- What Causes BPD Mood Swings?
QUESTION:
Dear Dr. Heller,
You wrote that we who have this emotionally dysregulated personality known currently as BPD can just go into the black “out of the blue”. I know very well the experience of “the eclipse” and I used to think it came out of nowhere, but I’m not so sure anymore.
I will track specifically what took place between feeling pretty good to despair, emptiness and sadness. I can see and identify what triggered my mood to darkness . Do you really think it comes out of nowhere? I do feel physically taken by a wave and then swallowed by the undertow but I think there is a trigger for that to happen.
Some communication I experienced in my environment – an invalidation from my mother happens first which then affects my brain chemistry causing self hatred and self doubting neurons to fire and there I go. I then disconnect from everyone around me. I take this emotional intermission where I space out because something made me sad.
I do understand that our brains are different and we are lacking what others do not, but do you think that just blaming the brain is a way to avoid not confronting the pain that triggered our emotions or thoughts? A way to avoid facing the pain a situation caused so it can have a better chance of not repeating itself? A way for us to not get some control over ourselves, emotions and our reactions?
I’d like to believe it was just a brain change and say I was powerless over it, but then I would sound like a drug addict blaming their “disease” rather than taking some responsibility and finding out how I could behave and think differently so these waves couldn’t get to me every time I was enjoying myself in the ocean. Do you think the triggers out there in our worlds affect our brains or do you think it just starts to rain out of nowhere?
Thank you.
ANSWER:
BPD mood swings are either provoked or unprovoked. Provoked means they are triggered by some thought, smell or physical event that triggers the “trapped animal” instinct and the seizure that causes dysphoria (anxiety, rage, depression and despair) and dissociative symptoms (if it spreads to the temporal lobes). What you described are unprovoked mood swings. I believe it’s due to an instability within the limbic system, again in the “trapped animal” response. I’m highly suspicious glial cell malfunction is to blame – 90% of the cells in your brain are support cells (called “glial cells”), not neurons. Prozac works very well and very quickly at controlling these unprovoked mood swings – in fact I gauge the Prozac dose on whether unprovoked mood swings, chronic anger, emptiness or boredom are persistent symptoms. Prozac works far better than Zoloft and other SSRI’s – likely because of the positive effects Prozac has on those glial cells (which has been shown in the literature). These unprovoked mood swings also trigger dysphoria (anxiety, rage, depression and despair).
