Published on 12, July, 2020
I've suffered from bullying my whole life and I have autism and anger issues, I know for a fact that I have adhd and aspergers, the problem is that I feel utter rage alot of the times, anger has consumed my life, its always there, even though I'm 15 I have experienced what feels like torture in my head, everything gets too much, In school, out of school and more, Anything angers me, if something doesn't go the way I would like it to, if someone speaks to me in a certain way, noises, specifically chewing noises, anything to do with the mouth and any noise that shouldn't be there, like a clock noise could make me angry, but when ever I tell someone that I am "angry" they just think "oh he's a little angry, it will pass" but when I'm angry I feel as if I could kill dozens of people and I am scared that one day I might do something bad, I have always had thoughts of suicide or murder, I can't help it, that's why I'm scared that one day I might go crazy. I suffer from severe anxiety and cannot express my anger, especially in public, so it bottles up until it bursts out, which rarely happens, which makes it so much worse, one day its going to burst out and I'm not sure if Ill be able to control myself, when I feel angry I hurt myself and maybe others, rarely others, I will break things, punch things, I will choke myself, scratch myself, bite myself and on the rare occasion, cut myself. I feel like I'm alone in this world because I have nobody to truly speak to about any of my problems. I just feel like I need all of the help in the world but because I can't express me feelings and have bad anxiety I can never tell anyone about my problems.
What you've expressed here is quite similar to how I feel. I used to be outwardly violent to my brothers as a kid and then, at age 16 had an epiphany kind of moment of breaking down for the first time ever. After that moment, I never hit my brothers again. The problem was I turned the pain in on myself.
I've yet to get a proper diagnosis I'm happy with. I've lived with childhood trauma and I seem to broadly fit a profile of possible ADHD (with some demand avoidance traits).
What you've shared sounds similar to what I know of people with emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), people with an autism condition called pathological demand avoidance (PDA) and people with complex PTSD. I'm aware that there can be a fair amount of overlap between ADHD and each of the conditions I've just mentioned because they each can fairly often include high anxiety and 'emotion dysregulation'. I've been studying each of these conditions a fair bit in a bid to understand how to prevent emotional blow outs/hyper-anxiety - sadly, I've not yet found any super great way of dealing.
I don't yet know how to contain my own anxiety and pain when it gets really high.
I've lost a relationship with someone I love to bits and I know I can be really problematic for people I live with when high anxiety becomes uncontainable for me.
- Self-harming has kind of helped me -although I get that it's not ideal.- Sometimes I'll try and get myself out to somewhere where no-one is and perform a series of 'primal screams' until I'm kind of exhausted.- Playing guitar (electric one with headphones) can also allow me to channel out aggression without hurting myself or others.[playing with headphones in the amp means that you can make big noise that won't startle whoever you're living with - you don't have to know how to play guitar much to have catharsis from making noise with it]
These above are ok but sometimes none of these options are possible 'in the moment' of a sudden increase in hyper-anxiety.
I've heard an Asperger's researcher, Tony Attwood, talk about how Aspies may often have a 'rumble period' preceding a meltdown. This seems similar to what I experience with extreme anxiety attacks. I'll typically/quite often feel that anxiety is rising a few days (and up to a week) before the anxiety attack and yet I lack a way of reducing the anxiety and preventing the anxiety attack/blow out.
I've had therapy but I've yet to find therapy that is able to counter a surge of unbearable anxiety.
I've not totally given up hope with this. Where there's a will, there's sometimes a way, I feel.
there's not much therapy type things for me to access at my age (atleast that's what my parents said). When I'm angry or anxious I usually shake a lot, like as if I had just been frozen with ice, I'm not good with confrontations and will shake as If I'm in fear when I'm usually feeling the opposite, Sadly In my school the teachers don't really care about problems students have, they should know everything about me but apparently they don't. What I do when I'm angry for any reason is blast music as loud as I can but its useless, unless its literally deafening then it does nothing for me, It's basically the same with self harm, If it doesn't hurt then ill do it again, I used to just punch walls but then one day I bit into my arm really hard and realised it helped a lot, mentally yes, physically no, It left massive bruises and lumps up my arm which didn't bother me but its obviously not good, what I really want to do is scream at the top of my lungs, I can shout pretty loud but I have the chance to do it, especially in school when something is angering me, in my head I'm knocking down buildings in rage but physically I just look distressed. I'm really sorry to hear that you lost someone you loved, I've lost many people that were close to me before but there's not much I can do about it now.
Cameron you are doing so well to bring this all out. And thanks calmerchameleon for being there for Cameron.
the fact you can see your anger is very encouraging. You then need to walk back a bit in your thoughts to where the anger starts.
to be honest you are a clear candidate for
1. physical relaxation techniques - body relaxation techniques ( look them up in youtube ---- they work if applied everyday ) then move to 2.
2. mindfulness mediation, mindfulness living, Walking mediation , Zen mediation,
sorry for the late reply I've just been off of all social medias recently, usually any of these things don't work, the best thing I can do (at least what I know of) is to power through it and just let whatever I can get out, out. I know exactly where the anger comes from and what causes it, well I think I do at least but nothing helps, Its just me and my anger, not the best analogy but you know when bruce banner gets angry and turns into the hulk without any say in it? it feels like that.