I'm alexithymic so I often have a delayed realisation of how I'm feeling, but I might still react angrily, even though I don't really understand why.

I'm an autistic guy and I struggled to deal with extreme anger for many years. Instead of helping me manage anger or just simply letting me be angry, my parents would treat me like I was a psychopath and treat me as if I wasn't allowed to have those feelings. It took me many years to understand I am allowed to be angry and the best thing is to let it pass, with no help from my parents of course. Now I manage it a lot better.

I’ve recently been realizing how much my childhood taught me to be able to completely internalize my feelings cus i would get bullied by my father if I showed him any negative emotions, so when I got bullied later I was completely unable to stand up for myself and also was unaware cus I’m autistic lol. Anyway now when I get angry I try to see if there’s something I can do about it, and if not I try not to give whoever is bothering me the energy that they want. If I get stuck in the autistic justice angry upward spiral, then I try things like grounding exercises, pet my dog, or take sleeping meds (if at night lol). It’s important to validate yourself and acknowledge that it’s fucked up and give yourself the care you need to be okay after something unfair happens. Also I hope you move out soon your roommate sounds terrible 😭

please don't stop making relatable videos

I feel you. I also get super angry for ever and ever and ever. Good for you for fighting back against these bullies even if it did get you in trouble... people love to twist things around on people like us

You don’t cope with anger by calming down (which mostly just suppresses it). You either have to find an outlet or a way to process it. So either, you need to move the energy of it out of your body with movement (punch a pillow, go for a walk, headbang to loud music), because it really can leave you with a charged feeling in your body; or, if your anger is more verbal than physical, you can process through it by ranting, listening to music that matches your mood, writing poetry, journaling, arguing with someone in your head, etc.

I think some of my anger is due to being on the autism spectrum. But I think some of my anger also comes from childhood trauma. Not only am I diagnosed with autism, but I’m also diagnosed with complex PTSD. And I believe some of my anger comes from trauma flashbacks. Yes, some of my anger is part of autism. But I think some of it is also due to trauma.

I used to paint very angry pictures. Or draw them. And write about it in my journal. I could never yell into or punch pillows either. My mom was always screaming as well and no one else was permitted to be angry. I used to feel angry for only a few seconds and then it would change into sadness, crying.

My Italian relatives will yell at each other occasionally, but there's no repercussions afterwards. I was in a car crash over there, and the drivers got out and screamed at each other for about a minute, then stopped simultaneously and gruffly traded insurance information. The driver of my car picked up the conversation right where we had left off. I was a nervous wreck, but he had gotten all that tension out by yelling. I will occasionally yell at even family members in Italy (and I hate it), but there are basically no repercussions. Of course, there are RULES about what you can and can't say even in the midst of a bout of yelling. My Italian grandmother would yell at us and run after us with a rugbeater when we were kids. It basically just meant "I'm sick of you. Get out of here!" Forty five minutes later you could be playing quietly in the same room as my grandmother, and there was no emotional residue from the outburst. It was all gone.

Dana lady; your videos hold so much value for me... And other awesome fellows. Thank you much.

i once got into a fight with an nt. who insisted i was angry until I actually was angry

When I was younger I used to lash out and hurt people, and myself. As an adult I've try to avoid any situations that could get me angry. I turn around an walk away from any trouble makers, not giving them the attention they crave. I've got better things to spend my energy on. I enjoyed your video, as always 🙂

Alexithymia is common in autistic people. It means you have a hard time telling what you feel.

