Count to ten, then swear (how to angry)

it feels like im holding a box that will drown me if i let it open

expressing it to others always makes me feel very petty and attention seeking

 

My anger is weird. Basically, trauma has cut me out from feeling more than frustration and irritation on my own behalf, but I go into homicidal protective rage mode (edit: over people I care about) way too easily. Also, if I do manage to get beyond frustration and irritation, it's really, really easy to flip that right into mania if I can't calm down, especially if I'm unmedicated. I'd like to be able to feel anger again - not rage, or spite, or anything, just garden-variety mad - but I have other shit I have to work on first. As it is, things that should make me angry come out as sadness or anxiety instead, which is unfun. When I could get angry, physical activity was really the best thing for it - lifting weights, playing with the dog, cleaning, that kind of thing.

Yelling really freaks me out, because yelling meant Shit Was Going To Go Down. Of course, I'm also that person who would literally rather you scream in my face than ignore me, because ignoring meant worse things. Brains are weird. I'm slowly getting used to yelling, but if it escalates to the throwing things stage or even angrily slamming around dishes while you clean, I'm the fuck out.

Sometimes I'll be talking to someone and out will come a torrent of words, and I'll finish and be like "wow, I didn't even realize that bothered me so much. I was actually pretty mad about that." That's always a weird feeling too.

 

This sounds similar to my experience and also like a reason why I try not to perform anger.

I just feel physically bad when angry and then frustrated and then I have to let it drain away, asap, so that I can get back to life, thanks. I've never, to my memory, expressed anger and then felt better about it. I proceed to feel bad that I was angry at all and wish I could have been tolerant enough to not upset someone.

:/

 

Spoiler: emetophobia tw?

For me, properly expressing anger feels like the one time I properly remember throwing up - a little bad, but mostly a relief because I've gotten the bad shit out of me. It comes out in that same almost uncontrollable rush, too. If I express it without getting screechy and nasty at other people, it's mostly a relief, anyway. Expressing it and being mean about it feels about like I'd imagine throwing up on your favorite shirt would - a relief in the moment, but then you look at what you did and you just created more work and mess for yourself.

 

Oh man this thread is my jam, do I have issues with anger or what... On mobile so can't go into much detail but p much I learned from my mom to tamp down my anger until I explode randomly one day seemingly unprovoked, and learned from my dad that being angry means you're too ~*~immature~*~ and ~*~unintelligent~*~ to be rational -- b/c expressing anger is always irrational -- and thus you instantly lose the argument. So now I have flight or fight responses at anger expression/yelling (I get both scared and instantly pissed off), explode in a sudden blaze of rage when I get mad where I stomp and scream 5 minutes then I'm instantly calm again, AND get judgemental when people express anger/upset b/c 'why are you being so irrational, all I said was... '
Just a ball of hypocrisy here!
(I'm working hard on the judgemental thing tho.)

 

I can't deal with people being angry and I feel like a piece of shit if I get angry myself, especially if I express it!

I don't know how to do healthy anger or deal with it, and the idea of addressing the issue makes me want to just crawl under my desk and lie there.

 

So, I noted this in the first post, but what I learned in anger management therapy was that anger is a valid emotion and it serves a purpose. It's like an alarm bell ringing when your boundaries or your principles are being violated. It's a call to action.

What's difficult is that it can cloud your judgment, put you into flight or fight mode even that's not the real solution. So it's an important and useful skill to learn how to calm your breathing, calm your body, and make room to think clearly send make good decisions.

Sometimes that decision may be that this isn't worth bothering with, but a lot of the time the decision is just what you are going to do, what you are going to say. The anger has served its purpose, and by talking about what set it off and why you can respect your anger, respect your boundaries, and express your needs.

