a veterinarian. She has loved animals her entire life, considers them her guardian angels. We had finally moved into a rental house that allowed pets, so we got a dog, an Australian Shepherd rescue dog who turned out to be the best dog who ever lived. I took her all the way through advanced obedience classes. I don't really have the words to express what a wonderful animal she was; in my mind, she was the Platonic ideal of a mother sheepdog. She also had distinct ideas of propriety, a phrase that could only make sense if you have ever had a female Aussie, and as a consequence was about as low maintenance as a high energy dog could be. One day my wife looked at the dog lying next to her on the bed and thought “You're nothing but trouble, I wish you were dead”. The next second she realized that that thought was so unlike her, and so different from the reality of our dog, that it was clear something was wrong in her head. The other was that at the same time we had had a daughter, a beautiful baby girl. My wife started taking her anger out on the baby as well as me. To be clear, this was not physical - but she resented our daughter crying and so on, and was brusque and short tempered with her. She was introspective enough to recognize that this was a problem. So some combination of those two experiences acted as sort of an intervention.
  - Insanity 8y ago
    Happy you made it through all of this, but damn that sounds like a rough period. (Postnatal depression might have made it even worse, vis-a-vis the baby). Good that everything turned out fine! (Y)
  - unclebucknasty 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing those very poignant experiences. I can personally relate to having an emotional response to something that I then recognize as somehow askew. In fact, given the complexity of the human emotional apparatus, I'm betting we've all had the experience of a mismatched response through various insecurities, injuries, etc, that manifest as projection and other defense mechanisms. The key to emotional health then, may come down to a question of degree and/or recognition when thinking is askew.
agumonkey 8y ago
One thing I learned on my own is that it's very easy to lose track of what 'normal' is. You slip slowly into different spectrum of emotions without really knowing why. When your mind is not at peace, stress/struggle will leak out in any shape be it anger, negativity, somatic onset (psoriasis, spasms) .. I believe strongly that we ought to aim for positivity and if we recognize something's not right, acknowledge it, and don't accept it as an absolute unquestionable reality.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  My layperson's understanding of depression is that it's your brain lying to you. My wife's perception of things that happened to her were often 180 degrees different from mine. She would take compliments I would give her, process them through the “depression” filter, and they would come out the other end as insults. You could actually watch it happen; there was a perceptible mental lag as the filters worked. To this day, her memory of those times is very different from mine. It's not just that you lose track of normal, although that is certainly true. But it's also that you can't trust your own sensory perceptions. You are viewing the world through distorting lenses.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    honestly, I had this kind of reactions even when I was "happy" .. I'd say it's more paranoid trait than depression but this is probably all very linked together.
  - TrevorJ 8y ago
    I've noticed that (warning: gross generalization incoming) women seem to communicate differently, on average, and tend to read between the lines to see if there is any hidden or implied meaning in a statement (negative or positive). Basically, there's an entire side channel of deeper communication that I'm much less capable of decoding or using.
- deleted 8y ago
GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
I had a similar experience with an ex-girlfriend. She was verbally abusive and sometimes even physically. I tried to break up with her multiple times but ended up being gaslight to stay. One time she removed the axel from my front bike tire hoping that I would crash and get injured when I went over a bump. She absolutely refused to get help even though I offered to take her.
- thefz 8y ago
  Just chiming in to say that as a biker, the front axle thing is a horrible thing to do.
  - GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
    Yeah, I was really paranoid after that. I came out after class and she walked up to me and handed me the axle. I will never understand someone who has that much anger toward their SO.
sizzle 8y ago
I'm afraid of recommending psychiatry's shotgun approach of throwing tricyclic antidepressant meds at someone until they subjectively feel an improvement in their quality of being from their baseline depressed state. Getting there requires taking all sorts of serotonin/dopaminergic etc neurotransmitter flooding/inhibiting drugs that made me feel like a lifeless zombie that I only recovered from by quitting cold turkey and enforcing a strict routine of eating clean, 7-8 hrs of sleep, mediation, hydrating, and minimal tech distractions Quitting cold turkey put me through withdrawal hell, Google "brain zaps" if you want to read up on what that torture feels like. I think in the future we will look back at the field of psychiatry medication today like it was medieval/primitive times. With that being said, if it has the possibility to help you then by all means try it, but don't be afraid to jump ship if you can find a natural way to rebalance your brain. If only I knew that path existed before getting on meds.
- twothumbsup 8y ago
  > tricyclic antidepressant these are different than SSRIs and not very frequently prescribed nowadays.

