How have you dealt with your anger?

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Anger sneaks up on me just like anxiety. Suddenly I have all this crazy energy and I don't know what to do with it, and it takes a while to realize why.
I hate the feeling of losing control, so I'm pretty good at staying away from that point.
When I was younger I internalized it all, but as the stressors become more real they don't seem to stay in for long.
Usually I just can't sit still and I start cleaning until I'm wiped out, but if I'm anxious enough I'll fully rearrange furniture. I think I starting doing it to feel like I'm in control of my environment. It's good because I have something to feel good about by the time I calm down, but it's bad because I just spent the past two weeks re-learning where I keep the forks.

I am rationalising things. I ask myself, does make sense to be angry? Does it change anything for the better? Does it help me to solve this? No? So why should be angry?



If issues are beyond your ability to change, it does make sense to let influence those your feelings in any way. You need to be settled in your self to deny issues the "access" to your mental well being.

I've used music, mainly jazz and the Beatles, along with Klezmer, I've also learned to use Buddhist meditation and poetry to help myself. I either write poetry or read my favourites from some of the more calming ones, William Blake, Rumi, and Basho for instance. I also have taken to long walks to blow off some steam, since Missoula is beautiful and I have many places to explore.

For reading I would recommend Marcus Aurelius.

I try to understand it.

William Blake, A Poison Tree

Marcus Aurelius

I don't know really. I can be extremely quick to anger and it tends to be almost uncontrollable.

I've come to realize something though. My anger is rarely just a reaction out of the blue. It's always proceeded by other negative feelings. It's like the release valve for everything else, anxiety, frustration, fear, humiliation, guilt, emptiness. Honestly, anger is a welcome reprieve from those other feelings.

That's why it's so hard to control. In order to control it I really have to find a way to preemptively avoid letting myself get into such a desperate mental state that leads to rage.

How about killing 'em with kindness.

When I'm angry and upset I watch horror movies.
It satisfies my need to see people getting hurt
and killed when I'm angry and I get calm
immediately.

Sometimes I beat, bite and cut myself to surpress
my anger.

Anger is something I usually deal with on a daily basis.

It was worst when I was in my mid to late 20's.

I would get focused on one single event, something that may have happened over a decade earlier; even something as simple as someone insulting me or disagreeing with me. It didn't matter, I would become fixed on this one thing and then churn with anger over it for long periods of time.

I would run those events over and over in my head, thinking of various "what if's" or "might have been" to try and either justify to myself my actions or lessen the results done to me.

Didn't really help...

The anger got so common, so intense at times, that I would pause in the middle and then become angry at myself for being angry. That was a rather odd feeling let me tell you.

Some times when I was angry, I would be distracted or forced to do something else and within seconds it was gone. Almost like a light switch being flicked on and off.

Like I mentioned, the anger in my mid to late 20's was the worse. When the feelings became over whelming I would beat myself. Then the shame and depression would set in. It really was no fun, and I don't miss that time in my life.

A few years ago, I realized that I couldn't change events that had transpired over the years. Yes, they had been bad, yes I had been a victim, yes they were wrong, but my anger did nothing to change all that -I was only hurting myself. This phase of my life I was learning to let it all go.

Fast-forward a number of years...

Now when I get angry, I will try and pause and remind myself that I am having one of my episodes and try to give a logical reason to warrant my anger. That in turn helps me to let go.

I have learned, very slowly over the years that eating healthy, getting plenty of sleep, and exercising to exhaust myself go a long way in reducing my anger.

I think there may be a few different streams in this discussion: some of us have known about aspergers for much of our lives, some have been ignorant of it for much of our lives. What is it - if anything - we're angry about? Being so stupid as to go on believing everything was as it should have been for so long? Being cheated of a life? You just swallow it, put on a happy face and go back to try again, don't you?

Feels to me like I'm rarely angry, never have been; yet I'm told on occasion I send non-verbal messages warning of imminent violence. After a bit of practice I can sometimes almost understand how that's possible.

This helps to read this cause I do the same thing still and I'm 33.

I just freaked on my wife again for the who knows Nth time. My check is gone in a day all for bills and other things that are going on right now set me off. Which stems back to something she did last year that was not good and really has hurt me and at times i think made it harder for me to function.

Sometime I just get so pissed at everything that I just explode and want to smash stuff. Which I've done and later regretted it. Laptop gone cause of it. My wife just will keep asking me question after question and it drives me even more angry, it's like she won't stop talking at me. I just have to leave or tell her to go away.

