AdultRAGE

Rage in adults is one of the most exhausting mental health behaviours to deal with.

Health professionals usually acknowledge out of control aggressive behaviour as a clinical predictor of eventual brain impairments like Alzheimers or other cognitive dysfunctions.

Psychiatrists observe reactive anger as evidence of underdeveloped interpersonal abilities in infantilized adults. That is to say, that many emotionally immature adults, respond this way as a result of several factors; some may have learned behaviour generationally. They may have repeated what they saw and as no one corrected them, they developed poor patterns. Or, another possibility is displaced emotional response characteristics. Some rage filled children may have grown into adults who learned to mask their rage and channel it into other unacceptable manipulative and destructive patterns.

I’ll give you examples:

R. was jealous her daughter was leaving for a tropical vacation without her, so in angst, she hid her passport, which resulted in chaos and great effort to obtain a new one.

C. harbours great resentment for her neighbour, so when this neighbour’s flowers leaned into her property, she angrily bent the stalks to indicate her hatred and contempt.

G. was outraged that someone had the audacity to expose her child’s wrong doing so instead of explaining to her child how the incident affected others - she chose to “cold shoulder” the teller of the tale and totally eliminate that person from her life.

A. had a conniption when a sorrowful family tale was relayed in a moment of sentiment. He flew off the handle because he didn’t like the outcome. His concern wasn’t for the person victimized, or the tragedy itself, his rage was a reaction to his ego, his anger was directed at the messenger, not the message.

Of course, expressing one’s opinion in response to a situation is human. Reaction is normal,

But retaliating, over reacting and obsessing over a situation is actually doing one’s self a great deal of harm. The person you’re directing the rage at, probably doesn’t even know, nor care.

Everyone has gotten angry. I giggle at some of the outbursts I’ve committed myself and thankfully I can look back at the lesson I learned. I know that Adult Rage is a red and white flag that says “I’m suffering and I don’t know how to regulate my emotions”.

What society needs to learn is self awareness, compassion and develop a greater respect for the human condition.