# Mood swings ... recommended books?



## OhDear (Jun 12, 2011)

Hi can anyone recommend any books to teach me how to control my mood swings as they are ruining my marriage.

From what I am reading I may be a borderline ... books to help me stop being/or live normally with borderline would be great.

Thank you


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

OhDear, welcome to the TAM forum. Based on what you say in your other thread, it sounds like you are NOT suffering from mood swings, which typically are associated with bipolar disorder. If you are suffering from anything -- and that is not obvious -- it would be strong BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) traits. There are several clear differences between the two disorders. Although I am not a psychologist, I will describe the differences I saw during the 15 years I took care of my bipolar foster son and my BPDer exW.

Bipolar mood swings are very slow because they are caused by gradual changes in body chemistry. They are considered rapid if as many as four occur in a year. In contrast, four BPD mood changes can easily occur in four days (or even one day). BPD rages, for example, typically last about 5 hours and rarely as long as 36 hours (if the BPD sufferer is inner-directed, you will not witness a raging screaming person but, instead, a quiet withdrawn person who turns her anger onto herself).

A second difference is that the onset is very different. Whereas a bipolar change may occur over several weeks, a BPD change typically occurs in less than a minute -- often in only 15 seconds -- because it is event-triggered by some innocent comment or action. Clearly, the sort of rages you are accused of having (by your H) are event-triggered by any discussions about his emotional affairs with other women. Whether or not you are overreacting (and thus may have strong BPD traits) is far from clear in the short post in your other thread.

A third difference is that, whereas bipolar can cause people to be irritable and obnoxious during the manic phase, it does not rise to the level of meanness you see when a BPDer is splitting you black. The difference is huge: while a manic person may regard you as an irritation, a BPDer person can perceive you as Hitler and will treat you accordingly.

Finally, a fourth difference is that a bipolar sufferer -- whether depressed or manic -- usually is able to trust you if she knows you well. Untreated BPDs, however, are unable to trust -- even though they sometimes may claim otherwise. This lack of trust means there is no foundation on which to build a relationship. Moreover -- and I learned this the hard way -- when a person does not trust you, you can never trust them because they can turn on you at any time -- and almost certainly will.

Yet, despite these four clear differences between the two disorders, many people confuse the two. One source of this confusion seems to be the fact that many BPD sufferers (perhaps 20%) also have the bipolar disorder.

Again, I am NOT saying you have strong BPD traits. You have not provided sufficient information in either of your threads to indicate that. All I am saying, then, is that you are not describing the kind of "mood swings" that typically result from bipolar disorder.

If you would like to read more about typical BPDer behavior, I suggest you read my description in GTRR's thread. My posts there start at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/anxiet...depressed-its-always-my-fault.html#post188319. Although those posts provide links to articles on BPD, I don't recommend them for you because they are targeted to the nonBPD spouses. If you actually have BPD, a good website would be BPDrecovery.com and a good book would be _Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified _by Friedel. If you have any questions, I would be glad to try to answer them or point you to online resources that can. Take care, OhDear.


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