Do you ever experience ups and downs in your feelings, such as suddenly becoming irritable or sad and crying, when you were feeling happy just a moment ago?
And if you can’t control them or don’t know why they happen, it can cause you to feel even more emotionally overwhelmed.
It is natural to have mood swings in your daily life, where you experience both good and bad things.
Our feelings are affected by various events.
However, if your mood changes too extremely or your behavior is driven by unusual mood fluctuations, it can have a negative impact on your life and your relationships with others.
In such cases, it is important to first understand why your mood is inconsistent more than usual.
By knowing the reasons, you can deal with the condition in a way that is appropriate for a particular case.
◎ Stress due to changes in life
When there is a change in one’s normal life, such as moving, changing jobs, getting married, or separating from a loved one, for example, one feels more or less stressed.
This is whether the change is exciting or anxiety-provoking.
Starting a new life can be mentally taxing, as you have to be extra attentive and unfamiliar with many things that don’t go the way you want them to.
On the one hand, you may feel positive about trying something new and looking forward to it, but you may also feel anxious about whether it will go well or what if you fail, and your mood may be more uneven in such situations.
◎ Chronic stress
Even if you are trying to control your emotions, your emotions can still be affected by stressful situations unless you are able to cope with the cause well.
When something even more stressful happens in a already stressful situation, or when the situation continues for a long period of time, your emotions become more unstable and it becomes even more difficult to control them.
It is no wonder that even though you may feel uplifted, if you are unable to resolve the source of your stress, it can cause you to become irritable and anxious again, resulting in mood swings.
◎ Mental health issues
Mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and depression, borderline personality disorder, alcohol and drug use disorders, and other mental illnesses can be associated with severe mood swings.
Symptoms of bipolar disorder include manic episodes, in which the mood is abnormally elevated, and depressive episodes, in which the mood is extremely depressed with a lack of motivation to do anything, and their mood fluctuations are intense.
There is no manic episode in the symptoms of depression, but there are ups and downs in a persistent depressed state, such as feeling a little better yesterday but feeling too sad today to get out of bed.
Borderline Personality Disorder is characterized by an extreme fear of environmental change or separation from others, and when a person feels that he or she may face such a situation, he or she changes attitudes toward the other person as if he or she has become a different person.
The person may initially be good to those who are with him or her as they wish, but then suddenly become angry when they do not care about him or her enough.
In alcohol and drug dependence, moods may be up and down, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or when they are not available, withdrawal symptoms may cause mood swings, such as becoming unusually irritable and helplessly anxious.
◎ Hormonal changes
The causes of our mood swings are not only stress and mental health issues, but also physical changes.
It is said that puberty, the period in which we grow from the body of a child to that of a young adult, is a time when the secretion of the hormone serotonin, which makes us feel positive, is lower than in any other age groups.
This makes them more irritable and angry, which you may have an idea.
In women, emotional ups and downs are more likely to occur during premenstrual, postpartum, postmenopausal, and perimenopausal periods, when changes in the female hormone estrogen occur.
Estrogen is responsible for stimulating the secretion of the happy hormone serotonin, and because estrogen decreases during the periods mentioned above, people tend to feel depressed.
In men, the decrease in the male hormone testosterone during male menopause, known as andropause, causes ups and downs characterized by irritability.
◎ Diet (Nutritional Deficiencies)
An unbalanced diet can have a negative impact on our mental health.
Some may point out that food and mental health have nothing to do with each other.
But food is the source of our brain, which is involved in memory, cognition, and emotional control.
And our bodies also need nutrients to function, and a lack of these nutrients can lead to lack of energy and even illness.
When the body is not functioning properly, it also causes us to feel depressed and mentally distressed.
For example, if you become low blood sugar due to excessive carbohydrate restriction in dieting, hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline are secreted to raise blood glucose levels.
And if they are secreted in excess of what is needed, you can become irritable and angry.
According to the National Council for Mental Well-Being, nutritional deficiencies of zinc, iron, vitamin B, magnesium, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids can cause grumpiness and lack of energy.
Knowing that our diet affects our mood, let’s make sure to eat a well-balanced diet.
◎ Lack of sleep
Our mood is negatively affected by days of sleep deprivation or poor sleep quality.
This is due to the fact that the frontal lobe, which functions through proper sleep, is slowed down.
The frontal lobe is responsible for keeping an eye on the amygdala, which processes emotions and inhibits us from becoming overly emotional.
If the frontal lobe is slowed down, the function of amygdala can be also slowed down, and the emotional response to stress can become more intense.
This is why sleep deprivation can make us more emotional.
There are various reasons for mood swings.
Know the reasons first, and reduce unnecessary stress by not letting your moods get in the way as much as possible.
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