Inconsolable Rage Fits

[Nuance]

From about age 5-25, I would have 3 hour+ rage fits 1-2x a month where I would cry and scream and feel completely out of control without knowing where it all came from. Nothing would console me until I got rid of all the emotional energy. To reduce the frequency of the rage fits, I emotionally numbed out and now I don't know what to do with my emotions.

I have been trying to get better control of my emotions over the last few years, but part of me is scared of my own emotions.

Does anyone have any input on accessing emotions while strengthening emotion regulation?

 

[RubyBlue]

Exercise!

Seriously, some kind of mma/kickboxing is awesome for wearing out the energy and letting you just pure rage. If you have a rage room near you- that’s an awesome way too.

Art helps, especially when it’s not so much rage anymore but the stuff under it.

Medication, it can take a bit to find the right dose/combinations and not everyone needs it but it can be extremely helpful in controlling your emotions.

Anything physical and creative is always awesome for anger.

 

[grit]

I am a firm believer that children learn through emotions and then grow to know cognitively what the experience is about. In adult, it is the other way around (most of the time) as learning cognitively and then having it embody or get it emotionally. This is my personal understanding of the world and maybe through the lenses of trauma as I cannot feel for those who never had fragmented or traumatic childhood...maybe they are firmer and feel things like a child emotionally and then see it cognitively. I do not know what I do not know.

What I am trying to say is this a child to cry in fits of rage is a very serious thing if you look at it as an adult view of things. You may not remember everything but something happened to you and it could have been traumatic or misunderstanding but in child's eyes that can be abandonment or something huge happening to them.
Now as an adult the question is where are you stuck sort of in this long line of regulating or dysregulating? It is obvious you can verbalize the emotion. It is obvious you can feel it in your body as rage but where you stuck, IMHO, is your somatics (which you may never recall if this experience happened when you were so young - preverbal- but that does not matter since you have the evidence in emotional outbursts or rage like behaviours)....but it is important to note. The other is your imagination. You are afraid of your emotions...that is because the experience may be so far so you do not have symbolizing way of experiencing it. You are imagining your emotions so concrete to make you scare but what happens if you start to experiment with your rage to see it as information as alert system of something you do not know.
I think this is what @Annalyn78 says comes handy. Use your imagination to play with the meaning of the rage to take the edges off rather than giviing the honors of it being real (unless it is real and you are living conditions that are abusive), if it is body memory you cannot recall, then one of the ways to experience is to play with it in art, in sport, in kung fu!

Hope this makes sense.

 

[Ronin]

Movement, Music, Meditation, Medication, Mastering something new, Marksmanship.

(Muses & Magic if either's your gig. Same Create & Transform it.)

Avoid: Murder & Massacres & Malice.

 

[Nuance]

I am a firm believer that children learn through emotions and then grow to know cognitively what the experience is about. In adult, it is the other way around (most of the time) as learning cognitively and then having it embody or get it emotionally. This is my personal understanding of the world and maybe through the lenses of trauma as I cannot feel for those who never had fragmented or traumatic childhood...maybe they are firmer and feel things like a child emotionally and then see it cognitively. I do not know what I do not know.

What I am trying to say is this a child to cry in fits of rage is a very serious thing if you look at it as an adult view of things. You may not remember everything but something happened to you and it could have been traumatic or misunderstanding but in child's eyes that can be abandonment or something huge happening to them.
Now as an adult the question is where are you stuck sort of in this long line of regulating or dysregulating? It is obvious you can verbalize the emotion. It is obvious you can feel it in your body as rage but where you stuck, IMHO, is your somatics (which you may never recall if this experience happened when you were so young - preverbal- but that does not matter since you have the evidence in emotional outbursts or rage like behaviours)....but it is important to note. The other is your imagination. You are afraid of your emotions...that is because the experience may be so far so you do not have symbolizing way of experiencing it. You are imagining your emotions so concrete to make you scare but what happens if you start to experiment with your rage to see it as information as alert system of something you do not know.
I think this is what @Annalyn78 says comes handy. Use your imagination to play with the meaning of the rage to take the edges off rather than giviing the honors of it being real (unless it is real and you are living conditions that are abusive), if it is body memory you cannot recall, then one of the ways to experience is to play with it in art, in sport, in kung fu!

Hope this makes sense.

