[Bolivar83]

I know anger is one of the bi-products of PTSD. After struggling with this for several years, I had thought I had it more under control. But today, I really outdid myself in the shrieking and sarcasm department.

Things have been stressful lately (layoffs, medical withdrawal from school, etc), and my PTSD has "rekindled", if this is possible.

Am trying to use my DBT skills to calm self down, and not take my anger out willy nilly, but I did slip this afternoon and give my sister in law a big piece of my mind over something trivial.

At the time, the anger was sooo intoxicating! I felt inflamed with power, and so self righteous. Now, in the aftermath, all I feel is shame, dirtiness (that I allowed myself to spew anger all over someone), and tremendous guilt. I have apologized profusely, but need to get a grip for when the next angry storm cell blows over.

Is there any skill that others find particularly useful? How do others deal with this (or does it not happen to you?)

I will try:
- waiting a few seconds before I respond
- calmly breathing, noticing if there is tension and deliberately relaxing that area
- slowing down (I find when I talk/walk/etc fast it just kindles the rage)
- asking for a time out so I can collect myself and respond (asking, of course, in a neutral way)

Thank you for any input.

[JaneC]

I'm sorry to hear you are having such a tough time. I'm glad you are trying tot ake care and be kind with yourself.

I have heard that it is very useful to find an outlet for your anger that is healthy, because anger has a tendency to build and build slowly like a pot of water.....and if you don't lift the lid a little or allow some of the steam to get out...you boil over.

I've heard of people grabbing a pillow and screaming into it, or punching it...whatever it takes to get that release away from others. And I also do believe it is then important to calm down and all the ways you describe sound perfect for in the moment.

Be kind to yourself also, it is exhausting being angry, and then feeling guilty afterwards.....so hard on the body and the mind. Kind to you.

[Open Eyes]

((Bolivar)),

I am sorry you had a big anger outburst like that, unfortunately that "can" happen with PTSD, and I know the regret that comes afterwards too. I think it is important to pay attention to the build up taking place in your life and realize as you have now that it creates a build up in "you" where you can over react this way.

You need to be working more on learning the things that do build up in you and why and break them down better before they build up in you where you develop this hair trigger reaction. With a lot of people the build up is a series of "defeats" taking place and not having enough exposure to accomplishing solutions. When someone has PTSD something traumatic happened where they could not stop it, didn't quite see it coming, or didn't know how to stop it and that adds up to the chemical dumps that took place that hurt the brain and led to PTSD. What that means is "defeat" and a sense of personal failure, or in many cases being intruded on in and unjust way which we all react to with anger.

When you have an episode like this, it is important to review it and try to identify how things lined up and how that came to be in your personal history too. It is not unusual for this to go back to a childhood where you had a need and that need was not met, even though you may have tried to ask for help or guidance or approval. This is why talk therapy helps because if you have a good therapist, that therapist can become a good mentor that can help you finally resolve some old challenges that you had no help with when you needed it. So basically, you were not seen, you went unheard, and may have been dismissed instead of helped to problem solve or, you were unfairly invalidated.

You need to slowly learn to see the build up taking place and find better ways to slow down and work through them instead of having each challenge just build up in you because somewhere in your past you learned that was all you could do for some reason.

You can always talk out these life experiences where you experienced defeat and invalidations. When you do that you can finally get that much needed validation so you can heal, and also learn better coping methods so you have healthier ways to stop the build up before you do the blow up.

Hey, I know it isn't always easy, I am very challenged with that myself.

((Hugs))
OE

[Bolivar83]

Dear JaneC and Open Eyes: Thank you for your thoughtful responses. Finding an outlet is something I am thinking on right now - I can see now how trying to reason through the anger may not be the best way to interrupt it. It makes sense that I am having trouble "switching" over into logic when I'm angry - the more effective response may be doing a physical activity, and bring the rage down to a degree that I can think more clearly...

I have an appt w/my therapist next week - I will think about what it is that builds up, tipping me into reacting. I'm sitting down now and trying to see if I can work this out. Open Eyes, it makes sense that the anger isn't from what happened in the present - there's too much heat for just a trivial disagreement - so it has to be fueled from something in the past.

I'm sorry this is something we struggle with, but am grateful for your sharing some skills I hadn't thought of.

