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I can go into the details later, but does anyone have any experience with anger management? I pulled some stuff online and have started going through it, but was wondering if anyone else has had this problem and/or what you did to work through it.
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I actually went through some anger management classes waaaayyy back when my ex was in the Air Force. I honestly don't remember a whole lot from it other than using some various tools they gave me at the time to calm myself down. I can still have a pretty short fuse, I just don't punch/kick holes in things anymore....usually....most of the time....well, never since the divorce.
I've never been through anger management but I had a horribly short fuse as a teenager/early 20 something. It's non-existant now and I attribute it to dealing with self-esteem issues. Pride and low self-esteem are two sides of the same coin. Pride is usually where those flashes of anger are.
The other thing that proved helpful was working on forgiveness, not just on current issues but past issues. I've stopped worrying about getting my pound of flesh. The only thing I can worry about is my own conscience, and if I'm out seeking my own justice then I've violated my conscience.
Having counseled people on the same issue of forgiveness, I know there are some things in people's past where forgiveness seems inappropriate, not just difficult. The problem is our culture often sees forgiveness:
- As a weakness
- The surrender of justice
- A sign that someone's getting away with something
We fail to see the lack of forgiveness -- in any crime against in the past -- as impact us, but I can assure you it's human nature (maybe just nature in general) for the lack of forgiveness to become bitterness. Let bitter roots linger for long and it's all-consuming and rob you of all joy.
Forgiveness is not a surrender of justice. Forgiveness merely means we surrender our personal right to extract justice. Forgiveness should not forego our responsibilities to prosecute criminals, for example. It does mean we would surrender our internal motivation to seek an eye for eye.
I've been told there are also potential biological/chemical issues that can cause anger issues, but they usually interact with existing emotional problems. For example, a percentage of people who take Wellbutrin for depression will experience flashes of anger, sometimes uncontrollable and chronic, and in rare cases leading to murder and suicide from otherwise docile people.
Excellent post, Gad. The silver lining, if you will, to my ex-husband being an alcoholic is that I spent a considerable amount of time going to Al-Anon meetings. If you aren't familiar, Al-Anon is the same twelve steps for people that have loved ones that are alcoholics. Much of who I am today and how I deal with issues in relationships is because of been in a relationship with an alcoholic for so long. I stopped going without completing the steps, but I did learn some valuable things.
Much of it has to do with forgiveness, and deciding what things in life are truly worth being angry about. Often, things that I used to get angry about are things that are absolutely not worth my energy, and I have learned to let those things go. For example, I used to go virtually insane if my kids would put dirty dishes in both sides of the sink. I like to be able to at least get at one side of the sink. It still irks me some, but I have made a conscious decision to not let it anger me. It's really not worth it.
I am a MUCH happier person now...I still have my moments where things frustrate me more than they should, but I think for the most part I put things in the right perspective. When I get upset, or feel I have been wronged, I really think about it. I try to decide if the situation really warrants the energy it takes to be angry about it. I also try to decide what my options are. If I have a disagreement with someone...what are my choices? Never speak to them again? Well, that's just silly. Sit & stew about it until they apologize? Well, that just ruins my day in the meanwhile. Forgive & move on? That usually is the option that provides me the most happiness, and the one I try to take.
Linderbee- Congratulations on taking the right steps towards getting your life back. Too many people never do. It's prison, man.
Unbearable pain that I've learned to no longer be surprised people will quietly tolerate and not address:
- Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse as a child
- Spouse or child of a substance abuser
- Rape/assault
These are things that any reasonable human can sympathize/empathize with, but people will go about their daily life in a desparate attempt to pretend it never happened. Doing this almost always guarantees negative behavioral changes, but the people suffering never seem to make the connection ... or have some irrational fear in doing so.
Cognitive behavioral therapy approaches as well as assertiveness-skills-training both can help a lot with anger issues. Forgiveness is asking a lot from people who may not even know what they're feeling, and for some people the anger comes from a frustrated sense of entitlement, not necessarily from needing to let go of a festering long-ago pain or poor self-esteem. There are many psychological and medical causes of irritability, impulsivity, and hair-trigger temper.
Assertiveness skills help because many people let frustrations and resentments build and pile on without being able to deal with smaller issues as they arise; when the straw snaps, it's disproportionate and may include a lot of generic frustration. Also, some people take their irritation out on the people they CAN, such as kid or wife, because they feel unable to stand up for themselves in other situations. If you develop the skills to address minor annoyances, or to try to correct problems when they arise, you feel more in control of yourself and of situations.
Cognitive Behavioral therapy helps because a lot of maladaptive behavior comes from how we interpret situations -- 'it's a catastrophe,' 'it's unfair,' 's/he should be different,' 'how dare he!' and learning to identify those unhelpful automatic thoughts and expectations and replace them with less extreme or more balanced ones can do a lot to modify anger, anxiety, depression, etc. ('It's a bummer, but it's not a catastrophe.')
