Counselling Specialties
Mood & Anger Therapy
Book a Free 20-Minute Consultation“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
— Hermann Hesse
Why does everything feel so much harder than it used to? Work has become a grind, and everything feels like it takes more effort.
A lot of the time, you’re moving through the day, going through the motions, without processing what’s going on. The things you used to enjoy doing have started feeling flat.
When you’re with others, you want to leave. When you’re alone, you feel lonely. You’re tired and want to rest, but even when you do, you’re still tired.
Or you’re feeling furious with everyone, and it seems like anything can bring out that sense of frustration. Self-control can feel impossible.
For others, it can feel like you never know which version of yourself you’ll wake up as. It’s hard to trust yourself. One moment everything can feel great, and the next, you have no energy, motivation, or interest.
Whether you call this depression, bipolar, ‘anger problems,’ or have another term for it, you know this feeling is not your norm.
Depression, bipolar, and anger disorders are often closely related. While they are separate conditions, they are powerful states that can overtake and control us.
For many people, depression and anger come hand-in-hand. Bipolar disorders are also linked with both, as they are often accompanied by depressive moods and difficulties with the expression of anger.
You may have learned that this is how you tend to react, but you know that you could react differently. With the right support, you can learn to bring more calmness, stability, and homeostasis to your life.
Feeling sadness, anger, and stress is a perfectly normal part of being human. But when these feelings start to feel overwhelming and interfere with daily functioning, that’s when they can become clinically concerning.
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
Major Depressive Disorder involves persistent low mood and/or a loss of interest or pleasure that lasts at least two weeks and significantly affects daily functioning. It can also involve changes in sleep and appetite, low energy, difficulty concentrating or making decisions, irritability, hopelessness, and thoughts of death or self-harm. For many people, depression is less about feeling “sad all the time” and more about feeling exhausted, disconnected, or unlike themselves.
I’d stopped doing pretty much anything I enjoyed. Even when I had free time, nothing sounded fun and I just didn’t feel like doing anything. Therapy helped me get through a lot of the negative thoughts, and after a while I started wanting to do things again. I honestly never thought that was possible.
Problematic Anger
Problematic anger involves anger that becomes unusually intense, frequent, difficult to control, or out of proportion to what happened. It can lead to yelling, aggression, impulsive behaviour, or consequences in relationships, work, and other parts of life. Often, people know afterward that their reaction went too far but struggle to stop it once the anger starts building.
The smallest things would set me off and I’d just react. I knew I had an anger problem, I just couldn’t seem to stop it in the moment. Therapy helped me notice what I was feeling before I acted on it and understand what was actually making me mad. My partner’s even commented on how much calmer I am now.
Bipolar I & Bipolar II Disorders
Bipolar I and Bipolar II involve significant changes in mood and energy, along with fluctuations in activity, behaviour, and sleep. Bipolar I includes manic episodes, while Bipolar II involves hypomanic episodes and major depressive episodes without full mania. These can include periods of feeling “up,” unusually energized or elevated, as well as extremely “down,” intensely sad, or even hopeless. Impulsivity and irritability often accompany manic or hypomanic states.
All of these issues are treatable, with therapy being an effective treatment for reducing symptoms, improving daily functioning, and rebuilding a sense of stability. At Pathway to Self, therapy helps you find your way back to feeling like yourself again.
By the time you think about therapy, you might already believe that this is just who you are, that the way you react is part of your personality, or that being unhappy is somehow in your DNA. That makes it so much harder to reach out for help. Not only that, but the effort it requires from you can take immense courage.
However, treatment for anger and mood symptoms is highly effective. Most clients who start therapy at Pathway to Self want to change but struggle to find a way out of the loop they’re stuck in. The Pathway to Self method is built to help you work through these issues and improve your overall wellbeing, not just to reduce symptoms.
The very first step is to help you achieve some stability by improving sleep and energy levels, learning calming strategies, or creating a routine that supports long-term wellness. Treatment also helps you recognize your anger cues and gives you strategies to change what happens next.
When confidence and steadiness are more accessible to you, therapy will help you learn how to work with the underlying issues behind the emotional and behavioural concerns you are struggling with. The Pathway to Self approach can help you access and process the underlying emotions that anger is covering. It can also help you understand and work through the factors and triggers that maintain depression and mood swings.
Therapy will help you pause, reflect, and act intentionally; reconnect with hobbies, people, and goals that used to matter to you; and find more calm, meaning, and patience in your life. Before long, you’ll find yourself feeling joy and satisfaction again.