And i know that what i'm saying probably sounds like some kind of alien babble when you've got little or no experience with healthy expressions of anger, but this is kind of the core of it. The first time you try doing it this way, it might be terrifying. You might feel like something horrible is sure to happen, you might feel like you're overstepping your rights by asserting yourself, but the fact is that if you're feeling angry, someone else has already done wrong and you have the right to try and fix it.

But man, the first time you tell somebody that you're upset and here's why, and they actually respect that, you will feel like a superhero. You might also feel like you want to throw up, but part of you will feel like a nauseous batman. And the more you can do it, the more confident you can be the next time.

I still struggle with feeling safe doing it, but i can promise that my feeling unsafe is way out of proportion for what actually happens anymore. It's rooted in having a histoy of bad that is pretty much ancient now. (well, okay, bad situations over the last couple of years have caused me trouble in this regard, given me more things to be legitimiately angry about with people who did not respect my needs so that my anger wasn't satisfied because the problems were not addressed; so now i need to retrain myself through experience by addressing angry things when they come up so i can learn to trust again that i can be productive when something sets off my anger)

Edited bc autocorrect

 

@Xitaqa Learning how to pick my battles definitely helped. Also walking away from a situation for a minute instead of staying til it escalated, taking a very stompy walk to the park has helped a lot. I'm still learning how not to let certain phrases trigger my 'oh no fuck YOU' rage button ('Calm down' for instance.) I know ppl mean well.

 

@rje yeah the "calm down" thing can be a real button-pusher for a lot of people. All to often it has been used to silence folks instead of to encourage them to collect themselves so they can address the problem.

Do you find any alternate wording that can communicate a similar idea of "we don't need to escalate, if we de-escalate we can work this out" kind of thing that works for you?

 

the thing that bugs me most is when I get told to calm down
and i already am? and have been for the whole time?

 

i also dislike being told to calm down. ironically, telling me to calm down while i am calm is a very easy way to make me not calm. see also: "stop yelling". "stop yelling" is the easiest way to get me to yell.

i think im in general improving in how i take that kind of "heads up you should take a break" because most people really are acting in good faith i just perceive it as XYZ negative things. i cant reliably tell when it's in good faith or not though so ive been compensating by attempting to assume everything is done with good intentions? but that is its own bag of stress.

 

@Xitaqa Hmm..anything that's more 'we' statements than 'you' statements helps. Someone saying something like 'Hey, let's take a minute to step back and breathe,' or 'I think we're both pretty heated right now, let's come back to this in a few' or something (if it's not an argument btwn us both they can say you or even better 'the discussion' aka 'the discussion is getting pretty heated')
It also helps if someone else say they're gonna take a break, then I feel more ok to take a walk to calm down for some reason. Not that it's someone else's responsibility to de-escalate but it feels less like I'm 'losing' when that happens? Idk if that's a good thing

 

anything that helps de-escalate and move you toward productive resolution should be counted as a good thing. it would be better if you can find your way to a place where you do feel free to initiate that break, but in the meanwhile, being able to respond positively to someone else wanting to break and de-escalate is valuagel and good.

 

hi welcome to the siblings who do things similarly show, where I do things in a similar way to my sister

I definitely hardly ever bring up anger or frustration about a thing face to face with a person... god, if ever. I don't remember the last time I actually confronted a person in an angry way irl. I'm usually on the de-escalation crew
my mom gets stressed out and annoyed (annoyed is an easier word to comprehend and use than anger, im not sure about functional difference of them in my experiences) very easily at inconveniences, so my usual priority when inconveniences happen that might annoy me as well, is to focus on making everyone around me happy and less angry about the bad thing. I find it a lot easier to swallow my personal reaction and try to make things positive than like. exist in the bad emotion

when i do get annoyed and want to express a thing, it's almost always rambling at friends or various places online (tho i tbh try to keep it to a minimum, venting anger can correlate with making more anger)

idk if i think there's a problem in what I'm doing?? my main issue is same as my sister, I have a pretty intense inability to confront people with things they do that upset me because it's a lot easier for me to just weather the thing and go on with my life, and thats probably not a perfect thing for a long term life plan of living with people or something
shrugs

