Diabetes Rage: What You Need to Know About Diabetes, Anger, and Violence

You may assume that diabetes just affects the pancreas and other organs (such as the kidney, heart, eyes, to name a few). However, living with this condition can eventually affect your mood and mental health, too. For instance, you may experience mood swings when your blood sugar levels are either too high or too low. Anxiety, depression, and stress may also crop up.

Managing diabetes on an everyday basis can get overwhelming at times; hence, it is essential to check in on your mental and emotional wellbeing regularly. So, when it comes to the question, “can diabetes cause aggressive behaviour?” the answer is a definitive “yes.”

One chief way to regulate your mood is to successfully understand and follow your diabetes management plan. This will eventually smoothen out the highs and lows in your blood sugar. You may also want to seek the support of a mental health professional if you are experiencing symptoms of anger, burnout, anxiety, or depression. Effective management of your mental health is equally important as successful management of your overall physical health.

Anger or rage can be a highly destructive emotion with a disastrous impact on our physiology as well as our emotional and mental wellbeing.

Diabetes Rage or Diabetes Anger

Anger is an extremely strong feeling of resentment, displeasure, and hostility that frequently arises as a response to a perceived wrongdoing.

Anger triggers the stress response within your body, causing spikes in blood sugar levels to an increase in heart rate as well as blood pressure.

It is normal for those with diabetes to experience rage or anger, often questioning why they must go through this disorder whereas some are of sound health. In addition, managing the condition daily can prove to be quite overwhelming, thus leading to diabetes rage or diabetes anger.

The Need to Tackle Anger

Anger, often, leads to diabetes burnout. An individual’s anger may lead them to seek some sort of freedom from the condition, thus neglecting their self-management. It must be acknowledged that anger is a natural emotion that has its share of uses in human existence. That said, uncontrolled anger levels can disrupt your health as well as social relationships.

When it comes to diabetes anger problems, if left unaddressed, can be detrimental to physical and mental health, including reduced glycaemic control.

Anger expression patterns have been successfully associated with maladaptive alterations in secretion of cortisol, which is a stress hormone.

Diabetes and Mood Swings

Feeling a wide range of highs and lows in quite common in those with diabetes. Your blood sugar levels eventually impact how you feel and can then lead to mood swings. Poor management of blood sugar can result in negative moods and a substantially lower quality of life.

Blood sugar levels that are below or above your target range could be a potential cause of diverse moods, including anger, rage, and violence.

You may also notice a trend in your emotion when your blood glucose is high or low; hence, it is vital to test your sugar level when you feel gripped in a particular emotion.

For instance, low blood sugar levels may lead to confusion, nervousness, hunger, irritability, shakiness, jitteriness, tiredness, and sweating.

Conversely, high blood sugar levels will leave you with feelings of anger, tension, sadness, fogginess, faintness, thirst, tiredness, nervousness, and lethargy.

Diabetes and Stress

The stress of a positive diabetes diagnosis coupled with the stress of managing the condition over the course of time can lead to diabetes burnout and a feeling of being overwhelmed.

Stress can affect diabetes in a negative way. Stress that prolongs for several weeks or even months can lead to unstable blood sugar levels, which can sometimes rise and sometimes fall. These eventual fluctuations can hamper your overall mood.

Do not let stress interfere with your management of diabetes. Speak to a doctor regarding your stress levels, or, alternatively, reach out to a diabetes educator.

On a Final Note:

Type 2 diabetes anger can be detrimental to both the person experiencing the anger and the person to whom it is directed. Anger can lead to several negative emotions, ruining your physical as well as mental health. In those with diabetes, anger and rage are quite common because managing the condition can get quite overwhelming. This can eventually lead to fluctuations in blood sugar levels, thus disrupting your mood. In view of these circumstances, you need to ask for help, so that things do not spiral out of control.