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Increased irritability
contents
- Normal irritability
- Pathological irritability
- Overload of the nerves
- Physical irritability
- Negative stress
- Irritability in depression
- bipolarity
- psychosis
- Other mental disorders
- high sensitivity
- thyroid disease
- Serotonin deficiency and serotonin syndrome
- rabies
- What helps against irritability?
Normal irritability
Occasional irritability is normal: cloudy weather, a few glasses too much, an empty stomach or anger, lack of sleep or brooding over a problem make us react more sensitively to stimuli than usual, and the phone's ringing sounds like a jackhammer.
Increased irritability can be a sign of mental illness. But it's just possible too much negative stress. Image: Ingo Bartussek - fotolia This increased irritability in the normal case sometimes has physical reasons such as the lack of vitamins in the cold season, which we can easily prevent by broccoli, sauerkraut and fresh fruit - or we overload the brain through various tasks at the same time: When I get up To focus on a text, and the children at the same time demand my attention, I want to clean the stairwell and also have an appointment with my landlord, the brain sets different patterns in action at the same time. This not only costs energy, it leads to dissonance. The best way to do this is to organize and structure, say, to do the different things one after the other, or, if possible, to connect them together.
The increased irritability serves as a "guidepost". Instead of burdening our brains with what we are supposed to "do" here and now, we appease our nerves as we do what we can and want to do here and now. Compressing yourself not only depresses our spirits, but also blocks the task of solving the problems that put us under pressure.
Physical and psychological reasons for this non-pathological irritability work hand in hand: we work all night and are becoming increasingly unproductive; our body lacks sleep. Instead of a yoga exercise for relaxation we work through half an hour before breakfast; Instead of starting the morning with a glass of orange juice and a walk in nature, we continue working to have "given everything" just to the appointment two hours later.
The brain receives the message: Alarm is announced. It prepares to fight, to attack or to escape. Even with our Stone Age ancestors, this danger program was important in order to put a saber-toothed tiger to flight, but not to accomplish complex tasks, for example to make a tool.
The hormonal changes during the menopause make many women easily irritable, as well as the days before menstruation. These are all normal reactions to a change in hormone levels.
Pathological irritability
However, irritability can also occur as a side effect of dangerous diseases, such as brain or meningitis, stroke, brain abscess, blood poisoning, and intoxication by alcohol or other drugs. Then horseback riding is often a harbinger of worse symptoms: loss of memory and control, brain damage, limited judgment and even suicide. Here it only helps to treat the disease.
Irritability is therefore not a disease, but often a symptom of illnesses, psychological disorders such as depression or borderline, as well as psychosomatic, for example, bulemia or anorexia such as attention deficit syndrome, but also physical such as polio, liver cirrhosis, diabetes, rabies or flu infections.
Irritability is manifested in inappropriate aggression, palpitations, trembling of the hands, insecurity, sweating, lack of concentration, blinking and anxiety attacks. The voice and body language change.
Overload of the nerves
Extraordinary irritability is usually due to an overload of the nerves by negative stress or negative environmental stimuli. The classic burnout, for example, used to mean nervous breakdown.
The nerves can be overloaded by pure environmental stimuli, such as permanent noise, bright light, or a dripping tap. For example, a proven method of torture is to allow a prisoner to drop water to the same spot on his skin for hours. Hunger, heat, cold, generally all unpleasant sensations of the body, cause increased irritability.
But mental states also lead to heightened irritability: anxiety, insecurity, emotional pressure in the workplace, relationships, deaths, separations and other personal disasters. Traumatized individuals are hypersensitive, especially in situations reminiscent of the traumatic event. Depression also manifests in irritability.
Physical irritability
Physical irritability is usually due to an infection. The infected part of the body reacts more sensitively to the stimuli of the environment: inflamed eyes tear in the light, an infected wound hurts when touched, in case of flu-like infections the skin is particularly sensitive.
Physical pain is usually associated with severe irritability: If someone dislocates their shoulders, sprains their ankles, suffers from headaches or toothache, they are often over-stimulated, and secondly, the corresponding parts of the body are hypersensitive.
Thyroid disease and low serotonin levels lead to an imbalance of hormones, and this expresses itself in high irritability.
Negative stress
Stress manifests itself in sleep disorders, inner restlessness, listlessness, problems concentrating, and cardiovascular disease.
