36 and on the way to an early grave...

First let me say that I cannot afford to seek professional therapy. Thank you for listening to my story.

For as long as I can remember, all the way back to grade school, I have had a severe problem with rage. Not just anger, or getting upset, but blind, "can literally feel my blood pressure is off the charts" rage, and I am tired of it. Everyone, everything, and nothing can set me off and sometimes it feels like I purposefully look for a reason, even create a reason to get angry. Even when I know I am in the middle of an "episode" I cannot end it. I burn with the fury of the sun until I have pushed everyone away from the situation and only I remain. And it is ruining my life and my health, and I want it to stop!

I would say that I am a regular person for the most part. I have a family, a professional life, a few friends, and hobbies. I would also say that a "good mood" for me is "even with the board" and rarely do I ever have moods "better than par." But I know (and so does everyone around me) that at any moment something might offend me and the switch is flipped. There is a song I know that says it very well, "...lashing out with random hate, there is no other way, it's my discipline, it's my way of life."

I have been fired from jobs because rage clouds my judgement and I say things that are completely out of line to coworkers, subordinates, superiors, even the owners of the company. No one is off limits. I was suspended from school repeatedly for it. I have pushed friends away with it. I even take a sort of sick pleasure in verbally battering people in service industries who I think are "acting stupid" because they have to take it. I can (and do) literally find fault in EVERYTHING and it makes me feel like a horrible person!

I have psychoanalyzed the problem down to the smallest detail and the best I can figure is 1 of 2 things.
1) As a school kid I was the kid that everyone picked on. From grade 1 until about 10th grade I suffered such an extreme form of harassment every day that when I had enough of it, it turned me into a vile, hateful, aggressive person. Around the 10th grade I started fighting at the slightest hint of disrespect, even if it was only imagined. Eventually people saw I wouldn't take it any longer and started leaving me alone. The problem is, by then, "I" had become so angry and resentful towards life that I have never been able to shake it - only temper it enough to live a (barely?) functional life.
-or-
2) My brain is straight up wired wrong. I am lacking some sort of chemical that assists with coping or some similar disorder.

I don't know what to do. I am actually shaking right now from trying to come up with the right words to describe the pure toxic rage I feel on a near daily basis. I know if it doesn't end I was either die alone, or heart attack / stroke out within a few years. I appreciate any help you can offer.

Maybe its more that you can't afford not to seek help. It may not have to be therapy you could start with talking about it with your doctor. There are anger management courses.

Which country do you live in?

Most countries have some form of councilling available to people who cannot afford private care.

Dealing with anger problems is really so complicated and i believe treating it (if its not due to bipolar which yours probably isn't i'm guessing) then it takes a long time to grow out of it. Because you need to develop insight, that's one thing. And you need to learn new ways of dealing with situations that trigger your anger and you need to practice those.

do you read self-help books about anger.

Also looking into mindfulness training and buddhism. I"m not kidding. After years of therapy, councilling, medication, i reached a stage in my mental health career where i felt what might help me best now is meditation. I still need to see a councillor form time to time and i don't know if my anger isn't fully resolved but its better.

Oh yes i just remembered, you can go on a goenka retreat and learn a technique of meditation that is being shown in clincial studies to improve emotion regulation. but you need to be able to do this for at least one hour a day, and two is better so its not easy. But the training is excellent. You can go along every year for another 10 day retreat. Goenka retreats are paid for by donation. they are well run, not religiously oriented and have excellent teaching. I would recommend you give this a try if you are adamant you don't want to try anything else.

however i will tell you, that if you get angry there on the course you will be thrown out. so what you have to do is recognise you are in a mood and let it go. But also at the same time, at every opportunity go and talk with the teachers about whatever you are finding difficulty with whilst on the course no matter how trivial. Don't argue with them about their theoretical model. Its the technique that matters and your practice. These retreat centres are all over the world. I've done two myself in Australia. Have a look on google for goenka vipassana retreat. Tell them at the outset that you have some difficulty with anger and you want to work on it.