magduf 8y ago

My last girlfriend was a lot like this. She ended up dumping me because I changed my mind about moving in with her, because I wasn't very happy at home with her. I think she's probably seriously depressed, but hides it with anger. I have no idea, unfortunately, how to help her, and don't think I can; she refused to even communicate with me after the break-up (which was by text message).

vinbreau 8y ago

My wife put her foot down eventually and told me she wasn't going to be able to live with me any more after too many verbal angry outbursts. I received an ADHD diagnosis as a child but was never treated. I lived with the extreme anger all my life and only recently sought treatment as an adult. Doing that was really hard after a lifetime of people telling me it was simply a matter of adjusting my attitude and that I brought all my troubles on myself. I'm finally on treatment after 45 years of that unending anger. It is definitely depression mixed with ADHD and anxiety. I'll have to see a therapist about potential PTSD issues. Adult depression can be a nasty mix of various issues and treating only one pillar can leave the rest to continue. Seeking the help from a doctor was almost impossible. It took me years to get up the nerve to mention it. Why? Because it was all my fault, I had been told this so for long that I was embarrassed. What if he tells me it's just a matter of eating right and that I'm just a regular guy? I was mortified of being rejected for treatment. Thankfully that didn't happen. It can be very hard for people to seek treatment, the stigma of not being able to perform like everybody else around you, all the while being told to just cheer up, think positive, be happy, you can do it! It's crushing.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
Yes. If you break your leg, that's an injury, and you see a doctor. If you get pneumonia, you're sick and you need antibiotics. But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure.
- ip26 8y ago
  Maybe we just need to reframe it a bit. If you have strep and you don't get help & take care of it, that's a moral failure (you'll get other people sick). If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure.
  - zepto 8y ago
    It would be nice if that analogy worked, but there is no psychological equivalent of antibiotics and although psychological and psychiatric treatments can be helpful, they often aren’t, and equally people actually do frequently recover from mental health issues without treatment.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Well, with at least some mental illnesses, e.g. hearing voices, the illness in part is that you think the voices are real. It doesn't occur to you that you might need the help of a psychiatrist. The whole thing develops out of trying to make sense of what you assume are real voices. Which is impossible, and drives you nuts making the attempt. [That happened to me, for a couple of years.]
  - jhayward 8y ago
    > If you have mental illness and you don't get help & take care of it, that's the moral failure. No. Mental illness directly impinges on the executive functions of the brain, which are what one uses to discern reality, weigh options, make plans, and motivate action. You are simply calling mental illness a moral failure.
- renholder 8y ago
  >But if your brain isn't working right that's a moral failure. See? That's that shit - right there - that makes mental health so stigmatised that people won't seek help.

criddell 8y ago

If in her mind all of the anger was justified, why did she ever go looking for a doctor and a diagnosis?

