After 2 years with the world's greatest therapist (IMHO).... I'm learning that I need some serious time away from my family (meaning my parents and siblings)... because you are totally right Eskielover, a lot of it is learned behavior. And now that I'm recognizing these behaviors in myself, I'm realizing that my family wears their emotions on their sleeves too. I don't doubt that I'm really bipolar though, because I go from 0 to 1000 and feel the fire rise in me so quickly... so what I need to focus on is how I let that all out. I think because my mom blames everyone else for everything that goes wrong in her life, I unconsciously did the opposite, and I wind up internalizing it all - blaming myself and then taking that anger out out on everyone else.

But my fiance and I have a deal where he points it out to me when I'm starting to be irrational... which backfires sometimes if my temper has gone past the point of no return. I do think it's helping though. Some of these times I would really never realize that I was acting that way.



-RK