People who suffer from negative stress are over-stimulated: they perceive the stress factors themselves as an excessive burden. The causes of such negative stress are loneliness, unsatisfactory relationships with other people, social insecurity, the fear of losing work or the home, and especially the requirements of the so-called meritocracy.
People are suggested that they are not as they are. At the same time they should be permanently in a good mood, earning well, that is, working harder and harder, at the same time being an exemplary family man or a caring mother.
If she toiles 50 hours a week, she is plagued by the guilty conscience of not being there enough for the family. When they take care of the children, they are under pressure, not enough to get on with their careers. Even the holiday becomes the task to offer the partner and the children as much as possible in the shortest possible time.
Inoculated constraints keep the brain in constant alert, because something is always lacking in the supposedly necessary perfection. Whoever is doing the best to relax, lying on the sofa, is plagued by the bad conscience: I have to do more sports, I have to eat less chocolate, I have to lose weight, I have to earn money, I can not let myself go.
Unfulfillable demands in every area mean de-identification with oneself. The alien parties measure their intrinsic value against the supposed successes of others, the whisperings of the advertising industry; People suffer from whisperings that they no longer perceive as such. The life coach Martin Wehrle writes: "Our life shrinks to a project whose goal is the optimization of the imperfect ego."
The logical gap between the actual state of the individual and the requirements of being perfect, being different in each area than you are, is tearing people apart. The brain perceives this dissonance as stress. Only those who are tormented wait for paradise in the form of a home and a filled account.
The neoliberal promise pretends that anyone who makes an effort can make the big breakthrough and thus creates millions of stressed people who run after this delusion. In globalization, we are also confronted with unmanageable possibilities, so that we can fail and in all likelihood at every turn, because firstly, success largely depends on chance, second, does not necessarily mean material wealth, and the number of billionaires third is extremely low.
Seemingly infinite possibilities, combined with the feeling of failure, if one is not the richest, most beautiful and present in all media, creates constant stress. Because the brain is overwhelmed with the excess of what it supposedly has to do.
However, this negative stress does not arise, as often assumed, from "overwork" but from meaninglessness. Whoever is unable to say no and does things that he does not really want to, shows the exaggerated irritability that he is doing the wrong thing. Excessive and strangely determined goals and the desperate desire to achieve these hallucinations, necessarily lead to stress, failure and thus even greater stress, just as spasmodically to reach the next goal, because of the failed claims failed feels like a failure.
However, people who do what suits them even get into the so-called "flow". During their work they forget the time; Day and night they work on their projects without feeling tired or irritated.
Wehrle writes: "The greater the interface between their desires and their actions, the more they will be able to enjoy their happiness in the present - rather than settling for an uncertain" afterlife "before or after death."
Psyche and body are associated with negative stress. For example, noise is a typical source of nerve strain. Although there are people who are more sensitive to noise due to their predisposition, mental health is often the key. The lonely old man, who calls the police every time the students turn up the music at night in the house next door, presumably suffers most from his loneliness and does not like the young people to have fun. The noise disturbs him on a subjective level.
Studies show that the same triggers as noise from a construction site, from people who work in their work, are less or not at all bothersome than people who are dissatisfied with their work in particular and their life situation in general.
Mental pressure and tension cause stress. The irritability is a warning signal in case of negative stress. Persistent negative stress can burn people out; This total exhaustion is called burnout.
Stress is life sustaining in evolution. The stress hormone cortisol increases the metabolism, the body provides more energy in the form of glucose, we can react psychologically faster. In addition, cortisol strengthens the immune system, it inhibits inflammation. Cortisol is therefore a hormone for dangers: It puts us on alert when a predator attacks and protects us from injury.
Unfortunately, our body also produces cortisol in stress factors that have nothing to do with such struggles: mental stress, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and mental health problems - all of which causes the hormone to prepare us for the worst case scenario.
When the body releases cortisol on a permanent basis, the hormone balance gets out of balance. The organism assumes a permanent state of emergency, it comes to chain reactions of norepinephrine, epinephrine and serotonin and in the end there is a serotonin deficiency. This leads to fatigue, lack of motivation, migraine, sleep disorders, anxiety, eating disorders and depression.
Anyone who is over-stimulated because he is dissatisfied with his life, helps to clarify his frustration, and then to change his life, determined and step by step.