 

I recognize that what you're saying is good sense. But I have a long history of not being able to trust my emotions, and of them sending out false flags, and of them being actively antagonistic to me, see: feelings of wanting me dead. I was also formally diagnosed with PTSD, and while I like to plead 'I got better,' I spent a long time getting... well... really angry at things that weren't bad, or were barely bad. A lot of things reminded me of sexual abuse that weren't sexual abuse, not even close, and I reacted (when I couldn't contain it) like it was actual abuse. My feelings flagged things as overstepping boundaries when they really weren't; I was just being ptsdramatic, I am trying to say.

It's a lot harder to justify anger or say 'my anger is a sign you did something wrong' after that. What if no one is really doing anything that bad and I'm sending out a lot of false flags again? Because that has legitimately been the case very, very often. How do I demand change or restitution when sometimes the change I want is absurd and the restitution I want is for something that legitimately wasn't bad? (And I really don't believe I'm talking down to slights here. I used to absolutely boil whenever I saw, irl or in fiction, a man expressing attraction to a woman in just about any way, because it always reminded me of bad things, even when it was appreciated and reciprocated. Brain, why were you so BAD)

What if you're angry and they ain't done no wrong my dude. It's obviously my problem then, not theirs

I want to verbally like this, that's such a good thing. Little language things like that can help a lot, and are very valuable to me, a person who isn't always good at expressing herself and uses learned verbal tricks to do so more efficiently

 

You know, you make a really good point here. Sometimes anger can come up because o a violation from the past that isn't actually present. It's really important to learn how to recognize that so that you're able to focus on what really needs to be addressed - the people who triggered your anger might not be the problem whereas a person in your past who traumatized you is the real problem.

In cases like that, I'm going to suggest that the anger is still a thing you can respond to, but the constructive response might not be obvious. Removing yourself from teh situation, contacting a friend who knows about your history so you can just express that you are feeling this way right now, opening up to someone new you can trust about the fact that you are upset and why that is - any of these could potentially be good ways to express yourself when your anger is summoned, depending on your own needs.

And there are times when any of us have to remind ourselves that we're carrying extra anger from something we weren't able to deal with, and this moment might feel like an opportunity to let it out, but it might be unproductive and unhelpful. (i mean, i get annoyed with customers and I get annoyed with employees, and I kind of can't scold the customers, but I know I don't want to make my minions feel like shit when they make a minor but irritating mistake.)

So yeah, recognizing that in yourelf is important. Identifying when it is and isn't a factor is important.

I think the rest of what I said earlier would still apply generally though. Expressing your anger doesn't have to mean attacking the person or thing that made you angry - your emotions might be telling you that's a good idea, but your emotions are still kind of a dumb hairy mammal and not a cool and thoughtful mammal.

So like, accepting that your anger has been triggered and it means something - with perhaps the additional step of doublechecking what it really means and whether you can address it here & now. Then trying to identify something you can do to address the problem. Sometimes the best you can do is simply acknowledge the problem.

Spoiler: many many words

When I'm telling people about my anger reaction, theres a lot of times I find it useful to make it clear to them that I don't think they're a bad person, I am just reacting to their specific action. Like, "I'm sure you don't mean anything by it, but when you said [X] that really ticked me off. Would you mind avoiding that around me?" YMMV of course; people tend to read me as authoritative so that's helpful. But i find that most people don't want to be perceived as callous jerks and are willing to accomodate simple requests to that end.

There are cases I run into where someon says okay, but doesn't really pay attention to it. When the person does/says the same thing again, I will say sternly, "I already told you I need you not to [X], I don't know why I have to tell you again." It's not flying off the handle and it's not attacking them. It's reminding them that we had already talked about this, in a tone that makes it clear I am unhappy that they are not following through on what they had agreed to do. They usually look rather awkward and maybe a little embarassed, because they don't want to look like a jerk and now they feel like they look like a jerk. I have learned that I don't have to feel awkward because that simple phrasing makes it clear to anybody listening that I've already tried to address this and now I am simply defending the agreed-upon boundaries.

