I get angry and fantasize about violence and working out. I used to be a fighter, I overtrained, then schizo hit me, then I moved on to powerlifting, then I quit that in favor of research at school, now I just do some bodybuilding twice a week. I don’t have the time or motivation to workout as much as I used to, I am still big though.
I sometimes just get really pissed for no apparent reason. Sometimes it’s due to hallucinations or taking things people say the wrong way. Taking things the wrong way in a psychotic delusional way.
Anyways it makes me want to beat someone to death but I obviously don’t and won’t.
My shrink says to look at the steps that brought me to anger and then take them back down- he means to change my perception of what other people do or the false reality which I experience. That’s hard. “Go perceive everything differently”. One time he just told me that I am outstanding at managing the pain. I think shrinks know that we are all damned.
I don’t deal with stupid well. My mothers purse was stole Walmart yesterday at 1.00 pm It is 24 hours later and police have not checked camera in Wal Mart. Should I be mad.
I used to be easily agressive and angry. Abilify has made me “equal”. I don’t react on anything. Or maybe it’s anhedonia because of sz. I’m never angry or upset. I just am. Never really happy either.
Whenever I find myself becoming too angry for any reason I come back around to the thought and quote by the HH Dalai Lama. “When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy”.
I’d been a waaaaaaaaaay over-the-top rageaholic for decades (wrecking relationship after relationship) when I ran across material that connected reactive anger to traumatic events in the past and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Over time, I was able to see how my mind and brain had been set up by having been passed around from one adopting family to another, then finally “kept” by a pair of unhappily married and very stressed out parents who were verbally and physically abusive. (A lot of that awareness came from joining Adult Children of Alcoholics / Dysfunctional Familes years ago, though I no longer attend those particular 12 Step meetings.)
I’ve studied a lot of brain function and neurophysiology since then, and now understand how PTSD rewires the brain’s emotion regulation system to make it less capable of managing one;s emotions as well as more reactive to threats and other triggers. A small daily dose of Seroquel quetiapine helps, as well as mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and other awareness-building activities that make it possible for me to “pull the plug” when my mind is triggered by how the bipolar psychosis interprets what happens around me.
I developed a mantra about two years ago that =really= helps to “digest” the cortisol and adrenaline floods that come up when my mind is triggered: “Observe to notice to recognize to acknowledge to accept to own to appreciate to understand.” (I know exactly what those words mean because I looked them up in several dictionaries.) I do each of those things and almost always get a lift-off in a few seconds now, though it took a lot longer at first.
That’s an interesting tactic, to try to figure out how you got angry. Most of the time my anger isn’t rational. My anxiety just causes me so much pain sometimes that I get intensely irritable and any slight thing infuriates me. Combine that with warped psychosis thinking and…yeah.
I deal with it by figuring out if my anger is rational or irrational. Since 99 percent of the time it’s irrational I can use that reminder to keep myself from lashing out unnecessarily at anyone. Exercise endorphins calm me a great deal and take that rage away for the most part so working out regularly is a must for me.
I also deal with frequent and intrusive violent daydreams. It gets bad. But my good voices told me it was just a way to unleash my negative feelings in a non-harmful way and not to worry about it. Remember it’s actions that count!
“Each time we identify with anger as ‘I,’ or with doubt or guilt as being who we really are, we suppress that state of mind[ful self-awareness] and can go no deeper. Whenever you call anything ‘I,’ that’s where you stop [being self-aware without judgment]. That’s the depth of the penetration. That’s where you get off the elevator. But if you stay open to anger, and let anger be there, you go deeper. You begin to experience the space in which these things arise and into which they dissolve. You begin to experience the space anger is floating in. That moment is not a moment of anger but of clear awareness. And then you stop identifying with yourself as anger. You are observing anger, but not becoming lost in it.”
– Stephen Levine: Who Dies? Am Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, Anchor Books, 1982.
What I’m trying to say here is that, for me anyway, figuring out what triggered the anger =can= be useful, but it’s far less so than looking straight into the sensations of the anger and “being with” them. =That= pulls the plug out of the wall for me in a way trying to recall the (externalized, and thus uncontrollable) cause never has.
If one is taking a moderate to high dose of an anti-P, it’s possible that anger (and other strong emotions) will be suppressed by the med’s blocking of receptor sites in the dopamine and norepinephrine chains in the limbic (emotion regulation) system in the mid-brain above the brain stem. For those who had =severe= anger problems, this is usually a “good” thing. But, of course, it makes life pretty dull, and reduces the incentive to do the psychotherapy that can process those emotions sufficiently to make it possible for the pt. to reduce his med dosage. (U probably already knew that.)
When I was younger… I put in Anger management classes… Yes, I am on Latuda and Seroquel, but I still feel anger at things.
It’s usually stuff that is internal… and projected out…
It usually comes from a feeling of loosing control. I don’t mean a break down sort of loosing control… but feeling that if you just controlled every aspect of the situation then it would be OK.
Of course we can not control every aspect of a situation… we can not control how others will react.
Learning to let the smaller details go… not getting so focused on small stuff helped me let things roll away. because those little things build… and that causes a blow up… usually at the wrong person.
Also… picking my battles. As a result of anger… I used to see every tiny thing as something to fight about. No matter how small or accidental… I needed to fight about it.
The hardest step for me… there was a time where anger and rage was the only thing I could feel. So I tried to be angry as much as I could so I could feel something. It felt good to be angry… I forgot how to feel other things.
Learning how to choose the other feelings in the box helped me not pick up the anger brush first.
Thanks J. I used to live off of anger and that’s behind me, at least it is most of the time. I don’t mean to say that I like what you went through, but I do like hearing that you went through it and didn’t just stay there.
I live by the water… I do go surfing… (when I can… and when the surf is up)
I prefer a long board… just because of my height.
A lot of surfers offer the Hakuna Matata
It’s just usually when I hear that or see it… the people are surfers… I was just wondering if you surf as well? If not… I am deeply sorry for bothering you.
I’ve got some weird anger issues. Usually, the way I handle them is to brood. A person needs to be careful when he acts out of anger. He can do or say things he might regret.