Irritability in depression
People who suffer from clinical depression are not necessarily easily irritable. Depression manifests itself in too weak reactions to external stimuli. However, people with unipolar major depression who are overly irritated are alarmed because it indicates a chronic course of the disease.
Psychiatrists at the University of California examined more than 536 patients and observed them in some cases for up to 31 years. 292 of the clients had been irritable at the beginning of the study. The period of the first major depression lasted almost twice as long in them as in less irritable ones.
As a result, the irritable patients showed a lack of impulse control, and every tenth even acted antisocial. Adverse disorders showed the irritable subjects much more common than the less irritable. 53% of the Irritable abused drugs or fell to the alcohol compared to 37% in the "quiet". 40% of the Irritable suffered from anxiety disorders, but only 26% of the less irritable. 88% of the Irritable showed at least one mental disorder, but only 73% of the other severely depressed.
The California psychiatrists consider it urgent to highlight anger and aggressiveness in episodes of severe depression, and to identify those affected. Because the therapy must be specifically designed to cope with aggression.
bipolarity
Increased irritability is an early warning symptom of bipolar disorder, as well as a manic as well as a depressive phase.
A depression announces itself through lack of energy, pleasure and joyless, low self-esteem and self-doubt, pondering around, sleep disturbances, concentration problems, sexual listlessness, but also by tension, restlessness and irritability.
A mania announces itself by the opposite: Raging mind, euphoria, sharper perception, greater willingness to contact and increased self-confidence. Tension, restlessness and heightened irritability as well as violent conflicts are also the first signs here.
psychosis
Bipolar disorders are associated with psychotic conditions. But also other psychosis sufferers are easily irritated. Restlessness, nervousness and irritability are generally an early warning sign of an ascending psychosis. The affected persons are very sensitive and slightly irritated; they lose their appetite, neglecting themselves, losing their interests and their energy; the feelings change, they dull or change rapidly.
The concentration is disturbed, psychotic people are easily distracted, the performance kinks; they withdraw socially, they have problems in relationships and break contacts; they change their interests, their perception changes as well as their experience.
For example, they perceive odors differently than before, and also colors; they believe the environment and themselves have changed; they see, hear and taste things that others could not perceive.
They feel watched and relate to events in the outside world, and they believe that others influence their thoughts.
Other mental disorders
Some mental disorders are accompanied by a tremendous irritability that manifests itself as aggression against oneself and others. These include borderline syndrome, paranoid schizophrenia and the dissocial personality.
Borderlinern lacks a stable self-image. Therefore, they project their own shares to other people, but at the same time feel one with them. For the object of the projection, this means that the Borderliner must necessarily control and attack him. The Borderliner subordinates his own hatred to the other person and sees himself as his victim.
Paranoid schizophrenics take their environment was distorted and feel persecuted by powers that supposedly only perceive them. In other people, therefore, they see dark forces, against which they protect themselves by all means; Aggression up to open violence are the result.
Dissocial lack of empathy. So they do not suffer from increased irritability, but are dulled by stimuli on the contrary. However, the result is similar: anyone who is slightly over-stressed expresses this through aggression. Dissocials also become aggressive very quickly, but they are concerned with enforcing their dominance.
Traumatized people are extremely responsive to stimuli that reactivate the trauma. The triggering experience is firmly rooted in the memories, and associations set the pattern in action. Refugees from Syria, for example, got anxiety attacks because they thought they recognized their torturers from IS in Germany; People who have suffered a traffic accident, for example, panic when they overtake a truck on the highway; War traumatized, who survived a bombing, get heart racing at the fireworks on New Year's Eve.
In all mental illnesses associated with increased irritability, it does little to treat the irritability. Psychotherapies and medications that relieve the disease are helpful here.
However, it is in all these diseases to behavioral therapy, either to practice dealing with stimuli, to put the person in a state of emergency, or to avoid these stimuli.
high sensitivity
Highly sensitive persons are more irritable than the average sensitive person because they have to process more stimuli. They perceive stimuli in greater detail than others, they experience moods in social relationships more intensively, they analyze more thoroughly, and they think in a more complex way. Her sense of pain is increased, she is easily enthusiastic and have many interests; their long-term memory exceeds the average. They think highly intuitively, they experience experiences long and hard, they experience art and music intensively.