Thank you for adding your thoughts on my post, I appreciate it. One thing I have learned by looking at this website is that I am not alone in the way I feel. It seems like the majority of the people in my situation tend to be teenagers though, so that actually gave me a different perspective I hadn't considered before. I remember being a teen and not only did I feel angry all the time, hostility literally oozed off of me. It has made me start thinking about what might have happened during those years that prevented me from "growing out of that phase"... while I don't have an answer, it is a new way of thinking about it.

I've not looked at the meditation or retreats you mentioned, but I have been making a conscience effort to be in a mindset that prevents me from getting worked up over anything. I think acknowledging that my anger is going to kill me prematurely has made me look at it differently.

If anyone else has any input, it is welcome.

UNless its blindingly obvious ( like you grew up with lots of abuse), trying to figure out if something happened in your past that caused this is a dead end and will not help you in anyway.

I am convinced that the greatest causal factor in this sort of thing is temperament which is genetic.

eg my sister and i grew up in the same conditions. Had pretty much the same treatment - we are very close in age - and she has never had anger problems. We are very similar but there are some obvious differences and our temperament is one of them. There was a triggering experience in our childhood but as i said, i'm the only one who seems to have suffered in this way. The triggering experience was that we were sent away from home to boarding school at a very young age. I was 5. My sister was 6. This has no doubt affected both of us but i do not believe it is the cause of any anger.

I was told that i was a baby who had colic - you know cried a lot and was difficult. I have read that babies who have this tendency tend to grow up with more emotional difficulties. The colicy part, as i understand it is not an illness - its just a disposition.

I tried for a long time to find the answer to my rage issues. Always looking for "inner peace". Always just on that edge of snapping. zero to sixty in a second. Uncontrollable.
For me, meds were the answer. They have made such a difference in my life. I could finally be normal. After all these years, people find it hard to believe that I ever dealt with rage. They can't even imagine me raising my voice.
The difference is night and day. I wouldn't be able to do it with out the meds.

That's a good point Tallis but what meds are you taking. Did anyone give you a diagnosis?

Anger/rage/irritability are often symptomatic of depression. I get irritable when depressed.

Never been offically diagnosed with anything, as I mentioned in my original post, I cannot afford to see a doctor. When I was young I was diagnoses ADD and given Ritolin and some other drug I dont remember. From what I was told it just made me a zombie.

A few years ago I went and seen my medical doctor it and she prescribed me some anti depressants. I tried 2 or 3 different ones and was never really pleased with the outcome. After about a year on 1 and a few months each other the others I stopped taking them as I wasnt really feeling any relief.

I'm 68 and can assure you that rage doesn't necessarily kill a person as fast as you'd think it might

I've been trying to overcome similar problems since the age of 8 when I gave up being sad and began to choose rage as a response to my frustrations.

The most useful thing I have learned is from "parts" psychology (there are many forms) in which it is accepted that we all have a ton of subpersonalities (almost like real people inside us) who have different ideas and opinions. Some of them fight. We may know about them (ex: "well, part of me wants to but another part doesn't because ...") but often we don't. They are unconscious all or most of the time.

According to this theory, you have at least one part that rages and other parts that disapprove. The trick is to get the parts talking to each other. It can be surprisingly easy to reach compromises or resolve problems entirely if the parts are able to talk to each other.

My favorite methods can be found in "Internal Family Systems" (R. Shwartz and J. Earley) and "Voice Dialogue" (Hal and Sidra Stone). There are lots of interesting videos on youtube.com that do a good job of explaining all this. Also some good cheap books available. Many people do IFS on their own although there are therapists who can help if you need/can afford a few sessions. Voice Dialogue also works as self-help once you know what you are doing with your parts.

Just for fun, you might want check out tmshelp.com where you discover there may be worse things than rage as a method of dealing with life's troubles. TMSers are people who are "goodists" who try desperately to do everything right and to suppress emotions like rage. They (thousands of them) get horrible psychosomatic pain which their brains use to distract them from becoming aware of how truly angry (or sad) they are. I have a lot of this kind of pain and it gets much worse if I try to repress my rage.

Also, I've known for years (but certainly didn't know at your age) that my rage induces fear in other people which prevents them from messing with me.

Definitely one of my more effective coping skills


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