Where to put rage?

June 18, 2024 3:32 AM

My best friend is in the midst of getting out of a domestic violence situation. I have rage, lots of it.

I have never been an angry person at all, this is by far the angriest I've ever been. I am not making it her problem and am continuing to focus on her in our conversations, but outside of those conversations I feel like a bubbling cauldron of rage. I don't like it and I have no idea what to do with it. My usual quickly repress it/consider the other person's perspective is getting me nowhere.

I do not want to focus on her situation in this question, she is smart and strong and she is doing what needs to be done. This is just for background to explain what I'm so pissed about. He is hellbent on controlling and hurting her. He owns guns and drinks and becomes even more scary. He has physically abused their toddler (the sweetest child I have ever met). He seems to be making decisions right now on a basis of pure revenge/hurting her the most possible, even to a cutting off his nose to spite his face extent.

She and her child are finally physically out of the situation and she is getting a restraining order for both of them. I think after this happened, my brain finally let me really feel all of the fear I've been feeling for them for weeks and it quickly became too much and turned into rage. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I myself am having violent thoughts (that I would never act on) towards him.

What the heck am I supposed to do with all this anger? Is there a secret "make it productive" hack I don't know about or a way to just make it go away? I am also still scared he will hurt her or her family who are helping her.

posted by Eyelash to Human Relations (24 answers total)

Go for a furious run or a swim, buy a stack of plates at a garage sale and smash them, go to the gym and hit and kick the heavy bag, get a stack of clay and much it around/punch in, scream into a pillow, go for a drive and park and yell in the car, go to a rave…you get the idea I hope. You can choose a safe place and way and let this rage through you. Be a bit safe about it, like don’t break your hand punching concrete. But it’s ok! It won’t consume you, even if it feels like it will.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:40 AM on June 18, 2024 [11 favorites]

Rage is an emotion that is best discharged through physical exercise. You can punch a lot of bags to be rid of your rage, you can lift a lot of weights, you can run until you've utterly exhausted your energy, you can smash tennis balls across the net, etc. and what happens is it allows you to physically complete your stress cycle, allowing your body to metabolize and release all that cortisol, leaving you with nothing but a feeling of power and dopamine. This is a real thing. It's got studies and theory and neurobiology backing it.

You'll feel more rage tomorrow of course and then you can do some exercise again. Like grief, the rage becomes moderated and spent with time, so this won't last forever. Take care.
posted by MiraK at 3:48 AM on June 18, 2024 [9 favorites]

Best answer: The below comes from a place of personally being caught in and finally escaping a DV situation. I hope some of it gives you places to start to unwrap the sources of your own rage.

Rage is absolutely understandable in this situation. And like you, rage came late - after all the efforts to protect myself were done.
I felt rage because I was subjected to something I did nothing to "deserve", and that took incredible efforts to become free of.
My rage hid fear that I would never really be safe.
My rage hid sorrow (and fear) that someone I trusted could ever see me as a "thing" and not a whole person.
My rage hid the sorrow at the death of the hope that there could ever be a "happy ending " to the situation.
My rage hid my sorrow and confusion that you can't "love" someone out of violent tendencies.
My rage was the amplification of the impotent anger I felt at how minimal and weak protections around DV situations were.
My rage hid anger and helplessness that I could go thru extraordinary efforts to do everything "right" and still get hit/still not be 100% safe.
My rage hid feelings of helplessness.
My rage hid anger that the rest of his world did not see how horrible the abuser was, and might never see or agree with it.

Rage is incredibly useful for hiding lots of other feelings while still amping up the "fight" part of "fight or flight". Honor it for its attempts to keep you in an "action" state (and not the state of curling up on the floor in passive acceptance ), but tell it to stay in its place.

I had a scuba instructor tell me once that he tells his students: if ever something goes wrong with your breathing apparatus, *calm people live.* That became my mantra: calm people live.

One practice I adopted was, when the rage got too big, I bought melons - water melons, cantaloupe, etc., took them into the woods with a baseball bat and sledge hammer, imagine them to be him, and beat the shit out of them - beat them into tiny bits, and then with my shoe, literally grind every last speck of them into the dirt.

Gently poke around the edges of your rage and see if they are hiding other feelings. Rage usually is.

If you think you can do it in a way that doesn't trigger your friend, lightly tell her that you are surprised to find that you are feeling feelings of rage, and you wondered if she is too, and what she does to manage it. It sounds like you have been an incredibly supportive friend - maybe you can also adopt her approach to rage, and share a joint language and system for carrying it.

Also, meditation helps tremendously.