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
Two things. What she says was the most motivating one is oddly prosaic. She is a veterinarian. She has loved animals her entire life, considers them her guardian angels. We had finally moved into a rental house that allowed pets, so we got a dog, an Australian Shepherd rescue dog who turned out to be the best dog who ever lived. I took her all the way through advanced obedience classes. I don't really have the words to express what a wonderful animal she was; in my mind, she was the Platonic ideal of a mother sheepdog. She also had distinct ideas of propriety, a phrase that could only make sense if you have ever had a female Aussie, and as a consequence was about as low maintenance as a high energy dog could be. One day my wife looked at the dog lying next to her on the bed and thought “You're nothing but trouble, I wish you were dead”. The next second she realized that that thought was so unlike her, and so different from the reality of our dog, that it was clear something was wrong in her head. The other was that at the same time we had had a daughter, a beautiful baby girl. My wife started taking her anger out on the baby as well as me. To be clear, this was not physical - but she resented our daughter crying and so on, and was brusque and short tempered with her. She was introspective enough to recognize that this was a problem. So some combination of those two experiences acted as sort of an intervention.
- Insanity 8y ago
  Happy you made it through all of this, but damn that sounds like a rough period. (Postnatal depression might have made it even worse, vis-a-vis the baby). Good that everything turned out fine! (Y)
- unclebucknasty 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing those very poignant experiences. I can personally relate to having an emotional response to something that I then recognize as somehow askew. In fact, given the complexity of the human emotional apparatus, I'm betting we've all had the experience of a mismatched response through various insecurities, injuries, etc, that manifest as projection and other defense mechanisms. The key to emotional health then, may come down to a question of degree and/or recognition when thinking is askew.

agumonkey 8y ago

One thing I learned on my own is that it's very easy to lose track of what 'normal' is. You slip slowly into different spectrum of emotions without really knowing why. When your mind is not at peace, stress/struggle will leak out in any shape be it anger, negativity, somatic onset (psoriasis, spasms) .. I believe strongly that we ought to aim for positivity and if we recognize something's not right, acknowledge it, and don't accept it as an absolute unquestionable reality.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
My layperson's understanding of depression is that it's your brain lying to you. My wife's perception of things that happened to her were often 180 degrees different from mine. She would take compliments I would give her, process them through the “depression” filter, and they would come out the other end as insults. You could actually watch it happen; there was a perceptible mental lag as the filters worked. To this day, her memory of those times is very different from mine. It's not just that you lose track of normal, although that is certainly true. But it's also that you can't trust your own sensory perceptions. You are viewing the world through distorting lenses.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- agumonkey 8y ago
  honestly, I had this kind of reactions even when I was "happy" .. I'd say it's more paranoid trait than depression but this is probably all very linked together.
- TrevorJ 8y ago
  I've noticed that (warning: gross generalization incoming) women seem to communicate differently, on average, and tend to read between the lines to see if there is any hidden or implied meaning in a statement (negative or positive). Basically, there's an entire side channel of deeper communication that I'm much less capable of decoding or using.
deleted 8y ago

GaryNumanVevo 8y ago

I had a similar experience with an ex-girlfriend. She was verbally abusive and sometimes even physically. I tried to break up with her multiple times but ended up being gaslight to stay. One time she removed the axel from my front bike tire hoping that I would crash and get injured when I went over a bump. She absolutely refused to get help even though I offered to take her.

thefz 8y ago
Just chiming in to say that as a biker, the front axle thing is a horrible thing to do.
- GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
  Yeah, I was really paranoid after that. I came out after class and she walked up to me and handed me the axle. I will never understand someone who has that much anger toward their SO.

sizzle 8y ago

I'm afraid of recommending psychiatry's shotgun approach of throwing tricyclic antidepressant meds at someone until they subjectively feel an improvement in their quality of being from their baseline depressed state. Getting there requires taking all sorts of serotonin/dopaminergic etc neurotransmitter flooding/inhibiting drugs that made me feel like a lifeless zombie that I only recovered from by quitting cold turkey and enforcing a strict routine of eating clean, 7-8 hrs of sleep, mediation, hydrating, and minimal tech distractions Quitting cold turkey put me through withdrawal hell, Google "brain zaps" if you want to read up on what that torture feels like. I think in the future we will look back at the field of psychiatry medication today like it was medieval/primitive times. With that being said, if it has the possibility to help you then by all means try it, but don't be afraid to jump ship if you can find a natural way to rebalance your brain. If only I knew that path existed before getting on meds.

twothumbsup 8y ago
> tricyclic antidepressant these are different than SSRIs and not very frequently prescribed nowadays.