Home · Conditions · Intermittent Explosive Disorder
Conditions we treatWhen anger arrives in episodes that feel out of scale to what set them off — and you spend the rest of the week trying to clean up what it broke — there's a clinical name for what you're describing. There's also a way through it.
A fuse. A hair-trigger. A problem. Most people who fit this pattern have already named it themselves — in less flattering ways.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder points at something specific: a nervous system that goes from neutral to a hundred faster than the usual tools can keep up with.
If the people around you have started walking softly in your direction, that's worth taking seriously — not because anything is broken, but because there's a way through.
The rest of this page walks through what's happening underneath, and how the work in our group and individual sessions changes it.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder is what the DSM calls a pattern of anger that meets three conditions: the episodes feel disproportionate to whatever set them off, they happen often enough to disrupt your relationships or your work, and between them you'd describe yourself as relatively calm.
Most people who fit this description don't think of themselves as having a disorder. They think they have a temper. Or that they're "wired wrong." Or that the people around them know exactly which buttons to push. Sometimes one of those is partly true. Often the truer version is: there's a part of the nervous system that's learned to go from zero to a hundred in under a second, and nobody ever taught it a different speed.
What has a name has a treatment. Our take
The episodes come on in seconds, not minutes — there's no "ramp up" you can catch.
Afterwards you feel hollowed out, sometimes confused about how it got that big.
The triggers can be tiny — a small inconvenience, a comment from a stranger, a printer that won't print.
Between episodes you're patient, even kind. People who don't live with you might describe you as easygoing.
You have a story for the people closest to you about why this last one happened.
Sleep, alcohol, and chronic stress make it worse — but it's not those things, exactly. Something else is underneath.
You've thought, more than once, that you don't entirely recognize yourself in the moment.
You've had episodes you can't fully remember — not blackouts, exactly, but the kind of fog where the sequence is missing.
You've apologised so many times you've started to mistrust your own apologies.
The work for IED is more layered than basic anger management — the speed of the episode makes traditional "catch it early" tools harder to use. We typically combine three things.
The window between trigger and explosion has to be widened before any cognitive work can land. We use breath work, grounding, somatic tracking, and (if relevant) referral for psychiatric consultation about whether medication might help create the breathing room.
Once the window is wide enough to think in, we work on the patterns underneath: what the episodes have in common, what stories run through your head in the lead-up, what older experience the current trigger is borrowing from.
Group is especially useful for IED because the disconfirming experience — being heard, being held to a standard, watching other people work the same pattern — happens in real time, in a room, with witnesses.
We're a psychotherapy practice, not a psychiatric medication clinic. But for some IED clients, a short consultation with a psychiatrist about SSRIs or mood stabilizers is helpful. We can refer to trusted psychiatry colleagues in the LA area when that seems useful.
If the pattern in this page sounds familiar, that's a good sign you're in the right place. The first call is short.
Information only — not a diagnostic tool. The descriptions of symptoms, conditions, and treatment approaches on this page are general and educational. They may not be used to diagnose yourself, a loved one, or anyone else, and should not be relied upon to decide whether to begin, modify, postpone, or discontinue any course of care. Only a qualified, licensed clinician — after a comprehensive evaluation — can responsibly evaluate symptoms and recommend a course of action. Reading this page does not create a clinician-patient relationship with Pasadena Clinical Group or any of its clinicians, employees, contractors, supervisors, supervisees, interns, postdoctoral fellows, volunteers, agents, or business associates. This site is not a crisis service. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or call 911. Use of this site is governed by our Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Notice of Privacy Practices, including the mandatory mediation, binding arbitration, class-action and representative-action waivers, jury-trial waiver, choice of California law, and Los Angeles County venue described in those documents.