I will tell you: the rage goes away. Once you feel safe; once you feel your systems for staying safe work; once you feel like the RIGHT people understand and agree that this person is a dangerous threat, once you feel like Help Is Here, and have a good body of time living out of danger -- rage goes away.

My heart goes out to all three of you. Breathe thru the rage, and commit to not becoming the monster you hate. Sending so much love.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:11 AM on June 18, 2024 [62 favorites]

This is different for different people.
I personally don't find the "punch a pillow" advice useful as it kind of just revvs me up even more.

Exercise is very good. Or hard, physical labour like digging rocks out of a garden bed, or scrubbing something clean.

Listening to passionate music, something angry and powerful like heavy metal or whatever genre you find moving.

If you have the mental energy, and have the inclination, try to channel that rage into a vivid expression. Write, draw, whatever it takes.

And there's absolutely no shame in having violent thoughts, although getting stuck in ruminating about that kind of thing is distressing.

If you are unable to journal about it, find a private place and talk your feelings out loud. Express them to an imaginary patient and compassionate friend. Tell yourself how you feel without any judgement or apologies.
Don't give yourself any advice, this is just the space to tell yourself "I've been feeling so..."
posted by Zumbador at 4:12 AM on June 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

Agree that doing something that physically uses up the energy is usually helpful. Preferably something that uses it up completely. Doing this should help prevent it spilling over into other situations.

Art, journaling, trusted other friends and therapy are good ways of exploring and expressing your scared-ness if you also want to contain that and keep it away from your friend.
posted by plonkee at 4:19 AM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

Others have covered the punching pillows/breaking cheap plates/go for a run advice.

Adding another option that worked really well for me when I was a teenager - I would blast Phil Collins' song I Don't Care Any More on my headphones (it was the 80s, what can I say) and put a pillow on my lap and drum along. ....That song seemed to be an especially good choice, because Phil also sounds pissed as well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:36 AM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

empathy, so much empathy

Is there a secret "make it productive" hack
there is a Want to achieve your goals? Get angry link out from an American Psychological Association topic page saying "effects of anger in spurring people to reach for and frequently achieve their goals were specific to situations where the goals were more challenging".
i hope this helps!
posted by HearHere at 4:41 AM on June 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Also schedule it--like they tell you to do with grief. "This is fine and good but just not right now, because right now I'm trying to sleep/get my crap together to go to the workplace/feed the cat. That's okay because at X o'clock I'm going to the home mart hammer aisle and thence to the gentle vegan market to get so many melons."
posted by Don Pepino at 6:27 AM on June 18, 2024 [8 favorites]

I beat the hell out of a cardboard refrigerator box once when a new fridge coincided with some bad circumstances. Like the melons Silvery Fish mentioned above, it was satisfying because I could see the damage my blows were doing.

One angry-making thing is frustration that you cannot reach the abuser to visit your rage on them. It does help, on a visceral level, to damage something.

Your hands are also easy to damage, full of little bones and delicate joints and ligaments. So if you punch something, make sure its surface will give way to your blows. That's why I liked the cardboard box-- it was right on the line between "satisfying to punch" and "not hard enough to cause injury to the puncher".

On a hot day, maybe a tied-off garbage bag full of water would work? Since the guy is literal garbage, and when you "win" you would get pleasantly soaked after working up a sweat.

I remember reading a recent AskMe about an aggressive dog, and trainers giving answers about redirecting the behaviour onto a toy or a rawhide chew-- something the dog could safely bite, shake, tear. I guess that's what this is.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:42 AM on June 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

I am also someone who doesn't get angry a lot. You have gotten a lot of recommendations to vent your rage in some appropriate way, by smashing dishes or watermelons or punching up a cardboard box. I guess that must work for a lot of people, and maybe it will work for you. I don't think it would work for me.

What does work for me when I'm stuck with intrusive negative emotions is meditation, and specifically visualizing the emotions being transformed and released back to the universe. If you don't have experience with meditations, there are good apps available now that will take you through the process of guided meditation.

Good luck to you, and to your friend!
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:59 AM on June 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

Editing to note it looks like others mentioned this already so I will co-sign - in addition to the physical exertion, you can use the old meditation trick "this is just a thought/feeling. it doesn't really mean anything. I don't have to do anything about it. I can just notice it. it's just a thought. All there is to do is to notice it". Sometimes that can really take the charge out of it, without having to pretend you don't feel the way you do.

and in general, if these are skills you are familiar with, you can use the same meditation/DBT/CBT skills you may apply to a period of extreme anxiety or depression to thoughts of rage. I often feel more "in the driver's seat" and less helpless with rage - which can make it hard to remember that I still need to work on not letting my emotions run the show, the way I would if I were despondent.
posted by seemoorglass at 7:26 AM on June 18, 2024 [4 favorites]

What I do with rage is sit within it and pay attention to the feeling of it while reminding myself that for as long as I'm feeling it acutely I need to act with way more than my usual degree of caution so as to compensate for its debilitating effect on my judgement. For example, if it happens while I'm doing something complicated like driving, I'll pull over to the side of the road while doing this.

