self-directed anger.

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When I have a "tantrum" I am not that angry at you at all. I am angry because I'm being misunderstood and punished for it.
It's usually filled with self hate. When mad, I want to hurt myself, not you.

When I'm upset, I NEED to cool off. you wont get any logical replies out of me if I'm in the middle of an episode. When I lock myself in the bathroom, let me be in there. dont threaten me to make me come out.

When a bad fight like this happens, where I feel misunderstood, and uncared for, and get so upset I want to cut myself, and it ends permanently with these feelings and your refusal to understand me...It does hurt our relationship. I trust you less every time this happens, I will get more withdrawn from you and hide things from you.

I'm NOT being defiant when I refuse to speak, or run away. I don't know what to do, so I'm silent, or hide because I need to be alone.

DON'T make me talk to you while I'm crying.




anyone else feel this way? want to add anything?

When I'm mad, 80% of it is self-directed. I feel stupid and useless. When Im mad at you, it's because you refuse to even try and consider I may be different than you.

I don't consciously direct anger at myself, in fact it's second nature for me to protect myself and make myself as comfortable as possible. There's enough people out there who would get angry with me or wish to harm me, without me adding to my own problems. If I get angry, it's usually either at other people or at a situation.

Unconsciously, it might be a different matter. But all I've noticed is that perhaps I work too hard at things and deny myself a lot of luxuries when most people would just relax and enjoy the goodies. And even that might be nothing to do with self-loathing. There are a lot of things about me that annoy me, and I'm definitely my own worst critic, but I never go any further than criticism. I hardly ever want to kick myself.

Very well expressed Spazzergasm.

I get frustrated over being misunderstood too though more and more these days, my anger is turning outwards towards people who have tried to hurt me in some way by actively bullying me, leaving me out, making snide remarks, watching me fail because they wanted to see me fail etc. etc.

When I have learned more skills and know how to deal with this list of people in an appropriate way, they will all have to deal with how they have treated me in some way or another, and I mean ALL of them.

Just hope my life is long enough to get through the list.

i understand exactly what you mean spazz.

i can't tell you how many times i have tried to explain to someone how angry i am with myself when i melt down. and it seems to happen with those rare people i actually care for. i get so mad at myself when i have let them down, then when i shut down they get angry and scream. then it all just spirals
down
wards

it is really the only part of this whole deal that i truly dislike.

i've never actually had a fight like this with a close friend. only family. i get this way if i am being provoked. i find if we can discuss the ways we work beforehand in an objective way, or after we are cooled off, these things dont happen. but i cant do this with my family. then again, i have very understanding friends, if few.

being a bit older i have been married, and don't really talk to my family much. i had this happen with family in my teens but my more recent memories are in relationships, and with friends and co-workers.

i think when i start having relationships, there will be breakdowns like this. i dont feel so attached to anyone at the moment, though. friends i do, but you dont really live with them, sooo yeah.

I think this is very much a female thing. I've had a lot of issues with it and it wasn't until recently that I actually got into a situation where I can get angry and not have it taken personally.
AS compounds the frustration and the trouble being understood, but the anger at self is more a girl thing than anything else, I think.

my friend who is an AS guy is very self-angry.

Me too. I feel like I let my parents down when I have one of those kind of meltdowns and I'm hurting the people who care about me the most. It's a horrible feeling of helplessness.

90% of the anger i feel at any given moment or have in the past has been directed at myself. sometimes it reaches 110%, and i am quite male.

80% of the time I get upset, it is at myself.

I suppose it's likely to happen more in females because they're more likely to have been treated as if their anger is unacceptable or unimportant. The theory is, if I remember right, that if anger can't be directed at the cause of the anger, then it can get displaced onto the self (or other innocent folks). Somehow or other, the gun has to fire once it's been loaded.

All of which is very sad. I think it's important for people to police themselves carefully for that sort of thing......though plain will-power is unlikely to be enough to change it much - the best solution may be to redirect it back at the true source of the problem, which could be a person or some inanimate thing. I've heard that anger (or agression) can be a good driving force for solving problems. There are also a lot of relatively harmless activities that can help to vent rage, like destroying something that doesn't matter much, for symptomatic relief, though of course that does nothing to directly fix the conditions that cause the situation.