“We all have the same core emotions of love, jealously, rage – it’s just how they’re expressed.” Sophie Cookson 

Extreme anger is a lesser-known characteristic of bipolar disorder. Not everyone with the disorder falls prey to destructive rages, but many, like me, do. I have only ever become enraged when I’ve had mania. I have not unleashed my fury often, having had only three significant outbursts in my life, but on those occasions, the Richter scale hit ten. There were also numerous lesser blow-ups that most people would consider over-the-top behaviours. 

We are all wounded in some way or another as we navigate through life. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder is traumatic because it robs us of our sense that the world is safe, predictable and benevolent. It often leaves us more vulnerable than before our diagnosis. As if that is not enough to contend with, the rages can come a-calling, taking an even bigger bite by stripping away all self-worth and dignity.   

When reviewing the literature on mania, this state will likely be described as one of “irritability.” This is a misnomer because it suggests the anger associated with mania is a state of being annoyed or possibly bad-tempered. Irritability does not come close to describing the volcanic rage I can experience.  

I do not like to discuss my unrestrained violent conduct with friends who have bipolar disorder, especially since we have different types of the disorder with various symptoms. It was only after 10 years of friendship with someone who had also experienced full-blown mania that I felt comfortable divulging my screaming fits, only for them to reveal their long-held secret of having had extreme rages, too. We were two veterans in the trenches, united by our hushed and embarrassed whispers.  

My sense of self is that I am a decent human being who never makes malicious comments or raises my voice. However, when I experience full-blown mania, I can become like a rabid dog, running wild, growling at everyone. I have no filter. Words become missiles. I behave very much like Jekyll and Hyde. 

It was difficult to accept this uglier side of me, mainly because I knew I was giving bipolar disorder a bad name by contributing to the aggressive stereotype disproportionately exaggerated in the media today. My eruptions were shameful. I preferred to hide this trait because it was not in keeping with my image of myself or the public face I presented to the world. Most of us try to show our best selves. At the end of it all, I was left with an empty heart and a body with a thin layer of scar tissue that mercifully faded over time. 

I was painfully shy for the first part of my life until the age of 18 when bipolar disorder reared its shocking head—a textbook case in terms of the age at onset. The rages arrived a full 17 years before I was diagnosed at age thirty-five. No one at the time knew bipolar disorder was responsible for this extreme anger, not even me.  

I was watching a television series on our sole TV when my sister came into the room with our father, who immediately switched the station so he could watch the hockey playoffs. He would not change the channel and made the mistake of laughing at me when I got angry. He was surprised as I had always been reserved before that night. I became so furious my father and sister had to physically restrain me with all their might as I was trying to kick the TV in the middle of the screen. It made perfect sense to me at the time. I did not realize that no one would be able to watch TV if I did that. I was past rational thought. My foot got two inches from the screen as I tried to demolish the TV. After that night, it circulated around the family that Louise had one wild, whopping, wicked temper if you crossed her. No one thought it was out of the ordinary to tell you the truth. I simply went down in the family annals as having the worst temper. 

The following rage happened when I was 23, reinforcing my viewpoint that I lived with the disorder untreated for over a decade. This rage materialized seemingly out of the blue after learning my father had only months to live. Unfortunately for all involved, I began manifesting the early stages of mania when I received this indigestible news—before I even knew what mania was. I’d had a massive disagreement with my sister over some of the arrangements concerning our father; tensions were running high because we could not reach common ground. What we argued about is irrelevant because I would be the first to admit that my behaviour was unequal to the cause. This had become the norm rather than the exception in recent years whenever I became angry.  

Once I stabilized many weeks later, I was remorseful that I’d been so caustic toward her, so I tried to explain that I had been experiencing rages over slight misunderstandings on and off for the last six years. She listened intently while I spoke. I tried to explain that I was entirely out of control and beyond reason when I had reached the point where I saw nothing but the intensity of my rage. I tried to explain that I became so furious I had trouble speaking because my tongue could not keep up with the rapid thoughts spewing from my mind, spitting as I yelled. I explained my behaviour to her in great detail to show that I was utterly irrational with anger.    

I said, “I’m so sorry. I love you very much. You know that.”   

She looked at me silently for a long while, assimilating the bizarre information I had just described and said, “I understand all that, but I don’t see why you had to use such foul language.” She had not understood a word. The person I had described was past the point of choosing polite words over four-letter ones. That person should have been given a tranquilizer and escorted to a quiet room for a few hours to cool down.   

I soon learned I could become so angry that I did not care where I was, who I was with, or what I was saying. If I were in London, drinking cocktails at an elegant royal function at Buckingham Palace with King Charles III in attendance, and if the King happened to say something to infuriate me, I would look him straight in the eye and say, “Shut up, Chuck.” 