The fact that they absorb stimuli, they often seem introverted, they close easily from others to others, they respond strongly to drugs, alcohol and caffeine, and they suffer from outside determination such as performance pressure to a particular extent.
Under time pressure and external compulsion, their mental memory is slightly overburdened because they have to process a high amount of information.
High sensitivity is not a disease that needs to be treated - on the contrary. Highly sensitive people have skills that the less sensitive do not have and therefore need a job and a social environment in which to develop them. Above all, these are creative activities in which they work towards a deadline but organize their work structure themselves. Even more important to her than "normal sensitive" is an environment in which the stimuli do not overwhelm her and sympathetic partners who accept that the highly sensitive disappears into his room for a few hours.
thyroid disease
Diseases of the thyroid announce, inter alia, irritability. Illness means either over- or under-function of the thyroid gland: the circumference of the neck increases, the person feels that he has a "foreign body" in his throat; he suffers from tachycardia and accelerated pulse. He loses weight or increases without changing his eating habits; he has hair falling out; his skin dries up, his hair becomes brittle, and his fingernails break. He feels tired and without drive. His muscles hurt and he feels weak. He has constipation or diarrhea. He is nervous and inwardly restless. He can sleep badly. He freezes easily. His sexual interest is sinking. His hands are shaking.
Thyroid disorders can be responsible for increased irritability. (Image: nerthuz / fotolia.com) Hypothyroidism can be treated with hormone tablets. This L-thyroxine takes the sufferer with a daily dose between 100 and 200 milligrams. The doctor starts with a low dose and increases it slowly, because the body has to get used again to a normal hormone level, and a high dosage can lead to hyperthyroidism. This hormone takes the sufferer for the rest of his life.
Eating in the stomach hinders the stomach from absorbing L-thyroxine. Therefore, the patient takes the hormone at least half an hour before breakfast.
It takes several months for the treatment to strike. The artificially produced hormone has no side effects.
Iodine deficiency is often at the onset of hypothyroidism, but can lead to problems even without these long-term consequences. The thyroid gains thyroxine from the iodine, which the body can not produce by itself. Iodine deficiency causes the thyroid to enlarge; the victim has a goiter.
The iodine-containing hormones T 3 and T 4 (thyroxine) are crucial for the development of the brain. A baby who lacks these hormones suffers from intellectual disabilities, including cretinism. If the mother takes too little iodine during pregnancy, the newborn will suffer from iodine deficiency. Chronic iodine deficiency reduces the intelligence quotient, as revealed by several independent studies. Iodine deficiency is the leading cause of preventable brain damage worldwide.
According to estimates, the Germans consume on average only half as much iodine per day as would be correct from a medical point of view. Germany is an iodine-deficient country. The arable soils of Central Europe receive little iodine, as it was grown in the course of Earth's history from the soil. A malfunctioning thyroid was therefore a feature of the rural population in historical times, and even in the 1990s, there were 100,000 thyroid operations annually.
The most important food to adequately feed with iodine in this country is sea fish, because it contains the most iodine among our foods. Iodine salt is also recommended, as well as algae products and iodine tablets; However, they are moderate to use, otherwise an overproduction of the thyroid is the result.
Serotonin deficiency and serotonin syndrome
Serotonin is a messenger substance that brightens our mood. It transmits signals to the brain and acts in the cardiovascular system and intestine. Serotonin acts on the blood vessels in the cardiovascular system and controls the intestinal peristalsis.
A lack of serotonin is reflected in depression, anxiety and cravings, but also by increased irritability and aggressiveness. If there is a lack of serotonin, then the balance between sleep and wakefulness gets out of hand, and migraine is also a consequence.
Depression can be treated with reuptake inhibitors for serotonin. So the serotonin in the brain can work longer and better. This increases the serotonin level in the brain. These inhibitors also work against anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
An excess of serotonin also has a negative effect. We call him serotonin syndrome. This manifests itself in anxiety, increased tension and twitching of the muscles, tremors and also in increased irritability.
rabies
Rabies is a virus infection that is transmitted from animals to humans. The main vectors of this Lyssavirus in humans in Europe are canids, ie dogs, wolves like foxes, and in South America the vampire bats.
Rabies is distributed worldwide, except on some islands. In Germany, she is considered defeated; This is mainly due to baits for foxes containing vaccine preparations.