It's very rare that Wellbutrin does as you describe, Gaddabout, and many meds have paradoxical risks. The SSRIs like Zoloft and Paxil, benzodiazepines (actually fairly often), prednisone (also often), some asthma medications all have a small but known risk of causing aggressive impulsive behavior -- and suddenly stopping medications can, too -- many things can cause problems with sudden mood changes and irritability. Thyroid disturbance, low-grade chronic pain, and much under-recognized is a history of a few mild to moderate concussions. Of course PTSD of any sort, but especially from any person-against-person trauma (rape, muggings, torture, etc. or being a cop or soldier in frequent danger), predisposes to irritability and angry outbursts, and that has more to do with being in a constantly high-self-defense mode, not with needing to forgive per se.
__________________ Hoping for Audacity
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
It's very rare that Wellbutrin does as you describe, Gaddabout, and many meds have paradoxical risks. The SSRIs like Zoloft and Paxil, benzodiazepines (actually fairly often), prednisone (also often), some asthma medications all have a small but known risk of causing aggressive impulsive behavior -- and suddenly stopping medications can, too -- many things can cause problems with sudden mood changes and irritability.
There's a growing body of evidence that rage is far more common to users of SSRIs and anti-compulsives like Wellbutrin than the makers of those drugs have let on. Having witnessed it first hand -- twice -- in people who had never experienced abject rage before, I'm inclined to be very suspect of those drugs.
Of course Wellbutrin is prescribed for people with ADHD and depression, which means some impulse control problems pre-exist, and SSRIs are used for PTSD and for irritability as much as for depression, also meaning pre-existing risk -- I have seen a couple people blow up on Zoloft, and the link between SSRIs and aggression (self or other-directed) are quite well-documented.
WB is more likely to cause anxiety-related (i.e. 'pseudo-defensive') anger outbursts, but it can indeed increase baseline irritability in some people, and for ex you probably wouldn't use it with Bipolars or PTSD w/o very careful consideration, and never with people who've had a significant concussion, because it can lower the seizure threshhold. I really had questions about it becoming widely used for smoking cessation -- properly used with psych monitoring, it's a very good antidepressant and actually can smooth out moodiness and excitablility, but handed out by a GP for smoking control with no good psych intake is a very different thing.
Benzodiazepines can actually lower frontal lobe impulse controls, which directly increases the risk of aggressive impulsive outbursts, and are strongly contraindicated in patients with dementia or frontal brain damage for that very reason. Prednisone and the glucocorticoids are widely used for asthma and allergic conditions, and I can't tell you how many people I've seen become irritable/enraged, suicidally depressed, panicky, or flat-out psychotic on those drugs over the years -- probably 2 or 3 a year.
__________________ Hoping for Audacity
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
Good info, Zen. Thanks. I don't think of myself as a New Age-y kind of person but I definitely am leaning towards more holistic methods of medicine these days.
Had a friend who crumbled when his wife left him. The day he signed the divorce papers he started experiencing uncontrollable mood swings. Two weeks later he was diagnosed as bi-polar and put on what seemed to me be strong dosages of lithium. Worked OK, dampened the extremes of his mood swings, but he still ended up losing his job of 23 years.
He took up construction to make ends meet and his attitude changed almost immediately. Dropped the lithium completely and hasn't shown signs of bi-polar in 8 years. His doctor was stumped. You can treat it, but there is no known cure for bi-polar disorder.
Best we can guess is he was never bi-polar -- had never shown any signs of it before the divorce -- but he probably developed some kind of chemical balance. I also think it's possible the lithium his body absorbed from sunlight 12 hours a day was probably a better dosage than anything he could find in the lithium salts.
Very good guess he was never Bipolar. That's the wastebasket diagnosis of this decade; drives me nuts. Doctors simply ignore things like 'Acute Traumatic Stress Disorder' or 'Adjustment Reaction with Mixed Emotional Disturbance' or 'Adj. Reax. With Disturbance of Emotion/Behavior.' Not as easy to throw pills at those things.
For that matter, people with pre-existing PTSD or with a proclivity for it can react to the end of a marriage or a disastrous job loss or the like with a relapse of PTSD symptoms (which can look a lot like Bipolar to the unsavvy eye).
That said, it is quite possible to go 8 -10 years or longer between Bipolar episodes. The solid research on it (which came out right when I was in grad school and was a challenge to the then-wastebasket Dx of Paranoid Schizophrenic) indicates there is almost always a clear family history going back a couple generations of Bipolar and/or Unipolar Mood Disorder (i.e., fairly severe Major Depression). I see a lot of PTSD and also adult ADHD that was never diagnosed as a kid get labeled as Bipolar, especially as 'Rapid cycling Bipolar'. Heck, I see late-life Frontal Lobe Dementia called Bipolar! Just because Lithium dampened the moods doesn't verify he had Bipolar. Enough Li will dampen anyone's moods.
__________________ Hoping for Audacity
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
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