On the day of the following rage, Anthony had dropped me off at a laundromat to do two large, green garbage bags full of laundry. I had arranged for my sister to pick me up an hour and a half later because I did not have a vehicle, and Anthony was otherwise occupied. I had not brought money for a taxi because she said she would pick me up with her new boyfriend, Thomas, whom I would be meeting for the first time. 

They were late. Very late. I had no money to take a taxi—this was when taxi drivers only accepted cash, and there were no ATMs—and I could not walk the 10 blocks home with two heavy bags. I tried to call her at home, but she wasn’t there. This was also before cell phones. The phone booth was four blocks away, and I had to purchase something at the corner store to get the necessary change for the payphone. In those days, this was always a major inconvenience; I could already feel my blood pressure rising. 

I called two more times with no luck. I was getting angrier by the minute. I started to pace outside the laundromat to scout her whereabouts. She was nowhere in sight. I fumed a little more. I went back to the payphone and called again. No answer. I smouldered some more. I paced some more. By the time she arrived, an hour late, I was boiling with rage. I spotted her across the street with Thomas, and they were looking through a shop window! When I saw that, I detonated. Didn’t she know she was extremely late and would be even later if she was moseying along? 

It did not matter that she was across four lanes of busy traffic. She could hear me if I screeched loudly enough. It did not matter that people on the sidewalk were staring at me. I didn’t care. It did not matter that she was with her boyfriend of one month, whom she wanted to impress. I can still see the look of horror and disbelief on Thomas’s face as I screamed and hollered and shrieked at her for running late and leaving me there, stranded with no money.  

What a scene.  

I was like a three-year-old having a massive tantrum at the grocery store checkout because they wanted one of the chocolate bars on display. I’m surprised my sister even acknowledged me in front of Thomas, but I kept screaming her name, making it impossible for her to ignore me.  

My anger resurfaced for decades on and off until I decided to seek treatment at the age of forty-five. By then, I was exhausted by the rages. To silence the beast that refused to be pacified, I took an anger management course during one of my hospitalizations. I was a good student, taking notes and asking questions. I was fed up being held hostage by anger once it ignited and coursed through my veins when it felt as though I was in an express elevator to hell for a private party with the Devil. It happened that quickly. 

In addition, I ended up having to control my drinking, which had quickly gone from an occasional drink to a persistent craving after John and Kiki left home. Alcohol dangerously lowered my inhibitions, unleashing violent behaviour—that most people would find incomprehensible—causing such anger in me when I was furious that it felt as though every atom in my body was exploding. 

Anger originates in the primitive brain, which is intuitive and responsible for survival, making it challenging to regulate. In the anger management course, I was taught to recognize the anger as soon as it began to threaten. At this point, I was told to step outside myself, giving me the space I needed to view the situation from afar. Unrealistically, I was expected to follow these precise instructions at a time when my reason and judgment were deserting me faster than water on a hot tin roof. According to the instructor, mentally distancing myself from the situation would allow me to think of a strategy by circumventing my previous go-to pattern of automatically responding with rage. I found these techniques ineffectual and concluded that anger management courses were geared toward people with normal anger. This type of anger could be controlled or reasoned with, unlike my violent behaviour, which was a runaway five-alarm fire within seconds. 

Over the years, I discovered that I was able to conquer my impulsive and unthinking rage by learning to recognize the early warning signs and triggers of mania and to seek treatment at that time before the situation became nightmarish. As it turned out, I had to get the manias under control before I could rein in the anger, proving that mania had opened the floodgates, fuelling the furies all along. Managing the manias was accomplished with the introduction of antipsychotics. I have not had a rage since 2001, when I was first prescribed these medications, which I continue to take to this day. It is possible to get a handle on this level of anger. 

My prognosis looks good. By working with my bipolar disorder, I aspire to live without regret. The simple act of living no longer wears me out; I embrace my new life, finding solace and safety in all things calm. There can be a great life after the mayhem. Nietzsche wrote, “Out of chaos comes a dancing star.” 

“The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum,but the being freaked out afterwards,and embarrassed, and guilty.It’s scary to lose control of yourself.” Spike Jonze 

My Bipolar Life – Coming 2025

This blog “Bipolar Rage: Zero to Sixty in Three Seconds” is 1 of 24 short stories from Louise Dwerryhouse’s upcoming book, My Bipolar Life, which will be released in 2025.

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Louise Dwerryhouse

Louise Dwerryhouse, a retired social worker, who worked in Canada and the UK, is an advocate, and mental health blogger on “lived experience” living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder late in life, over 30 years ago at the age of thirty-five, and has been living well with the disorder for 10+ years. She writes to those alone, frightened and traumatized by volatile mood swings such as she had in her early days post-diagnosis. Louise tries to lead by example, by sharing her journey to recovery, showing it is possible to live well with the disorder. Her dream is to see a society centred on acceptance, inclusion and less stigma in her lifetime.

• Learn more about Louise and read her blogs on her profile page
• Louise’s talkBD episode on My Bipolar Disorder Story