So so many thoughts on this, can relate so hard, though have been lucky to have been offered the following insights: - Rationalising feelings ('thinking feelings' rather than 'feeling feelings') may be the norm and actually helpful for Autistics (not the same as not having feelings!) - Happy people are not going around tearing others down... Hurt people hurt people - Validating feelings and Indulging feelings are different things Autistic people very much have feelings and emotions, and due to our sensitive nervous systems these can be much more intense experiences. Though I do think we are much less likely to have feelings without also having cognitive awareness of the cause. I get the sense that NTs are told to practice 'feeling' their feelings with the goal of identifying the root cause, rather than just reacting and potentially projecting the feelings on to the wrong thing and making legitimate healing/processing impossible. My theory is that Autistic people are more likely to already know what has caused the emotion, and unless a history of gas-lighting has trained us to ignore or invalidate them, we know exactly why (what principles/needs/senses are being undermined). Combine that with the intense physiological response we often experience, to force ourselves to 'feel our feelings' even more is likely unnecessary and potentially unhelpful. I believe thinking through and rationalising our feelings can be really helpful. The way you frame the problem can make a huge difference in how you process and resolve the experience. The idea that someone must be very unhappy if they are behaving in a way they clearly know to be crappy. Like, that man in the park must feel so insignificant and empty if he would go to efforts to upset someone else to feel a sense of satisfaction and be noticed. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he deserves sympathy/compassion/forgiveness... What I am saying is, he is already living the retribution you expressed wanting. There is no way the mood boost he got from being nasty outweighs the grossness he must already feel to even consider behaving that way. Means you can walk away from the interaction with gratitude for having a life so big you'd never waste your energy behaving like he did, and being proud that you are a big enough person to place value your own and others' feelings. The fact that you would never do something like that, means you are already the winner in that situation. In regards to your friends then trying to help by loading on additional judgement on the problem (this case the unhappy soul in the park), this is actually not Validating but Indulging. It is loading on extra fuel (as you expressed) and just serves to keep you inhabiting the feelings rather than processing and resolving. I think the key (for me at least), is to shift focus from the problem (that random human is not yours to fix nor worth your energy), and onto you and your feelings (what really matters here). Feeling Angry is valid, what happened to you was genuinely shitty, you didn't deserve it, and what you need now is to be shown the kindness that you do deserve. Rather than forcing yourself to feel those feelings any more/longer, you (or your friends) should offer a contrasting feeling of safety and support. A distraction with a safe/comforting activity works best for me, and gives the feelings (chemicals in your nervous system) time to dissipate. Oh, also, frustration is an internal helpless version of anger. It is not the same, and feeling frustrated when you should be angry may be a trauma response to being unheard and suppress in the past. Anger is you feeling deserving of being heard and empowered to assert your needs. I have heard it put, 'Anger is the part of you that loves you', because it is the part of you that knows you matter and will fight to keep you safe. Don't be ashamed of your anger! Last thing... There are feelings charts that can be really helpful for understanding our experience of feelings. They plot emotions around a circle with colours based on similar nervous system arousal... Anxious, surprise, and excitement are all in a cluster together under the base/core feeling of fear, as they all contain a level of uncertainty of an unknown (Disney's Inside Out would explain it as a mix of fear and happy). Just because some unknowns are desired and promise to be positive, we are still anticipating something unfamiliar, which is still the same uncomfortable physiological activation. An activation that we likely feel more strongly than NTs, and maybe why lots of autistic have comfort foods and hate opening presents etc? I hope something in this is helpful :)

Yeah, if people were jumping on your back, the consequences for the individual in question have nothing to do with anger issues on your part and everything to do with FAFO.

I’ve always found it funny when people have outbursts then regret it and claim they didn’t mean it. I’ve spent 24 years with repressed, *burning* rage. If I’ve ever lost it at someone, it’s not going to be over something small. It has to be something cruel. And I won’t have remorse afterwards. Getting “angry” at a sibling as siblings do then feeling remorseful afterwards? Yep, that’s fine. But that’s an entirely separate entity to the suppressed rage without remorse that I feel. I think my stepmum (among many others who I was abused by) has a cluster b personality disorder. She turns you into a villain then regrets it afterwards and then does it again. But unlike her, I have Object Constancy. She called me an embarrassment, useless, pathetic. She decided that I was a traitor and her enemy for something she made up inside her own head and then switches it all for her melodramatic play with her in the starring role. She decided I was her enemy. So be it, to me, *her* betrayal is unforgivable.

This is all extremely relatable. Your content and experience tends to be for me, which is why I like to watch your videos.

Hi i was very much bullied at school emotionally but i think i was so naive and repressed at a very young age that i didn't even get angry then. It's only as a teenager and later as an adult that i found out i have anger 😅 I understand how silly punching a pillow is etc lol, i never break things and very rarely shout. I usually sing karaoke to an angry song, which really helps 😊😂

Do not know if it works for everyone, but when I am angry and someone holds my shoulder firmly it snaps me out of it. It is like the surprise is more important than anger for the brain 🤷‍♂

As a kid I would let out my anger right away. I had a few controllers with teeth marks on them. Now I tend to store it up and release it later on in private. I don't know if it's an autistic thing or a me thing.

