People may think that mental disorders are uncommon but the reality is that they are very common and widespread. Some people may have mental illnesses but they don’t believe or acknowledge that they have them. About 54 million Americans are said to suffer from some type of mental disorder in any given year. Mental instability is a condition that affects the thoughts and behavior of an individual. People who are considered mentally unstable have difficulties coping with the day to day life experiences. They are unable to cope with challenges of life, every day functions, or other demands.
Many families aren’t yet prepared to cope with people who have mental instability. The mere aspect of having a family member who is mentally unstable can be emotionally and physically tasking often making other people not know how to respond to the situation. The mentally unstable person or even their family members may feel vulnerable to judgments and opinions of other people.
What’s Being Mental Unstable?
When you are mentally unstable, it means your emotional and mental wellbeing is impacted such that you cannot be able to cope with day to day challenges, functions, and demands. Mental instability can affect anyone regardless of their status, age, and gender. It can affect the young, old, and the youthful. Mental instability affects a person’s ability to maintain their work relationship, personal relationship, and relationship with other people.
Being emotionally or mentally unstable may be a sign of more problematic things happening within you. If you are emotionally or mentally unstable, it could mean you have a mental disorder or you could be reacting to some experience you had in your childhood. For example, you may have personality disorder like borderline personality disorder or you could be reacting to a childhood trauma. You could also be having depression or uncontrollable stress. Your mental instability could indicate anxiety disorder.
People who are mentally unstable may show signs of anxiety and depression while also having changes in their behavior that affect not only themselves but also people around them. It is important that you learn the signs of mental instability or being emotionally unstable so that you understand the needs of people in this mental status. When you know how to deal with and help people who are mentally unstable, you can be able to offer the much needed support without the persons’ behaviors affecting you. Just as Joyce Meyer said, an individual’s emotions are quite unstable and they should not be the foundation for finding the direction in their life.
People who are mentally or emotionally unstable tend to have intense spells of anger, depression or anxiety that may last for several days or just hours. Their mood swings vary between periods of euphoria to periods of dysphoria, and from severe anxiety or irritability to manic self confidence.
Signs and Symptoms of Mental Instability
Mental instability may present with symptoms that vary from an individual to another. Children may show symptoms that may sometimes differ with those of adults or adolescence.
Children
Kids that are mentally unstable tend to show symptoms and signs that require attention from specialized persons and groups or even family members and parents to be able to help the children cope with the situation and attain a positive outcome. Small children having mental instability will show signs and symptoms such as:
- Hyperactivity
- Recurrent nightmares
- Excessive worry
- Anxiety
- Aggression
- Frequent temper tantrums
- Disobedience for example, refusing to go to school or bed
- Poor grades in school despite putting strong efforts
- Changes in their school performance
- Changes in eating habits or sleeping patterns
Pre-adolescents and Older Children
In order children and those in pre adolescent stage, mental instability may present in different ways. The children may indulge in substance abuse. A child who functions and behaves in the right, healthy manner may begin to show mental instability in their pre-adolescent years. The child begins to be moody, angry, negative, and unable to cope with day to day challenges or activities. They also begin to be suicidal. The emotional changes in this childhood stage may occur outward where the child begins to be defiant to authority. They may engage in theft, truancy, and vandalism.
The old child may experience physical problems presenting in form of complaints of ailments or changes in sleeping and eating habits. The pre-adolescent may turn to abusing drugs.
Other signs witnessed in pre-adolescents with mental instability are such as:
- Frequent outbursts of anger
- Inability to manage responsibilities whether at home or at school
- Prolonged negative mood that is accompanied by suicidal thoughts and poor appetite
Adults and Adolescents
People in adulthood stage may also develop mental instability and among the most common signs is the development of extended, extreme depression characterized by sadness and irritability. Many adults today suffer from depression. The individuals will experience symptoms such as:
- Extreme highs and lows
- Social withdrawal
- Inability to endure day to day challenges or problems
- Suicidal thoughts
- Excessive fear and anxiety
- Changes in eating or sleeping habits
- Hallucinations – hearing things or seeing images that aren’t there
- Strong feeling of anger
- Having unexplained ailments
- Having strange thoughts – delusions
- Confused thinking
- Substance abuse
Mentally Unstable – Signs
Impulsive Actions
If you are emotionally or mentally unstable, you will likely act impulsively. You could do things that can harm you or other people without thinking about it. Think of it this way, if you are emotionally unstable, you may indulge in behaviors such as driving a car very fast without caring about your safety or that of other people. You may also be inclined to driving under influence of illicit drugs or alcohol. Those impulsive actions mostly likely are associated with anger.