I try to get away from the people or thing causing me to get more angry and go do something I enjoy like playing my drums, ride my bike whatever. If I don't something is going to get broken or I'm going to smash my head into the wall.

I used to have a problem with anger back when I was a teen. I would get in fights; just defending myself. Also I wanted to kill a couple of people, but I could not figure out a fool-proof way to do it without getting caught. When I was sixteen, I got saved and the Lord took away my anger. Now when someone is mean to me, I pray for them. I still can feel hurt and disappointed, but that desire to get even is gone.

I've actually gotten something out of almost all the replies, thank you.

Ow... ow... Good, good advice.



I think I know how you feel, but I've fortunately managed to keep it mostly on the inside. Why does everything have to be so goddamn hard? Why is nothing ever satisfying?



Being cheated of a life is one hell of a bitter pill to swallow. But... After trying to change fate for so long, and then just ending up sick and insane, looking reality in the face is no longer strictly laughable to me. It's hell sometimes, but it's my life.

I do swallow it and then come back. I think most people are nicer and more tolerant than I give them credit for, and I'm the one who's more likely to cause trouble. See, I think they're out to get me, and I automatically get defensive. Bad bad bad. What's worse is how difficult it is controlling my emotions when encountering people.

This vid helps me laugh at my pathetic self:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7VzWitgeU4[/youtube]

Brilliant.....Blake was a genius I gather a lot of that poem is symbolic, and I can't decypher much of it, but the (more well-known) first verse is just direct truth, and I always finding myself coming back to that verse when I'm trying to make some headway on an anger problem.

Anger is still a very difficult emotion for me - I hardly ever express it directly. A counsellor once asked me where my aggression was, I replied that it was a redundant emotion in these modern civilised times. She wasn't convinced, and later said, after hearing recordings of my heavy metal music and singing, that she figured that was where my anger and aggression had been getting an outlet.

The problem with expressing it (for me) is that it always feels so horribly wrong to do so - I'm very aware of how damaging a person can be when acting in anger, and I always feel that it must be better to remain calm, and try very hard never to do anything that I'm going to have to apologise for later. Somehow I never meet anybody who's just a total bastard, at whom I might justifiably be able to throw everything including the kitchen sink, with no need for remorse. I always see the possibility that I may have misunderstood the situation, or the possibility that they may yet have a good side and don't deserve my unbridled wrath. Then there's the fear that they might turn out to be stronger than I am, or that the law might be unleashed on me.

I do manage to display a certain amount of controlled disapproval, I might issue a verbal put-down or some other indirect device. Or I might just go rather cold and quiet, and find myself withdrawing some of the kindness that I've previously displayed to that person - somehow, although I don't seem to get heated, I seem to make them know that they've displeased me, though I'm often caught up in also demonstrating that they haven't really hurt me, which serves to belittle them and show that my dignity is intact. Sometimes I'll sense that it's a bully who's just trying to get a rise out of me, and I'll fire off a damning insult, absolutely deadpan - somewhere along the line I really took it on board that bullies love to get a rise out of their victims, and I delight in showing them that I'm completely unruffled. Sometimes I can even respond with kindness, and though that's often said to be the ideal post-Christian response, I wonder whether it's really that, or just another way of denying them what they're really looking for, to guilt-trip and undercut them and to belittle them in a subtle but devastating way. I do tend to feel it's a kind of revenge, and I do find revenge sweet, though I try not to overindulge.

But I think I'm gradually learning to sometimes declare my anger to the person who seems to be the cause of it, rather than to take my anger out on them in those indirect ways. I want to put my heart on my sleeve but I only feel able to do that with friends, and as I'm so poor at relating to people in real life, I rarely feel enough trust to feel able to get anywhere near that ideal. Occasionally I make a breakthrough for a few moments, and I really feel a sense of growth when I do, but I always seem to have my (metaphorical) sword in reach, just in case the other person turns out to be an a**hole.

I hate succumbing to the temptation to run some bastard or other down to people I feel safe with, but if the bastard goes too far then I do tend to do that. I've often mentioned the bad in another person to a third party, not exactly as a deliberate attempt to defame them, sometimes negative things are pretty much my sole experience of the person and so by simply describing the things I've noticed about them with no wish to do harm, I end up painting a bleak picture of them. There seems to be something false in the idea that if you mention a bad point about somebody, you should also mention a good one to balance it out - sometimes I have no positive data to share.

I suppose this sounds silly, but I just remind myself that I don't know how to get angry.