I don't have angry outbursts that often, so when I do I think it takes people by surprise because they're like, "The Quiet Girl is flipping out! WTF?" Like when I lost my shit with this woman in kickboxing class when I was a teenager because she wouldn't stop belittling me and telling me how I was doing everything wrong, but the instructor wasn't upset with me at all and told my mom that the woman had been a problem for a while and that he understood my anger. (She was a real know-it-all who even tried to kickbox-splain the instructor. But I happened to be one of her favourite targets.) I do get told often to "check my tone", which pisses me off. I'm autistic; I literally have a hard time reading tone at the best of times. And then if I leave the room to cool off, I get accused of sulking 🙄I try to pour my emotions into a journal, but I also have a Spotify playlist titled "In Case of Anger, Press Play", which is full of everything from Green Day to DMX to "Liberi Fatali" from Final Fantasy VIII. I think it helps 😁

Thanks!

I'm having a lot of realizations listening to you today Dana. First is that my bullying in school was also very physical, and I'm not sure the other girls faced the same thing. I don't believe they did. The next is that our "ruminating" may not be ruminating but a sense of justice that has been cut off. I feel VERY strongly about justice, and so many times I've just been told to "let it go", when as I've got older the more I've realized that actually no, something needed to be DONE about this, and people are just letting things slide because it's "easier" on them, not the right thing to do. Which is incredibly demanding on me and anyone actually wronged.

Anger is actually a very easy emotion; one of the go-tos for us humans. We don't much think on it (pun intended).

Why do so many neurotypical people always think from a competitive perspective? And for dealing with anger I just shout at them and if that doesn't work I give 'm the death stare and for the system I just act passive aggressive if they piss me off (again and again). But if I'm really angry I just let them wallow in their own stupidity, maybe give a bit of a helping hand. But those things don't happen to often, so luckily I don't have to worry about it to much.

Aside from the specific incidents, we're exactly the same here. Don't doubt yourself. You're right to feel the way you do. The only thing that ever made me feel better was justice, which doesn't happen often. Even then, it took time. I'm still mad about things that happened decades ago, but I don't dwell on them like I used to. For a long time, I used to hit things, but not pillows. It needed to be solid and hard, but not enough to break my hand. It only helped a little bit. I wonder if it qualifies as self harm. The pain is definitely part of it. It might be worth a try. Just don't hurt yourself.

i wrote out a big reply...but then i swiped backwards by accident and poof! Im not re writing it either LOL but yah I had a nickname about my rage episodes. I know where its coming from now but too late... ive already spent 30-35 years angry and sharing that with the public. I think the most anger of all though, was directed at myself. The hate, the confusion, the desperation and unmet need to understand what was happening. ooof it does feel good to throw stuff and scream and cry. I remember once I threw my wooden table and chairs and a lap top off my deck just so out of control. it also totally sucks to do that. So dont liisten to me. Thanks for your videos!

In regards to emotions… I didn’t know I had anxiety. I’ve been super anxious my entire life and no one ever identified it until I was an adult and I made a friend who had an anxiety disorder pointed it out to me. I drilled her on what anxiety feels like and how does she know I have anxiety. Sure enough, the way I feel and have felt my entire life was anxiety. I was accused or called angry, too talkative, shy, hyper, restless, jumpy, impatient… I guess all of these can come from being anxious?

The best rant Dana, you made my day! 👍🏻😎

Love the man in the park comment at the end. lol.

i usually don't comment on many videos but after years of suspecting im autistic im finally getting a diagnosis (hopefully lol), and your videos have provided me a lot of comfort

I have had this issue throughout life as well. There are always people who deliberately spoil the enjoyment of others through resentful behavior. They satisfy themselves by making life difficult for others. I don't think getting angry at them is an autism thing though. But I do relive the experience in my mind over and over trying to figure out what the proper response should have been. I think that is called rumination.... that is an autism thing. When I was younger, I constantly replayed these events in my mind.

I was so shocked when you said You could sit with your anger for hours and hours and no matter what you did it just doesnt helped and feeling childish with coping mechanisms because THAT'S EXACTLY HOW I AM !!! It's like when I feel that anger, I'm like thinking I'm not "allowed" to let this feeling go, I'm supposed to be mad and its supposed to ruin the rest of my day because thats what its always done, I hate the autistic rage, it just builds and builds throughout the day from all the overloads of daily life and from the outside looking in I feel like I've just snapped and I'm being a big B****, its horrible to deal with but I'm a lot better than I was a few years ago, especially these past few months trying to understand myself

I really hope your living situation works out. As for the ...... In the park, hope karma gets him good. I struggled alot with anger from out of nowhere when i was young. It took years to deal with my emotions in a more constructive way. Its confusing not knowing what you're feeling or why. Im still an emotional wreck, but not as bad as i was

