I'm 15 Years Old And I Blackout When I'm Angry

by Anonymous

I'm 15 and my girlfriends mom suggested I see a counselor about my anger. I hold everything in and rarely let people see that I am angry and usually when I do it's too late and I've already hurt the ones I love.


Sometimes I get so mad just thinking about things that have happened to me like when I was little and remembering my dad throwing me through a window and slamming me against walls, and wondering why I lived such a hard life. And then joining a gang because they where the closest thing I had to family.

Now I am out of the gang and my dad is no longer abusive physically but he plays mind games with me that make me super angry. When I black out it gets really bad really fast and I have no control over it and I have severely hurt people and I am easily angered whenever I feel threatened or like me or someone I love is in danger.

Sometimes I'll even turn on something that spooks me and black out and wake up to find I've done something extremely destructive.

I want to find out what kind of rage I'm suffering from and how to deal with it. I haven't blacked out for about six months and feel safe that I won't but I still go into rage whenever something is thrown my way that I don't suspect. Or even when I think about fights I've been in or what has happened to me and I'll get huge adrenaline rushes to the point my whole body is shaking just thinking about fighting and when I get mad for some reason my jaw muscles tighten and start to twitch.

I've tried martial arts but that just scares me even more because they haven't helped and now I am even more capable of inflicting damage. What kind of rage am I suffering from? And what can I do to help?



Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello, and thanks for telling your story here. I respect your efforts to understand yourself and your rage. I can tell you really don't want to be destructive, but don't know how to control it. I will try to help.

You ask what kind of rage you have. There are no categories of rage than I'm aware of, but I can say several things from what you've told me here:

1) Your rage is subconsciously governed, and in that sense, it "has a mind of its own."

2) When it takes over, your conscious mind "blacks out," because this rage activates a part of your brain that has the capacity to shut down higher brain function, which governs the conscious mind.

3) The adrenaline rush you feel has the potential of setting up an addictive pattern in your nervous system, where you feel the need to periodically release your rage. So, in a way, you might say that you are addicted to periodic rage release.

The good news is that you can change this, and you can heal your emotions. But you have to really want it. I think you do.

Start by doing all of the exercises on this FAQ page. These are powerful tools, but they only work if you use them, and take them seriously. This includes exercise that will help you to resolve the emotional trauma you experienced when you were a child.

I also suggest that you stop spending time around your dad, until you have some healing and benefit from these processes. I think that being around him makes your rage and potential for violence worse.

Set your mind to this, and you will succeed. Believe in the goodness in your heart that made you write your story here in the first place.

My very best to you,

Dr. DeFoore

P.S. If you found this to be helpful, please consider making a donation to this site to support our mission to help you become your own best anger management resource.

P.P.S. If you got something of value here, we would also greatly appreciate it if you would click the "Like" button at the top left corner of this page.