Usually the reaction after a second or two of startled embarassment is something like, "Oh shit, i'm sorry, I'll make sure to [X]" and I'll say "Thank you, I appreciate it" because they merit encouragement.

Once in a great while I will get a jerk who doesn't automatically want to get along with folks (DISCLAIMER: this phrasing is under the assumption that my request and boundaries are reasonable. If someone is making unreasonable demands of you, you are not a jerk for denying them, i cite the entire history of Ray as evidence). Usually this manifests as them wanting to know why [X] bothers me, and I used to feel obligated to explain and justify, but I find that very often leads to them trying to un-justify it. These days, i usually will go with something like "It doesn't really matter" or "that's not something I like to talk about" or whatever, and "what matters is that [X] bothers me."

There will also be folks who will agree to the request but also ask about the reason. It's important to recognize the distinction. Jerks will challenge the reason before giving any indication that they will respect the boundaries you want to lay out. Decent folks will generally indicate their cooperation, or give a reason why they're not cool with your request ("Sorry, but I don't delete posts as a matter of principle"), before asking for elaboration about why you want this. And you can explain or you can tell them you'd rather not talk about it or whatever; there's nothing wrong with not wanting to explain why a thing is upsetting even when people are accomodating. Most folks will probably make some assumption, but that's not your problem. Only jerks will make explaining yourself a condition for respecting your request.

Okay, i can think of an interactions where nobody's a jerk...
"Do you mind not [x] because it really bothers me"
"Sorry but i need to [x] for reasons. Do you mind if i ask why it bothers you?"
"I'd rather not talk about it, but it's a real problem for me."
"Well, if it helps i could maybe [Y] so you don't have to deal with [X] as much."
"That would be really helpful, thank you."

I mean as an example.

Have i mentioned that i find having mental scripts helpful for dealing with human interaction? A lot of conversations boil down to varioations on a few simple scenes, so having a rough outline will help, and if the other person goes off script you can sort of steer the conversatin back in teh directin of the intended dialogue.

 

I will respond more thoroughly to the rest of your post but before that I just wanted to say

...if only I wasn't so attached to my current user title.

 

could always use it for your custom title, your occupation, or your signature ^_^

 

MENTAL SCRIPTS ARE HELPFUL AS HELL FOR HUMAN INTERACTION. If I'm confronted with something suddenly, even if I want to talk about it, I usually back out--but if I've had time to rehearse something I MIGHT say, potentially, if I wanted to address the thing, it's much more likely to happen. It's the only way I come out of the closet to anyone.

Which gives me an idea--if I note things that make me angry, rehearse my reasoning in my head, I might be able to convince myself to talk about those things. I would still go through my natural vetting process of trying to think about how it looks from their position, because otherwise, I can make and have made Big Mistakes. (But this can also bog me down, because when I start seeing their position, I often stop being willing to defend my own, because what makes my reasons or thoughts more important than theirs? Anyway)

The next problem (and possibly the real problem) is that no matter what, expressing anger or annoyance just inevitably bogs me down with guilt. If I actually make it through expressing a need or telling someone I felt wronged and they agree to change their ways or help me out somehow, I just... feel like the shit of the earth. It's the worst. I cannot beLIEVE I just asked for help or for someone to change. Holy FUCK. What an ungrateful. Motherfucking. DON'T I REALIZE I COULD HAVE DONE THAT MYSELF OR JUST DEALT WITH THE SITUATION AS IT WAS?

It feels awful, I always just wish I had never said anything; watching people try to be kind and considerate is almost always way worse than dealing with whatever was happening before.

...Why the fuck am I this way :<