So, you need to be warmed up to proper temperature before you can be diagnosed as "proper dead". Hence the saying: you're not dead until you're warm and dead. Until that point it could be a false positive because of the unusual scenario.
Mental health is much the same. So many people arrive in a panic because they've had a suicidal thought or they're worrying more than usual or they are suddenly apathetic etc. When I talk to these clients, quite often I find that these symptoms started around the time of some huge life event, which is often ongoing, even if it was decades ago.
The Internet is full of articles about ADHD, PTSD, clinical depression and so on. Whilst these conditions undoubtedly do exist, if you really did have Asperger's then you have to admit it's quite unlikely (but not impossible) that it remained undetected for 45 years and only surfaced when your nan died. But people want a diagnosis, an explanation for what they are experiencing, and the Internet is waist deep in it.
I urge all my clients, and now I urge you, not to immediately panic and start seeking a clinical diagnosis until you have dealt with whatever else is going on in your life first. There is a good chance that dealing with these things will deal with the other symptoms as a by-product.
That said, if you have done that and there truly is nothing else lurking about then maybe there is something else going on. But maybe don't worry about it until you are definitely fully thawed-out. This is one of the main functions of therapy (with me, anyway).
If this is something you'd like to look into,
why not give me a call?
Whilst the consequences of angry behaviour can often be negative, no emotion is inherently good or bad. Pretty much anything can be good or bad depending on its application, such as nuclear physics or Chihuahuas.
Channelled in the right way, anger can be a great motivating force. It's what makes people run towards the enemy, rather than the ostensibly more sensible urge to run away. It's why people write stern letters to the council to get something changed. Of course, it is also responsible for road rage and violent crimes.
Broadly speaking, anger presents in one of two forms: hot and cold. Hot anger is like a shot gun; when it goes off, everything in range can get hit. This is where tantrums occur, ranting, out-of-control behaviour and that sort of thing. It may not have a specific focus, or it might and the hope is that someone will work it out through the medium of these angry charades (it's a book... it's a film...).
Cold anger is like a sniper rifle. It has its target, and it is the sole focus of the angry behaviour. This is where things like revenge against a specific person or organisation come in. Arguably this is the more dangerous of the two. Hot anger tends to burn itself out very quickly, although there may be repeats of the outbursts. Cold anger will often get worse over time as the mental plan for revenge feeds itself.
When people come for anger management is almost always for hot anger, and this is primarily what we are going to discuss. Frequently this is the end of a long saga of angry behaviour, and they have either frightened themselves or had some sort of ultimatum to get sorted out.
There is a reason we call it anger management, rather than anger eradication. As I have said, all emotions have a use; anger is no different and there are times when you need it. Secondly, there is really no practical way to eradicate any emotion, it would certainly take some invasive brain surgery and I'm not supposed to do that sort of thing and my kitchen is a bit small for that anyway. As an aside, what people describe as their symptoms might better be called rage than anger; the red mist that people talk about when they feel they have lost control of themselves.
One of the things which many people have in common is that they only act on their angriness when they're at home or driving. This confuses the person who is experiencing it, who can't work out why they take it out on their nearest and dearest or in such a potentially dangerous situation as being in charge of half-a-ton of mobile weaponry, i.e. a car. It is less common, but not unheard of, for people to become ragingly angry at work.
Imagine that in your head there is a bucket. When something frustrates or angers you and you can't act on it immediately, you throw it in that bucket with a vague idea of dealing with it later. Typically this is when things upset you at work, where throwing a tantrum could be described as a career-limiting move, and so it goes in the bucket.
The trouble is, once it goes in the bucket is very difficult to extract it as it's in a big soup with all the other things you threw in there. So instead, you put the next thing in the bucket, and the next thing, and the next… Until the bucket is full to the top. When the next thing comes along, you try to put that in the bucket too, and it won't fit (also known as I can't take any more).
Your only option at this point is to hang on to it for now if you can't kick off at this moment (also known as stewing) and when you're safe at home you pick the bucket up and throw the whole lot over what/whoever has just got in front of you at the first tiny provocation. This is why people talk about themselves as having a short fuse, because it looks from the outside as though a very tiny thing set off a massive anger explosion with no warning.
For about half a second it feels fantastic. The bucket is empty now, and a lot lighter. But then the realisation of the explosion hits, and shock and guilt at what you have just done lands like a ton of bricks. And what do you do with that feeling? Excellent idea, says your brain: put in the bucket! As time goes by, more and more residue from the previous outbursts stick to the bottom of the bucket, like that last bit of peanut butter you can never get out of the jar. The bucket capacity becomes a bit smaller each time, and so the intervals between the outbursts become shorter and shorter.
The best cure for this, obviously, is not to put things in the bucket in the first place. If this all sounds like what happens to you, or even if it doesn't but you still have anger/rage issues, get in touch and we can start working towards that elusive management.
*Not absolutely anybody, I mean, I haven't asked all of them.