Well, to be honest, I was actually abandoned as little baby, was a ward of the Korean government until I was 5, and had very painful reconstructive leg surgeries. My best guess is that my little brain just couldn't handle the chaos and all the physical pain. But now I am most likely giving the past too much power. Reframing the rage sounds like an excellent idea. I need to face it or I will remain stuck.

@Annalyn78 @Ronin
Thank you for those awesome suggestions. Finding a creative outlet and getting more physical will be on my to-do list.

 

[Ronin]

Can I ask what happens if you sit it out, if you can't act in any way?

IME some times what happens *after* rage is more clue how to help it than what happens before or in the rage.

And do you know what situation / thought / emotion sets it off, abandonment? Because if you have what sets it going, and what makes it worse, you can do soo many therapeutic things with it... that mean it stops being a freight train so bad and gets to be instead of an off the rails train one you're able to direct better, until back to just regular orderly train one can trust themselves with.

Like a A-ha. I again wanna f*ck lives up. Great, now fetching naps. And not worsening it by being where people hurt others. There it went, no injustices to right, sleep for halfa week :sleep: :woot:

Until rage starts being just like any regular emotion that doesn't cause act-it-out / act-now issues... but something you feel but can integrate. Intense... But not unmanageable.

 

[grit]

Well, to be honest, I was actually abandoned as little baby, was a ward of the Korean government until I was 5, and had very painful reconstructive leg surgeries. My best guess is that my little brain just couldn't handle the chaos and all the physical pain. But now I am most likely giving the past too much power. Reframing the rage sounds like an excellent idea. I need to face it or I will remain stuck.

I am really sorry you have experienced and still remember such painful past. Yeah that would definitely create a real rage in the body for lack of love and support. I am sorry for the loss of innocent and joyful childhood. I can empathize with your story.

 

[Nuance]

Can I ask what happens if you sit it out, if you can't act in any way?

IME some times what happens *after* rage is more clue how to help it than what happens before or in the rage.

And do you know what situation / thought / emotion sets it off, abandonment? Because if you have what sets it going, and what makes it worse, you can do soo many therapeutic things with it... that mean it stops being a freight train so bad and gets to be instead of an off the rails train one you're able to direct better, until back to just regular orderly train one can trust themselves with.

Like a A-ha. I again wanna f*ck lives up. Great, now fetching naps. And not worsening it by being where people hurt others. There it went, no injustices to right, sleep for halfa week :sleep::woot:

Until rage starts behing just like any regular emotion that doesn't cause act-it-out / act-now issues... but something you feel but can integrate. Intense... But not unmanageable.

My major triggers tend to be feeling hopeless and not feeling heard/getting needs met.

When I got into rage fits, it felt like my world was caving in, I wanted to crawl out of my skin, I wanted to run but couldn't (I have mobility issues), and my mind was being hijacked. Afterwards, I felt relieved, ashamed, disoriented, and like a failure.

I don't get the rage fits that often anymore but when I do focus on those emotions for a set amount of time, I tend to dissociate a lot (my mind blanks, conversations become disjointed, I redirect and fixate on other people, my energy level plummets for days, and occasionally I lose my balance and fall). My therapist often notices that he will get me to be vulnerable, I might shed a few tears, and then all of a sudden, I go on a tangent... I usually don't register it until he points it out. So maybe I am more scared of the associations that come with the emotions than the emotions than themselves. Like I have an intense fear of what will happen if I just let my emotions loose.

 

[Ronin]

What helps you both believe in, and access, your ability to help yourself?

What helped you when you were a child?

Might be good questions that, answered to yourself by how you live, might help.

You survived even when a very little actually abandoned child... You can do it, as an adult, as you did it even then.

That rage? Probably helped you to.
Overwhelming it is, it's not your enemy that will make you do something rash. It's your friend that you need get on better terms with. :sneaky:

 

[Nuance]

What helps you both believe in, and access, your ability to help yourself?

What helped you when you were a child?

Might be good questions that, answered to yourself by how you live, might help.

You survived even when a very little actually abandoned child... You can do it, as an adult, as you did it even then.

That rage? Probably helped you to.
Overwhelming it is, it's not your enemy that will make you do something rash. It's your friend that you need get on better terms with. :sneaky:

Thank you so much. I am getting a lot more insight in this exchange than years of therapy regarding the rage. I knew the rage symbolized something but I could never put my finger on it.

Now that I think about it more closely, I think I dissociated to protect myself from pain but then rage helped me to assert myself and get in touch with my reality before something inevitable was about to happen... like my gut was telling me to wake up and take action. Once again, everyone's input has been so helpful. :)