Living with IED

i believe my wife has this can someone please help me to better deal with this situation

After 22 years of on and off treatment for depression, fear, and anxiety, I have recently been told by a new doctor about IED.
I would like to know from others with this disorder if my symptoms are the same as yours.
First, I ALWAYS have an underlying level of anxiety and some mind racing on a day that an ooutburst may occur. Sometimes this anxiety will suddenly go away and I know Im fine. If it hangs around all day, someone may say something or do somethng or dissapoint me and I lose it. I have NEVER hit a person. I have thrown things, broken a chair or two. Later I'm like ###$, what did I just do?
I can go very long periods of time without doing this. I can also fight it off if I'm lucky and want to.
Ive been on paxil and clonazepam for many many years, and thought this anxiety was something I just have to deal with. We are upping the paxil dose and using the clonazepam more if I need to.
Does this sound like you? Very Curious.

I have IED, was diagnosed about 2.5 years ago. It is a roller coaster. I have a lot of bad times in the past and trying to limit them today. I have never struck out at anyone else, only myself. I tend to destroy things and cut when I am on a meltdown. Once the moment has passed I can't fully understand why I did what I did. I wish others in my life understood this problem I have. I sat here tonight and read what loved ones have written about people they are dealing with, I am sorry that you have to experience it. I also look back and get angry and sad at the same time to know that my loved ones just chalk it up and call me crazy. Or when I call my mother about something that I am upset about and am having bad thoughts, her response is " there is something wrong with you". Really? I hope your loved ones know how much you mean to them, at least they have someone who is standing by them and trying to help them with their situation. I wish you all well.

I was just diagnosed about 3 weeks ago with IED. toward the end of my pregnancy I would get mad, throw something & then sit down & cry. I chalked that up 2 pregnancy hormones. then in Feb of 2011 my husband & I got into an argument & had he not been holding my daughter I would've punched him, I could feel me wanting 2 do that. there have been 2 other occasions involving me & my husband where if my daughter hadn't been present, I probably would've hurt him. I'm put holes in the wall when I have an episode, but haven't hit anyone....yet. I finally found a place that seems like they will help. my primary doc went from talking about mood stabilizers 3 months ago to there's no meds for anger management & not being helpful. today I may have gotten my husband in trouble with his work. I went to turn in some paperwork & 1 of the employees got snotty with me, so I went off on him. I really want to get this under control before I hurt myself or someone else. usually the 1st thing to cross my mind when someone angers me is to beat the $#%^ out of them & I've never been a violent person.

as a person with the disaorder who spent from 11 to 18 then 18 til 28 in those places when he comes out he will be a deffernt person hell be worse it took me a totle of bing locked up 15 years to get me stable were i am to day and i still don't walk away from a fight and could go back at any time all the meds do is take away my compassion for people weed helps

I wish I'd found this forum sooner, especially for the good advice about triggers and preventing outbursts.
I've never had a diagnosis because I live in the UK, but I km w I have IED.
I have just destroyed my marriage after losing it with my husband for the maybe twentieth time in our 25 year relationship.
It was partly caused by us having an argument while I was under the influence of the DHEA supplement that my obgyn put me on. I should have known that it wasn't safe for me to take that stuff!
What I want to know is, in the unlikely case that my husband decides to take me back, is it safe to do so? Or is IED really incurable?