Thank you both for really helpful suggestions and input!

[FacingMyPast]

I didn't see this before I posted pretty much a related question.

I just had a outburst a bit ago, I was typing out pretty much my first post about why I'm here it was long and brought back a lot of what I was trying to suppress and keep under control and my husband was watching basket ball and asked me to look at something on YouTube but yelling at me in the kitchen over everything and I just snapped and yelled at him and got so angry with him for no reason pretty much other than being overwhelmed with emotion and chaos in a sense..

I decided to go sit outside for a bit and be alone and read more on here.
I find that's what I do I leave the situation and avoid the aftermath and now I'm angry that I have to apologize and I'm angry he's upset because he has no clue what I was doing that made me snap...

Is leaving a situation after I have gotten so angry the best way of dealing with it? Does anyone else do it?
What else could be done?

[Open Eyes]

((FacingMyPast)),

This is a good question. You were doing something important to you when you were typing a post. You also "needed" to do that for yourself. Also, with PTSD remember, everything is magnified, including concentration and deep focus. So, when your husband called out to you, he interrupted you, that is "invading your space". That is why you reacted in anger at him "got snappy". Yes, you don't want to apologize because you are still angry and he still invaded your space, that how your mind is reacting, that is what can happen with PTSD. It is part of the eggshells I talked about in your thread, I think it was your thread.

That "invading of space" is an important one to remember because that is when the typical "anger" reaction takes place. Then you walked away right? That is also connected to the anger, the way you have described the event, to me doesn't sound like you had the flight response, to me it was all anger and distancing from your husband, but in anger. You distancing that way is how you tend to punish sometimes, you get away from me.

When PTSD is active and the person doesn't quite understand it all yet, that anger reaction can be a very quick response where you don't really decide to be angry, it just comes out first in a kind of "reverse" from the conscious mind making the decision. That anger reaction is very much like a flashback, you can't seem to stop it, it just has to run it's course and you don't get a chance to really "consciously" think about it until "after" it runs it's cycle.

It is important to realize that this anger means "you were invaded in some way". Going back to what happened, you were engrossed in posting and concentration on what you were writing, "sudden surprised unexpected intrusion by your husband", that was a sudden intrusion that made you snap. That is how "sensitive" PTSD can be for a while until you have had time to work some things out.

Also, what others around you do not understand is what you are experiencing is very "hard" to understand and can require a lot of concentration. Your "conscious" mind is confused right now and is beginning to see things that the average person cannot see. The average person is not really "aware" of their subconscious mind, it is there but kind of behind a door they don't even realize is there. With PTSD that door is open and it is showing you things you didn't know were there, and you want your outside world to be quiet so you can figure out what this new door is all about.

It is not unusual for some people in the early stages of PTSD to see this door and find it very enlightening. Some people react with "wow, this is surreal, I never knew this, even, I am going to write a book about this. This has been described as sparks of light, because most likely when people have been observed in this state, they will light up and have these epiphanies.

Well, that is fine until the darker things start showing up from behind that door too, then it can get scary and that is when the person struggling gets very self absorbed. It is not unusual for a person in this stage to be misdiagnosed as narcissist, however, someone who "knows" about PTSD will recognize it as a part of the bigger problem that is not narcissistic, not bipolar cycles, not Histonic, not just depression, but PTSD.

Oh, how I wish my family was told all of this so they would not react badly when I was engrossed, they disturbed me and I reacted badly. It was not intentional, I had a big puzzle going on that I could not even put into words to describe, and believe me I tried many times.

Anyone can look up PTSD and see a list of symptoms. But what is not being described is "why" these symptoms are happening, what it is like from the inside. Even when someone is diagnosed, the person can look up the symptoms and not really understand "why" either. After working through it, and having therapy to discuss the different things coming from this "now exposed subconscious", the person starts to understand it better and begins to start "gaining" on it.

So, the "anger" is usually, an intrusion, an invasion, an invalidation, telling the PTSD person to get over it or to "just". People with PTSD "hate the just comments" big time.

The truth is "everyone has subconscious skeletons" but what they do is just shove them aside and think they are over with, in the past, done ,when in reality they are all still there. And what most people do is ignore them, they may be out of sight, but they are not truly out of mind. This is why spending time with someone struggling with PTSD actually can expose the person exposed to developing secondary PTSD.

