Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

wc0143 Posted: Jun 06, 2005 02:30 PM

Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

any advice on how to deal with the person? How to get them help?

sophie78 Posted: Jun 06, 2005 02:42 PM

Re: Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

The key is not to escalate!! I cannot emphasize this enough.

You say, 'We are unable to have a productive conversation so I am going to walk away. I am not walking away from you or this issue permantently, just until we can have a productive converstaion.'

Other strategies I teach patients:

count to 10
visualize a stop sign
breathing techinique
relaxation techiniques
speaking softly
paying attention to physiological cues of anger

brooklynbridezilla Posted: Jun 06, 2005 02:44 PM

Re: Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

I did, for a while. The most effective thing was saying 'If you cannot speak to me with a civil tounge in your mouth, then this conversation is over.' But this person wasn't physically abusive. If that is part of their anger/rage, I would just cut them out of my life until they got counseling. I would not risk my safety for anyone.

MonkeyLuv Posted: Jun 06, 2005 02:44 PM

Re: Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

I'm not sure about help, besides anger-management classes, but I dated someone with very bad anger issues. I found that simply not engaging him at least avoided conflict. I wasn't really sure how to handle him other than avoidance. It's the reason why we broke up.

ETA: as per brooklynbridezilla... that worked sometimes too. The guy I knew was never abusive, but when he lost his temper it was like Vesuvius blowing its top. It made me really uncomfortable to witness his outbursts.

wc0143 Posted: Jun 06, 2005 03:03 PM

Re: Anyone with personal or professional experience with someone with RAGE/ANGER issues ...

I guess I'm wondering how we get the person to see that there is a problem and needs help when they are so wrapped up in what has them so irrationally angry.