I used to deal with rage by burning it off with intense physical activity, but there exists no physical activity short of total self-destruction sufficient to burn off the amount of rage prompted by e.g. current events in Gaza. I do not intend to destroy myself because doing so would interfere with my current project of outliving Itamar Ben-Gvir, which leaves me no other option but to sit in stillness in the centre of the rage with the sole intent of experiencing it in as much detail as presents itself for inspection.

There are things that rage makes possible that cannot be achieved any other way, but almost all of them involve some form of destruction so it is vital to make sure that nothing of value will be lost thereby, and it is simply not practicable to make accurate value judgements while rage is peaking; it physically shuts down the neocortex.
posted by flabdablet at 8:38 AM on June 18, 2024 [6 favorites]

When I was a very young child, I randomly flew into utterly uncontrollable, violent rages. The reasons for this are irrelevant. I was given a stupid inflatable clown thing to punch; it didn't help.

When I was a teen, I flew into random angry rages. I won't discuss the causes, that's beside the point. The only means of control I had was to separate myself from the situation.

When I was an adolescent, I flew into dangerously violent rages. Unbeknownst to me, at this point in development is where my father started to spend a lot of time incarcerated; I avoided that fate. The only thing that really managed these outbursts was to let them burn: throw the couches around the house, tear the doors off the wall, that kind of thing. Nothing productive or helpful or even sane.

I'm an adult now and the only thing that truly makes me rage, that invokes those dangerous feelings, is when someone I love and protect is harmed. Because such people are people I'd literally die for or be hauled off in chains for it takes a great deal of effort to channel that into something actually useful and helpful: I sit very quietly, for as long as it takes, with my shillelagh across my lap and meditate on what needs to be done. This clarifies my feelings enormously, and helps me understand what truly underlies the rage itself.

So far, at least, I haven't had to beat anyone to death.
posted by majick at 8:51 AM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

I read a tip on /r/anger that magnesium supplements can help mitigate rage. I started taking them at night and they are the first thing that worked for me after trying many other things. I used to lie awake every night seething and now I don't.
posted by Jacqueline at 10:37 AM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I want to emphasize two things that have been said here:

This kind of strong feeling is connected to a LOT of stress hormones in your system. Like actual physical chemicals running all over your body, getting you to ready to (remember this?) fight or flight. Your body is like DANGER DANGER LET'S GO!!!! So, you gotta go, which is to say, use up and process those stress hormones with physical activity. The reason that running up a hill, lifting weights, etc. all works is because it's helping your body process all those extra stress hormones. If you're not someone who regularly participates in strenuous physical activity, please don't feel like you need to run a marathon. Walking in your neighborhood, maybe at a slightly faster pace than usual or up some hills, can also be your physical activity. You can also jump up and down, ride a bike, do jumping jacks, etc. I particularly like physical activity in nature because I also think woodsy/natural views are healthy. Whatever you do, leave the phone off/in your pocket and don't listen to anything. Move your body in a way that is slightly more difficult than usual, for an hour if you're used to physical activity already, or less if that's what you can manage. But move, every single day, for at least a week but more if possible, while you begin to sort through your emotions.

Next, yes, rage and anger are often masking other emotions: lack of control, feelings of powerlessness, fear (you mentioned this one), maybe even some frustration at your friend for not leaving sooner. None of these feelings are bad or embarrassing, and any shame you feel will only make it harder to work through it all. So, to get to the heart of all this, do some journaling, or talk to other friends (posting on AskMe is great too!), or, my recommendation, if your employer has an employee assistance program (EAP), do some short term therapy to talk to a professional about all this.

So, the way you work through this: physically burn up those hormones; emotionally work through and talk through your feelings. Good luck. It sounds like you are a really good friend to your friend.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:29 AM on June 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

Complete the stress cycle: TED talk from the authors of the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

Your friend might benefit from the techniques in the book, though for the moment maybe you do the reading and give them the short version.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:42 AM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

If you can afford it, this is something a short course of therapy would be good for. You are feeling very natural, very strong emotions and talking them through with a professional could be valuable (plus perhaps arm you with some techniques for the future).
posted by praemunire at 12:28 PM on June 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

Is there a secret "make it productive" hack...

thich nhat hahn's media crew published a good summary/starting point. I'd advise following up with some of the dharma talks mentioned.

