In Intermittent Explosive Dysfunction (IED), an individual reveals repeated outbursts of aggressive habits which are disproportionate to the state of affairs. Whereas regular individuals present aggressive behaviors on occasion, these with IED present a frequent sample of verbal and bodily aggression. The outbursts are both high-intensity, occurring a number of occasions per 12 months, or low-intensity, occurring a number of occasions month-to-month.
IED is an impulse management dysfunction. It’s a failure to regulate aggressive impulses. Lack of impulse management in IED happens on the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral ranges. On the cognitive stage, the individual with IED is unable to regulate their ideas when triggered by a state of affairs.
Particularly, they’re vulnerable to hostile attribution bias, the place they attribute hostile intent to ambiguous behaviors. Regular individuals who make such hostile attributions can typically override their robust cognitive inhibition.
These with IED, in distinction, have weak cognitive inhibition. They will’t use their ideas to regulate their aggressive ideas. Because of this, these aggressive ideas take over their minds, they usually expertise intense feelings that search launch through aggressive behaviors. Â
Indicators of IED
1. Feelings
An individual with IED experiences an elevated sense of pressure earlier than the outburst. They might really feel annoyed, agitated, irritated, and stuffed with rage. After this pressure finds launch in an outburst, they’ll really feel guilt, disgrace, or embarrassment.
2. Behaviors
Verbal abuse can contain threatening, insulting, yelling, pointless arguing, mood tantrums, and tirades. Bodily abuse entails bodily attacking individuals, animals, or property.
3. Cognitive indicators
Cognitive signs embody racing ideas, incapability to tolerate frustration, making fast choices with out considering, and feeling a lack of management over one’s ideas.
4. Bodily indicators
Elevated coronary heart charge, sweating, tightness within the chest, shaking, muscle pressure, headache, and adrenaline rush earlier than and throughout the outburst. Feeling drained and relieved after the outburst.
5. Impression
Aggressive behaviors might be damaging to all the important thing areas of life. An individual with IED is more likely to discover themselves in fixed battle with pals, companions, household, and coworkers. They will additionally get into authorized issues as a consequence of their violent tendencies.Â
6. Episode traits
Outbursts are unplanned and happen with out warning. They’re reactions to perceived provocations, normally lasting lower than half-hour.
7. Self-harm
Bodily aggression in IED might not solely be directed in the direction of different individuals and issues but in addition to self. Throughout an outburst, the individual with an IED might hit themselves, pull out their hair, reduce themselves, and throw themselves on the ground, writhing like fish out of water.
