To control extreme mood swings, focus on lifestyle changes like regular exercise, a balanced diet, sufficient sleep, and stress management (meditation, deep breathing). Identifying triggers through journaling, limiting stimulants, and connecting with supportive people also helps, but severe swings may need professional help like therapy (CBT, DBT) or medication, so consult a doctor or mental health expert to find the right approach for you.
But there are things you can do to reduce how often you experience them or how severe they are when you do, including:
Bipolar episodes last longer than mood swings
Hall. Your mood may change throughout the day, which is perfectly normal. Mood changes caused by bipolar episodes don't tend to change that quickly. Bipolar disorder episodes can last several days or even weeks.
Symptoms of bipolar disorder
Mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder, affect people emotionally. If you have depression, you may constantly feel sad. You also may be anxious. If you have bipolar disorder, you'll likely have extreme mood swings.
Address these triggers by:
A variety of vitamins like B6, B12, folate, and vitamin D have been linked extensively to depression as a possible cause. A continuation of research expands into how a deficiency of these vitamins causes depression.
Lithium (lithium carbonate or lithium citrate)
Lithium is used to treat mania and to prevent further episodes of mania and depression. Common side-effects of lithium include increased thirst and urination, nausea, weight gain and a fine trembling of the hands.
Vitamin B-12 and other B vitamins play a role in making brain chemicals that affect mood and other brain functions. Low levels of B-12 and other B vitamins and folate may be linked to depression. Low levels of a vitamin, also called a vitamin deficiency, can happen if you're not eating a balanced diet.
Common symptoms of mood disorders include:
Changes in mood here can happen quickly and occur over a few days or even over a few hours. If there are four mood changes within a month, it is called ultra-rapid cycling. While the phrase “rapid cycling” may make it seem that there is a regular cycle to these shifts in mood, most cycles do not follow a pattern.
It could be something as simple as being hungry or tired. Or, maybe something recently happened in your life that has you feeling scared, angry, or stressed out. Mental health struggles can also make you irritable, so if you haven't taken one of our mental health test yet, try that.
Something that's pretty minor (even though it's stressing you out currently) likely won't matter to you 5 days, 5 weeks, or 5 years from now. In that case, give yourself 5 minutes to think about it.
9 Signs of Borderline Personality Disorder (You Need to Know)
Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), family-focused therapy or other types of therapy can be an important part of treatment for managing symptoms or stopping them from coming back. For some people with depression, other procedures, sometimes called brain stimulation therapies, may be suggested.
Overview. Cyclothymia (sy-kloe-THIE-me-uh), also called cyclothymic disorder, is a rare mood disorder. Cyclothymia causes emotional ups and downs, but they're not as extreme as those in bipolar I or II disorder. With cyclothymia, you experience periods when your mood noticeably shifts up and down from your baseline.
Most of us experience mood swings—you might have days when you feel happy and at ease and other days when you're sad and tired. Changes in moods are part of being a human. But if your moods cycle higher and lower than average—between mania and depression—you might have a mental health condition known as cyclothymia.