The most common type of vampire bats is the common vampire, Desmodus rotundus. His prey spectrum ranges from mammals and humans to birds. Diaemus youngi, the white-winged vampire, prefers birds, also attacks mammals. The comb-toothed vampire, Diphylla ecaudata, specializes in birds as prey. "
Vampire bats prefer bites to areas of the body that are easy to reach. In cattle, they cling to the withers and bite the side of the neck; When attacking from the ground, they prefer the region above the hooves, lying animals, vulva or udders. Before the bite, the skin is licked by licking. Then a skin fold between the razor-sharp incisors is clamped and jerky a skin flap separated.
The damage a larger prey animal suffers from bite and blood loss is low. However, flies like to lay their eggs in the wounds, which can lead to ulcers. There is danger of infection when biting and licking blood. In South America, the vampire bats are the main carriers of rabies
The rabies virus migrates through the nervous system. It eats three centimeters per day and reaches the brain after several days. It destroys the spirit and body of the victim.
The disease takes place in three phases. The first stage is characterized by shyness, nervousness and irritability. Light, touch, heat and cold cause pain to the infected. The sick can not swallow, and saliva flows from the mouth. Sick people react aggressively when they see water and despair because they can not drink it. They are unable to do so because of their paralysis.
The pain is unbearable, the organism collapses, often the patients become aggressive. Sick and spit, bite and roar. In addition, there are hallucinations, the neck is paralyzed, the sufferer is wandering about restlessly. In the eyes of past witnesses, the sick behaved like wild beasts.
This second stage doctors call raging anger. Finally, the limbs and facial muscles of the patient solidify. Frequently, the people howl "like dogs" because their vocal cords are paralyzed.
The disease is still leading to death today if it is not stopped in the incubation phase. A pediatrician suspected, however, that the body of the virus could become master. The epidemic was only too fast. He put patients into artificial coma so that the organism could develop antibodies. The first four subjects survived with massive neurological damage. In 2013, however, a girl survived rabies unscathed.
The increased irritability is an early warning symptom in many diseases and helps to treat the recognized in time suffering. Not so with rabies! Irritability marks the first phase; The disease has already broken out and can no longer be contained.
Only rabies helps against rabies. In parts of Africa and Asia, the virus is still raging today, and in India alone around 20,000 people are infected each year. In most cases they become infected because they bite a sick animal - mostly stray dogs, rarely jackals, foxes or cats.
Travelers should therefore avoid areas where such half-wild dogs reside, be wary outside the cities when wild animals such as jackals, foxes or hyenas approach without shyness.
The risk of becoming infected depends on the type of travel. Those who travel by car and spend the night in hotels rarely get in touch with the animals that transmit the disease. Backpackers who share their sleep with dogs, monkeys, rats or pigs in the open air, however, sit down Risks. Outdoor trekkers can ask locals; they usually know very well whether there are infected animals in the area, because Indians learn as children to protect themselves from rabid dogs. It is also advisable not to stroke caring animals, even if they cause pity and carry a stick to keep infected animals at a distance.
In South and Central America, it helps to sleep under a mosquito net at night so that the bats do not reach any uncovered parts of the body.
But above all, when traveling to countries where rabies is rampant, vaccination is a must. This applies to India as well as Nepal, Somalia and Tanzania.
Anyone who misses this and is bitten by an animal should go immediately to the doctor and get vaccinated.
What helps against irritability?
Irritability can be treated differently depending on what the cause is. Natural remedies such as St. John's wort, passion flower, valerian, hops, lavender, chamomile or lemon balm, as well as orange oil, fennel oil, bergamot oil, basil oil, rosewood oil, yarrow oil or sandalwood help against mild irritability.
Autogenic training, yoga exercises and shamanic exercises are also helpful. Baths with relaxing oils are recommended as well as sports: cycling, hiking, running or weight training. It does not have to be a competitive sport, but the movement in the fresh air makes the irritable one calm down. If physical irritability occurs, swimming makes less sense, since the skin and mucous membranes react sensitively after swimming.
Irritability as a result of lack of sleep is not pathological. Sleep helps, go to bed early and sleep late. One day later, the irritability disappeared.
Although all these exercises also alleviate irritability, which is an expression of more serious diseases. Here, however, the cause is to heal the disease, not its symptom. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)