Individuals with emotional instability may be vulnerable to impulsive spending or engaging in unmindful gambling. There is little self-control in these people and they may not understand delays in gratification. The reason people with emotional instability engage in such impulsive actions is because they want to feel good, but these actions only allow the individuals to feel good for only short periods of time.
Struggling With Anger Issues
The hallmark of a person with mental instability is showing of anger. An individual having emotional instability will mostly have problems with how they control or express their anger. They will tend to snap back and forth in trying to be pleasant but at the same time finding themselves extremely furious.
The individuals may be vulnerable to having outbursts of happiness and sadness, but their anger tends to be more damaging. They just cannot control their emotional feelings in a healthy way. The individuals may scream or shout when angry and at other times, they may express the anger with violent actions. Other people may mistake the actions of the persons with mental instability. Although they may show violent actions, this does not always mean that they intend to harm people they are angry with. You may see behaviors such as slamming of doors or pushing objects when expressing their anger.
Dr. Carol W. Berman who is an assistant clinical professor in the field of psychiatry says that people should not internalize the behavior of others who have mental instability problems. They shouldn’t take it too personally, and need to remember that it’s not about you but about the person with the mental problem. In most cases, people with mental instability or borderline personality disorder are not quite aware of their behavior or the effects the behaviors have on other people.
Being In a Circle of On and Off Relationships
It’s difficult for a person with mental instability to keep their relationships stable. The individuals will cascade between having affections towards their significant other and having bad feeling about them. This is something that is on and off and many a times, the individuals will find themselves in relationship arguments that trigger a break up with their partner only for them to want to come together after a couple of days or a few hours.
People with mental instability will have relationships that eventually turn to being “eggshell relationships” according to Joe Navarro, M.A who is an author and a former FBI Counterintelligence Agent. These are relationships where those living with people having mental instability have to trend very lightly. You have to wake up each day symbolically walking on eggshells simply because someone with a mental instability acts weirdly or toxically. You have to be so careful when around them otherwise they will lash out at you.
Extreme Reactions
Just like anger, people who have mental instability will show extreme reactions to situations or events that are perceived or real. For example, if a person perceives that someone else is wronging them, they will straightaway show a stronger reaction rather than first taking time to find out about the wronging or the situation.
Usually the perception of the world is off in them and what such individuals will do is; they will react to perceptions rather than reacting to reality of situations. A common perception people with emotional instability will extremely react to is the feeling that they are being abandoned. If the individual feels as though their friends or family or spouse is abandoning them regardless of whether it’s true or not, it can make the person to extremely react negatively.
Treatment of Mental Instability
People who have a member of family with emotional or mental instability need to know how to cope day in day out with the behaviors the affected individual displays. You also need to know how to handle unusual behaviors – for example, the individual may be extremely quiet and other times, they may withdraw. The individual may have outbursts of anger, have great anxiety, or they may burst in tears.
Establishing a support network is crucial because you will find individuals and families that are experiencing the same situation as that you have at hand and they can offer valuable advice.
It is important that both the individual with mental illness and the family members seek counseling. This is because just as the person with mental instability has problems and issues to tackle, so is the family. Professional counselors can help with suggesting better ways of coping and treating the mental illness.
Also, you may consider taking time out and get away from the individual to help release stress and frustrations you may have with the individual or family of the affected person. When there is a family member with mental illness, it tends to be the center of focus and other family members may feel as though they are ignored. When you schedule your time so that you mind about yourself, it can help you get into perspective on how to cope and deal with the situation. It allows you to be more patient and develop compassion that enables you to help and cope with the affected member of the family.
With the right treatment approach and support, people with mental illnesses can recover and become very productive in the society or family.