I think it is important to do your best to set aside times where you can have your own space. If you need to spend time here for example, posting and talking things out, then your family needs to understand "not" to disturb you. There are times where you will need space to think about the things you have been seeing behind that door that others just don't see and don't understand.

[FacingMyPast]

Originally Posted by Open Eyes

((FacingMyPast)),

This is a good question. You were doing something important to you when you were typing a post. You also "needed" to do that for yourself. Also, with PTSD remember, everything is magnified, including concentration and deep focus. So, when your husband called out to you, he interrupted you, that is "invading your space". That is why you reacted in anger at him "got snappy". Yes, you don't want to apologize because you are still angry and he still invaded your space, that how your mind is reacting, that is what can happen with PTSD. It is part of the eggshells I talked about in your thread, I think it was your thread.

That "invading of space" is an important one to remember because that is when the typical "anger" reaction takes place. Then you walked away right? That is also connected to the anger, the way you have described the event, to me doesn't sound like you had the flight response, to me it was all anger and distancing from your husband, but in anger. You distancing that way is how you tend to punish sometimes, you get away from me.

When PTSD is active and the person doesn't quite understand it all yet, that anger reaction can be a very quick response where you don't really decide to be angry, it just comes out first in a kind of "reverse" from the conscious mind making the decision. That anger reaction is very much like a flashback, you can't seem to stop it, it just has to run it's course and you don't get a chance to really "consciously" think about it until "after" it runs it's cycle.

It is important to realize that this anger means "you were invaded in some way". Going back to what happened, you were engrossed in posting and concentration on what you were writing, "sudden surprised unexpected intrusion by your husband", that was a sudden intrusion that made you snap. That is how "sensitive" PTSD can be for a while until you have had time to work some things out.

Also, what others around you do not understand is what you are experiencing is very "hard" to understand and can require a lot of concentration. Your "conscious" mind is confused right now and is beginning to see things that the average person cannot see. The average person is not really "aware" of their subconscious mind, it is there but kind of behind a door they don't even realize is there. With PTSD that door is open and it is showing you things you didn't know were there, and you want your outside world to be quiet so you can figure out what this new door is all about.

It is not unusual for some people in the early stages of PTSD to see this door and find it very enlightening. Some people react with "wow, this is surreal, I never knew this, even, I am going to write a book about this. This has been described as sparks of light, because most likely when people have been observed in this state, they will light up and have these epiphanies.

Well, that is fine until the darker things start showing up from behind that door too, then it can get scary and that is when the person struggling gets very self absorbed. It is not unusual for a person in this stage to be misdiagnosed as narcissist, however, someone who "knows" about PTSD will recognize it as a part of the bigger problem that is not narcissistic, not bipolar cycles, not Histonic, not just depression, but PTSD.

Oh, how I wish my family was told all of this so they would not react badly when I was engrossed, they disturbed me and I reacted badly. It was not intentional, I had a big puzzle going on that I could not even put into words to describe, and believe me I tried many times.

Anyone can look up PTSD and see a list of symptoms. But what is not being described is "why" these symptoms are happening, what it is like from the inside. Even when someone is diagnosed, the person can look up the symptoms and not really understand "why" either. After working through it, and having therapy to discuss the different things coming from this "now exposed subconscious", the person starts to understand it better and begins to start "gaining" on it.

So, the "anger" is usually, an intrusion, an invasion, an invalidation, telling the PTSD person to get over it or to "just". People with PTSD "hate the just comments" big time.

The truth is "everyone has subconscious skeletons" but what they do is just shove them aside and think they are over with, in the past, done ,when in reality they are all still there. And what most people do is ignore them, they may be out of sight, but they are not truly out of mind. This is why spending time with someone struggling with PTSD actually can expose the person exposed to developing secondary PTSD.

I think it is important to do your best to set aside times where you can have your own space. If you need to spend time here for example, posting and talking things out, then your family needs to understand "not" to disturb you. There are times where you will need space to think about the things you have been seeing behind that door that others just don't see and don't understand.

Would you mind if I showed my husband this post?

It was very enlightening and I think it may explain to him what I can't seem to verbalize.