Everyone knows that anger is not good for us and for other people. Everyone knows that. But the fact is that they cannot help it. They are overwhelmed by the energy of violence, of anger; that is why everyone should learn the art of embracing anger and transforming it.

The first step is to learn how to breathe mindfully, to smile to your own anger, and to embrace your anger tenderly like a mother embracing her baby. […]

We know that when anger manifests in us, we should not do anything, we should not say anything. Because doing or saying something out of anger will bring about negative things that will make us regret later.

posted by j_curiouser at 12:43 PM on June 18, 2024 [2 favorites]

from your 'best answer':

One practice I adopted was, when the rage got too big, I bought melons - water melons, cantaloupe, etc., took them into the woods with a baseball bat and sledge hammer, imagine them to be him, and beat the shit out of them - beat them into tiny bits, and then with my shoe, literally grind every last speck of them into the dirt.

no shade, but in Buddhism, we might say this is 'practicing being angry', which might actually foster more anger.

Repeat: no shade, it's a big world.
posted by j_curiouser at 12:53 PM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

Oh, that situation sounds really tough - I hope things do work out for your friend.

Totally agree with everyone that rage is natural, but maybe not helpful for any period of time. I'm not someone who had ever felt much rage - I would get very upset or anxious, but not angry. But having dealt with some pretty intense family stuff, I finally started to feel WILDLY angry and it felt so strange.

In terms of rage though, my solution the worst time was also activity - this is kind of specific, but I jumped on my bike, cycled to the beach (while having an animated imaginary argument with my Dad), then jumped in the cold sea and swum around a bit. It really worked - the exercise, the venting, and then a very big physical feeling. Afterwards, I could think about how the sea felt, and how those big emotions came with the physical sensations. I still remember it vividly but it definitely helped me think about the rage as a passing emotion, not something that was ingrained in me. I really think it was the coldness and the shock overtaking my brain rather than the anger that helped me separate it out.

So perhaps something physical in terms of exercise, and/or something with an intense physical feeling? For me, the venting was good, but also I to tend to go over things a lot, so I try not to have those imaginary arguments too much as they just make me anxious.

Personally, I wouldn't share these feelings with your friends just now. It may just add to their worries.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 1:33 PM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I want to second the comment above talking about all the things rage can be hiding. If you're finding it just won't go away, there's probably some roots you haven't dug up and looked at yet. Journaling can be good, if that's your cup of tea; particularly for getting you to spell out and look directly at the things that you may feel like you "can't talk about" (with your friend or in general). I found getting into specifics very useful: "I'm upset about the things he said" is a good social technique to not spread secondary trauma all around, but in your own journal you should be able to say "I'm upset he told her ___" and really engage with the details that are haunting you.
posted by Lady Li at 1:58 PM on June 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

When I get really angry about something, I lift weights. I never viewed myself as a weightlifter but my husband introduced me to it and it is so good when you are feeling angry and helpless and the problems that you are mad about are bigger than you.

Oftentimes when I start a session of lifting heavy things I have a particular thing on my mind but at the end of my reps I feel much stronger physically and usually look stronger too. It doesn’t solve what’s making me angry, but it makes me feel a little more powerful and gives me the time and space to process some of those harder feelings in a constructive way.
posted by donut_princess at 5:22 PM on June 18, 2024 [3 favorites]

One more thing on the topic of trauma processing. When I had horrible feelings I couldn't dig out, inspired by a truly world-view-shattering tragedy, the other thing that truly helped was actually group therapy. One on one therapy just dug me in to the feelings, and I already knew what they were, and trying to explain what had happened to other people just left me feeling like screaming rage at the world was the only fair and right reaction.

But being face to face with other people who had been through the same and even worse felt like it turned what had happened into something that could be talked about (and even laughed at, shh, don't tell anyone), and it was transformative in ways that went deeper than my conscious awareness. I have no words but I left that group therapy session and a song came on the radio and suddenly I knew everything would be okay, even though it was also true that everything was terrible.
posted by Lady Li at 5:43 PM on June 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

In addition to what everyone has shared, I'm here to recommend a book that's helped me find a relationship to anger: The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, by Karla McLaren. She frames anger as a protective emotion -- which sounds pretty close to what you are describing...
posted by gigimakka at 12:20 PM on June 22, 2024 [1 favorite]