I am new to this forum but want to reach out to anyone affected by IED, whether you have it yourself or are living with someone who does. To put it as simply as I know how, if those of us with IED knew any possible way to control our outbursts (which are not premeditated and often leave us feeling guilty and embarrassed later on, not to mention *extremely* exhausted) we certainly would - because absolutely nobody wants to be an unstable ticking time bomb. We can be having an otherwise fantastic day where everything is going well and nothing whatsoever seems to be causing us any alarm or stress, and out of the blue something happens that is typically outside of our control and we just simply lose it. Mild-mannered, conscientious, responsible people quickly become the most unrecognizable, foul-mouthed, shameless individuals who honestly bear zero resemblance to who they were 30 seconds prior to the IED attack. While I have never hurt anyone or even threatened anyone during any of my outbursts (which have become more and more frequent over the past 6 years or so), I have certainly damaged or destroyed plenty of items around me, and have experienced difficulty not harming myself as well (but am happy to report I have, to date, never harmed myself). I am sure my neighbors can hear me but to their credit have not yet come to see what may be going on. While in the heat of the moment I have always remained firmly aware of what I was doing, fully knowing that my emotional response was grossly out of proportion to the event that triggered it. But it is impossible to be rational when in an irrational state of mind, so absolutely no conscious awareness of how inappropriate my language and behavior may be during the moment itself has ever been sufficient to make me rethink my choices and settle back down during one of my IED episodes. And this is something I think needs to be understood by those who suffer from IED as well as those who may be looking on while a loved one is going through the episode. It is not that we are unaware of what we are doing in the moment. It is that, somehow, for some reason, we feel an actual "need" to act on this sudden explosion of built-up anger. I can literally feel the anger from an upcoming IED episode slowly creeping its way into my thoughts and then try with everything in my power to ignore it or pretend that it is not there, but for some completely bizarre and inexplicable reason I truly feel incapable of avoiding it and at some point there WILL be an outburst. It's like a string of dominos that we desperately try and protect from toppling over, and we literally do everything in our power to make sure that very first domino stays upright. I will move heaven and earth to try and avoid letting the cascade begin, but if and when that first domino falls, it's all over and it is NOT pretty. My personality changes and I immediately become unrecognizable in both my language as well as in my behaviors, and most of my self-control goes out the window (ironically, with my complete awareness of it having done so but not caring whatsoever in the moment). I have found that I make a point to forcefully spit when I am having an IED outburst, and if I am lucky I will find a sink close by to spit into. But often I will spit at or directly onto the object of my frustration, again knowing full well that this is completely inappropriate, unsanitary, and 100% ineffective - but in the moment I simply do not care, because (again) it is impossible to think rationally when being overtaken by such an irrational anger. I am trying to understand why some reactions - even in the moment - are completely off limits to me (such as harming one of my pets or a person) but reactions seem to be entirely "okay" (such as hurling objects, slamming doors and drawers, spitting, screaming the most foul-mouthed expletives that would make any worthy sailor feel ashamed). I am hoping things remain this way, and that I do not ever venture into physically harming myself or someone else during an IED attack. Fingers crossed that this line will not get crossed. Something else to be aware of is that following an IED attack, particularly the more severe ones, I am *completely* exhausted for the entire remainder of the day - whether that be 30 minutes late at night or the entire day if an attack occurs during the morning. So much physical and cognitive energy gets expended during these attacks that all I am usually able to do is completely shut myself off from all other people until I can crawl into bed and just lie there motionless until I fall asleep. Attempting to get up for any reason can feel absolutely overwhelmingly impossible. I can't appropriately think of a way to actually describe how profound the exhaustion following an IED outburst can be. Shortness of breath is fairly common. Pounding headaches too. My blood pressure usually stays elevated for several hours (and I have always had low blood pressure to begin with due to a strict regular exercise program), to the point that I am sometimes unable to fall asleep because it is so high. Muscles do not want to work properly because there simply is no energy available to coordinate their movements. Then, somehow, and quite miraculously, when I wake up several hours later it is literally as if nothing had ever happened, and I have returned to my normal emotional and behavioral self. There is always a great deal of guilt and remorse, not to mention embarrassment, for what took place the day or night prior, but since the acute IED outburst has passed I usually laugh at myself and tell myself I am better than that - that I know better and that I can do better - until it happens again and none of those positive affirmations or the constructive self-talk mean a thing at all to me. The regression back to the uncontrollable anger when the string of dominos falls the next time is just as unprovoked, and just as unwanted - but just as equally unstoppable as it was the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that.

This is my first post to the forum and I made it following an IED episode that began about 8 hours ago and lasted maybe 90 minutes (alternating between extreme anger and brief periods of "I'm over it" apathy) until I forced myself to go to bed early before I had the chance to damage or destroy something I would later regret. I was able to sleep fitfully for about 3 hours but then suddenly became unable to fall back to sleep about 3 hours ago due to a racing mind, so I have been researching IED ever since and figured I would share my thoughts in an attempt to take my mind off of my insomnia.

For those of you out there who can relate to anything I have written about, please know that you are not alone, and that you are not somehow fundamentally flawed. This is not something we asked for, and is something each of us would unquestioningly rush to rid ourselves of if it were in any way a possibility. I do not have any pearls of wisdom or suggestions for how to deal with what you are experiencing, but if the old saying is true and that indeed "misery loves company", then hopefully sharing my own experiences with you will somehow help to you feel a bit less miserable.