1:37 This is something that I wish educators were better educated on. Autistic children are oftentimes the victims of bullying, and yet when we defended ourselves we were the ones treated as the bad guys. It's so rubbish. Neurotypical children get away with bullying with no consequences, yet autsitic people are treated as the threats. It's an example of serious institutional ableism.

lol yesterday I got so angry at this new game that came out (there was a lot of hype so I was excited) and it was just a really bad game in my opinion and so I just screamed about how illogical and stupid the puzzles and things were, why I hated how stupid it made me feel, just literally yelling all my feelings about it. My partner sat there, listening, and when I was done he was like "you're cute when you express yourself" and it just both calmed me and made me laugh at the same time because so often I CANNOT find the words for how I feel and he was just happy I could, even if it was through yelling.

Can you maybe talk about the range of emotions that we experience. Also maybe the delayed response in emotional processing. Thank you .

I've always wondered why the system is set up where people are allowed to behave badly and provoke the [*insert favorite expletive here*] out of you, but if you react physically you're the one who gets punished. I guess school was like that, too. All too often the system seems to be set up to accommodate the narcissists, IMO. Hope tomorrow goes better for you.

"Autistic Anger" New punk band just dropped

i had a similar park related shouting event a few weeks ago. it took me a long time to feel safe to go back there. will you go back to the same park quickly?

1:53 / 2:15 / 2:20 / 2:30 - I think it's really interesting that for you, only the "see red" level of stuff is you being "angry"... I'm more in a mindset similar to your therapist, where annoyed, frustrated, snappy, etc., are all just forms of anger... and the "see red" form is, of course, also a form of anger (some might call it "blind rage" or something), it's just not the only one. But I guess you associate "angry" with the outward expressions of anger, maybe??? Like that yelling at someone or throwing something is what makes it anger? Curious to understand how you think about it more. (Because I think the distinction you draw is perfectly valid, it's just different than the distinctions I draw.) And like, do you experience alexithymia? Because I could certainly see that coming into this as well. To me, though, these are all just variations on a cluster of emotions that I would call anger... it can be mild or intense, brief or long-lasting, etc., but it's all (to me) anger. And I just think it's interesting that you think of it differently. I feel like I was going somewhere with this comment, but I've lost track of it. Anyway... interesting video. And yeah, I do think the gendered aspect of expectations around expressions of anger is hugely relevant to all this. And I could imagine that playing into the distinction above, actually -- especially if you do in fact see the outward behavior stuff as definitional to what anger is, because while I would tend to disagree, I can very much see how the societal narratives around anger (and its permissiveness towards men to express anger with violence, while women are very much penalized for doing so) could build that association. I wish we lived in a world where the internal experiences of such emotions (i.e. including things like annoyance and frustration, whether or not we call them anger) could be thought and talked about as more distinct from outward expressions. Dunno how that might (or might not) change your thinking on it, but I know I wish it was easier for me to be able to calmly say to someone "I'm angry about X thing that happened" (or "that you did"), and have that be taken with the same sort of seriousness as it would be if I went on some rampage about it, but without me having to inflict the trauma on them of having to experience that. And, ya know, sometimes that does work, with some people. But I've definitely had the experience where calmly expressing, in words, that I'm angry, doesn't seem to carry much weight with the listener, and therefore doesn't get taken seriously... and that sucks.

Yeah, I seem to attract arseh*les too for some reason. You know, I dread good days now because I know someone or something will ruin it for me. It is like some people out there don't like it when you are happy. When I am angry I feel like screaming and swearing. I don't swear much except when I am peeved off. You can tell when I am angry, I grind and grit my teeth. Am amazed I haven't grounded away my teeth to be honest.

What's your astrology chart?

Hi Dana, I know how you feel.

I know it probably won't help, but it's most likely the park man wants to "get back" at someone for whatever just like you want him to "get his" I know it's cliche' and simple.... but there you go..... He probably doesn't have the nerve to confront whoever or whatever makes him mad, so he's just passing his frustration along... I myself might just simply unloading on you right now to some degree because I don't want to have another screaming argument with my sister that helps me financially... I sympathize with you more than I can express... super late (age 51 late last year) diagnosed autistic that just had to move too... so maybe knowing you might be expressing moving frustrations!?!?!? Also a Dr. Who fan if that might help heehee

LOL I was bullied but not like you did The schools don't help because The schools don't help you're not supposed to fight back these days

I definitely didn't get a good sense from that housemate of yours from that one video (assuming it's the same boy, that is)....

Dana, will you marry me❤😊