[Watz1448]

Okay so last night me and my girlfriend got quite drunk, we had a small argument, and her and I were a little upset, wouldn't say extremely upset. But out of no where I just snapped and grabbed her by the throat, I've never done anything like this and have no idea where it came from. I scared the both of us and I want to find help to make sure I never do it again. I have always said things like I'd beat someone's *** for hurting a woman, what caused me to do this and what can I do to not hurt her again? I had no control of myself. Please help me.

[Skeezyks]

Hello Watz1448: The Skeezyks typically avoids offering advice or making suggestions. But I'll make an exception in this case. My thought would be that you may be struggling with pent-up stress / anxiety. I have similar sorts of urges often. Fortunately I have always been able to control them. But, in my case, I'm quite certain they stem from a huge amount of generalized anxiety from which I suffer. Pent-up anxiety is like the steam in a heating system, if you will. If the pressure builds up to too great an extent, it will find the weakest link in the system & blow out there. Your mind & body can only handle so much stress before the pressure will cause a blow-out. And this, I would suggest, may be what happened to you.

If it is, then the answer is to figure out what it is that is causing your stress / anxiety & then figure out what to do about it. Can you eliminate whatever it is? Can you reduce your exposure to it? Is it something from your past that you need to deal with? Individual counseling may help as well as some type of support group or other type of therapy. And, of course, there are med's one can take if necessary. Such activities as meditation & physical exercise may also be helpful along with avoiding caffeinated drinks. (Chances are you've heard all of this before.)

I presume, from reading your post, that this is the first time anything like this has ever happened with you before... either with a woman or with other men. However, if you have had this experience before, but it was with other men not a woman, then it is possible that there is some other underlying problem. Some types of brain damage can cause a person to lose control of their emotions. Even a serious concussion could, as I understand it, cause this type of loss of control, at least for a while following the injury. So it is possible that there could be a physical problem as well. You presumably know whether or not you have anything of this nature in your past that could have occurred. If so, your first step might be to get yourself checked out neurologically.

So these are the kinds of things that come to my mind with regard to the incident you describe. I would like to wish you the best as you work to figure out what caused this unfortunate incident. The fact that you are aware of the seriousness of it & are determined to have it not happen again bodes well for your recovery.

P.S. Welcome to PsychCentral!