The Anger Bomb

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Have you ever just been fine one second, in your own peaceful mood, and then suddenly someone does something to set you off? And then the anger just stays with you the whole day and you get moody and don't really want to have anything to do with that person for the rest of the day?

Yep for me its rare its not the whole day well in high school it was in uni it is for abut 12 hurs o alone time and thinking and being angry and then I calm down

Yes, very much so. Though I have to say that it's only really been happening in the last year or so and I attribute it to an overall increase of stress in my life during this time. If you want a detailed answer, check out my post in the Haven. It pretty much describes the last time it happened, if you're interested.

I think that's the thing with the "resistance to change." How it's like you THOUGHT you could handle things, since you thought you knew what was going to happen.. and then something is so unexpected, it totally throws that off. And you spend a looonng time constantly feeling like any little thing will change everything. And as soon as you get used to how things are, they change again. And that makes you even more upset about it, because it keeps happening. You can't do anything about it, and nobody understands why it bothers you. Usually I don't understand why some things bother me. they just DO.

Yes. Sometimes Aspies are not aware of underlying stress. It's partially due to my rage that I finally got diagnosed.

I am now trying to learn to recognise the signals BEFORE the time, and trying to learn to take appropriate pre-emptive action. I am getting better at it, but still have a lot to learn.

I can highly recommend this article (written primarily about kids, but applies extremely well to adults too):
http://www.aspires-relationships.com/AS ... ith_as.htm
It is easier to download and print the .pdf than to read it online.

The article is also very similar to a book I bought by the same author:
http://www.amazon.com/Asperger-Syndrome ... 931282706/
Once again, it's about kids, but I can extrapolate a lot which applies to me as an adult. I wish she'd written one specifically for adults, actually.

I have that too.

Something can bug me even if it's trivial, 12 hours later, I am storming around in an adrenal overload clenching my fists and wanting to pound on the person who annoyed me.

Yeah, I can fume for hours about a single thing. If I'm not somewhere I can express my frustration, it builds and builds until it really gets ugly; if I'm not at work I can typically just growl and punch my fist into my open palm, and that relieves frustration greatly. But invariably when I'm finally free it explodes in a rant that goes on for a long, long time. My true rage only really gets triggered if someone either hits me or intentionally pushes me past my breaking point by constantly berating me.

I see it differently. When I used to explode or whatever you call it, it built up over weeks or longer. I would get mad at one person over one thing and then something else. For whatever reason, the problem I had with that person would not get resolved. I would eventually go off on that person over something small and trivial, even though my original problem was more significant. I would end up appearing like a lunatic for going off on something so small, often with the person who earned my wrath coming off looking like a sympathetic figure. I think I grew out of it, or just learned to avoid people who would manipulate me into feeling like I needed to respond in that way.

You just described how this year has been for me...

It's even trickier as I usually manage to be very composed during the crisis/change and when it's over I completely collapse and need ages to get back to normal again.

No.

There's nothing specifically Aspie about that. The same pattern occurs amongst neurotypical people when conflict is not fully resolved.

What I really hate and it always sets me off, are repetitive unwanted experiences.

That could be anything from loud kids next door and their parties every Saturday night, to the punk across the street who likes to rev up his Kawasaki, to Rosetta Stone commercials, to the traffic light which is ALWAYS red despite the fact that the side street is an itty bitty dead end on both sides, to boss's Blackberry left unattended in his empty office, beeping constantly. IT IS BEEPING RIGHT NOW!! !!

The worst I think is when the same people come to me with same questions again and again and again and again. I don't know if they are unable or unwilling to remember! Either way is pretty bad, and their lack of gray matter is NOT my problem. They are making it my problem by coming to me incessantly! A blonde bimbo in marketing had just e-mailed me and asked me what the password was for the company server. I know she asked that before, so I searched my Sent Items in Outlook. I've sent her the location where the password is documented FOURTY-ONE times in the past 3 years. Screw her.

You need to tell someone about this -- your manager, for example, or hers. She is wasting company time and resources by engaging technical staff in tasks which keep them from more important work. Also, she is causing you to compromise security by copying and distributing the information that many times. If she does this to you, she probably wastes other people's time too.

Sometimes I get so angry it ruins my entire day, but other times it only lasts until the source of my anger is gone. For instance, on my way home today, I was driving in the passing lane on the freeway. My intention was to be passing, otherwise I wouldn't have been in that lane. But I was behind a guy who was driving slower and I was waiting for him to move over. Well, this little b***h in a Mercedes came up on my butt and just stayed on it. I'm calmer these days for the most part, I just ignored her and kept jamming to my music while waiting behind the truck in front of me. Well, eventually he moved over and I sped up, and she dropped back way behind me.

You see, I know the freeways in my city. My city is one of my obsessions, I know it very well. I also know I was entering an area where Louisiana State Troopers like to hide in the median over a specific overpass, not to mention we were nearing the beginning of a construction zone where a State Trooper sits to warn traffic of the coming lane closure. So I slowed down and stayed in the left lane, because I knew (1) there are always State Troopers there, and (2) there was a construction zone coming up. She had Florida plates, so she clearly had no idea of the things that I was aware of.

This b***h finally went around me, but as she was beside me, she looked at me and my car with a very stuck-up "I'm so much better than you, you pitiful little person" look and then got in front of me. This pissed me off and sent me into a rage similar to the one that almost got me arrested a few months ago. I got up on her rear bumper as close as I could and started making obscene gestures at her. She then went around the guy in front of me and got way ahead driving way too fast through the construction zone. If given the opportunity I wouldn't have thought twice about running her off an overpass, hurtling into a tanker truck. That's how angry I get, I will use my car as a weapon and not think twice about it... and I don't give a crap if the source of my anger meets a very painful, fiery demise.

This is what I consider an "anger bomb". A few months ago I was nearly arrested because some guy cut me off on the same stretch of freeway and I kept trying to run his vehicle off overpasses, into ditches, etc and the entire time I was making very threatening physical gestures toward him. He laughed for a while until he realized I didn't really give a crap if he died, and then he stopped laughing and called the police. Of course I didn't care, I kept trying to get him to pull over. And he finally did, but when he did, he led me right into a trap where the police intercepted me and pulled me over. I still see that guy sometimes, and he remembers me as well as I remember him. I wouldn't mess with him again unless he made another stupid maneuver, but whenever he sees me, he always switches lanes and exits the freeway at his first opportunity. I can't help but laugh, because I'm the least "tough" person I know and I'm not even all that masculine compared to most guys.

Thanks for that link, Alphabetania, that's a useful article.