I have never related to something more.

I hate the way that I hate.

I just can’t fathom how some people can be so oblivious and inconsiderate to others, sometimes to the point of danger.

I don’t have a remedy or fix apart from letting you know that you aren’t alone.

The inability to self-soothe and therefore outburst when you have emotions is an executive dysfunction that is definitely part of ADHD. As others have said, the degree to which you feel the emotions may have other components, but the inability to quell or redirect your emotions is definitely a normal ADHD symptom.

I’m pretty sure I’m also ADHD and I certainly also hate injustice and inaccuracy. (Jordan Peterson talking about IQ will basically send me into a rage.)

More to the point: anger, criticism, shame, fear – those emotions will have my chest tightening and my pulse racing.

Anyways, a piece of advice that I found once that was weirdly helpful (no idea where I found it) was a cardboard cutout metaphor. But I’ll be using a snake metaphor instead.

Get this, we have more than one brain.

We have a brain we share with lizards (that’s got our territoriality, our fear, and our anger). We have a whole layer of brain around the lizard one that we share with mammals (cuddling, protectiveness, affection, etc). And then we have the thinking, rational part of the brain. I think it’s called the cerebral cortex.

And part of what that last brain does is take in stimulae and interpret it. Only after this part of your brain interprets stimulae does the rest of your brain feel an emotional response.

The Snake Metaphor

The example given in the article was with cardboard cutouts of gang members. But I choose this:

Imagine you’re walking on a dirt path somewhere and you come across a piece of garden hose that looks vaguely like a snake. And you’re afraid of snakes.

You will either feel terror or nothing at all.

If you think it’s a snake, there willl be adrenaline and cortisol pumping through you.

If you realize it’s a piece of garden hose – even with the same exact visual and auditory stimulae – you will feel no fear.

Because your emotions are a slave to interpretation.

There’s a moment when you recognize, “oh, this person is willingly hurting someone.” You feel the rage only after that recognition.

I’m guessing, given your description of your quick rages, you will most likely NOT have time to apply this in the moment. So you’ll need to do it all in hindsight: reflect on individual incidents after they occur. Every time you calm down, try to reinterpret the situation and then add it to a databank of reinterpretations. Eventually, you’ll start to encounter scenarios you’ve already seen and added to your databank.

Reinterpret “this person is willingly hurting someone” until it becomes “this person is a wounded dog, biting everything who approaches without knowing or caring who it hurts or who is trying to help. It’s not cruelty; it’s pain.”

Reinterpret this:

Jordan Peterson claims that some people just have low IQ and “that’s a real problem. Society doesn’t really have a solution to the existence of these kinds of people. They just cost humanity resources and contribute nothing.”

until it becomes:

Jordan Peterson only advocates social darwinism because he’s a millionaire funded by billionaires. He doesn’t even advocate what he cares about. He’s a pathetic shill, desperately chasing money because wealth is the only substance in his life. No love, no hope, no aspirations. A wounded animal with tunnel vision, unable to be happy or form meaningful bonds with people.

And suddenly anger becomes pity.

And once you start looking for it, you’ll realize a rather profound truth,

Evil Never Emerges From a Vacuum.

I had an older brother who called me an, “outcast among outcasts” and that hurt me deeply until years later, when I found an old essay he wrote where he described his greatest insecurity. It was, word for word, “I felt like an outcast among outcasts.” The exact “insult” he had used on me.

Like a wounded animal lashing out.

I have a mother who’s deeply immersed in the intellectual dark web. (Hence me hearing Jordan Peterson enough to drive me crazy.) And I thought that was pretty cruel of her until I realized:

humans are scummy and greedy and anyone “advocating” for a better system just wants an excuse to greedily devour everyone else

… was a damn good description of her entire childhood! All of the adults. All of the people responsible for her. And she cannot look past that, because she formed her worldview in the years during which no figure in her life set aside their own self-interest to be kind to her.

And she needs people like Peterson who will tell her that an unchecked flood of human greed and selfishness is exactly what capitalism was built to endure and to harness.

In reality, most people are better than that, and she should have been treated better. And a bunch of teenagers stranded on an island for fifteen months treated each other better than anyone in her life ever treated her. And she can’t see that.

Like a wounded dog blinded by pain and rage.

Just the other day, my chest was actually constricting due to some random anonymous commenter getting mad at me. (Yes, that happens to us ADHD folks). And the ONLY thing that helped was when I realized, “the commenter also accused me of being a Fed at the end of his comment. Clearly he wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at an FBI agent he believed to be monitoring him and trying to mind-control him on behalf of the globalists or something.”

Yet another wounded animal lunging at every shadow he sees.

I don’t believe it’s possible to dampen an emotion. I certainly don’t think it’s possible for a neurodivergent to bring an emotion to neurotypical levels. After all, as an ADHDer, your hyperfocus will always amplify the shiniest thing in the room, and rage and shame and fear are always the shiniest thing in the room.

But you can cut them off at the source. You can choose to interpret the situation as one that does not call for an ounce of rage in the first place.

Firstly, we must recognize that our empathy and compassion are a privilege – we were loved at a crucial, formative time in our development. We were cuddled at a very specific age that allowed our brains to develop empathy. We were loved at enough pivotal moments that we believe kindness can be expected from people.

Which – at least for me – is impressive, because it was a traumatic upbringing that could have been a hell of a lot better. It’s impressive that such a childhood created someone “good.” But as twisted as our parents and relatives and role models may have treated us (I don’t know your story, but there sure is a lot of trauma in mine) we both still got enough affection to understand human connection, which is a form of happiness that exceeds all of the other forms of happiness combined. Ludicrous wealth? Being top dog? Preying on the weak? None of them come close.

Not everyone got what we got.

Have you heard the phrase, “hurt people hurt people” ?

Edit that. Change it to, “ONLY hurt people hurt people.” Turn it into a mantra: every time you’re upset, look for the hurt that causes the cruelty. I promise you, you will always find it. And when you do, your anger will abate, because you will recognize: it’s not cruelty. It’s pain.

I’ve felt this way most of my life, especially the aspect of injustice.

I started with a new therapist recently, and he’s having me read Codependent No More. Turns out, chapter 1, every single thing they said rings true. So I’m 90% sure I am very Codependent.

One of the biggest ones that stood out to me was the term “righteous indignation” which is something I consider a core part of my identity…if you think about it though, the indignation is from knowing I’m right, and expecting other people to come along, and being furious when they don’t.

At the end of the day, anger is fine. Normal. Necessary. But the reason behind the anger is where you need to be careful.

If it isn’t actually directly impacting you, practice letting go. Abstracted anger is really hard to get rid of once you start figuring out justifications. Gotta find a way to short circuit the process, take a break to breathe, and revisit the situation without the anger and see what happens.

I think explosive, sudden anger is pretty common in many folks regardless of ADHD. However, as you’ve noted, if you feel that there is such intense rage in you that you might be acting irrationally then I would strongly recommend speaking with a therapist.

Everyone experiences and communicates their emotions differently. A good therapist can help you analyze your emotions and work with you to determine why your reactions might be so explosive. It could be due to past trauma, present anxieties, neurodivergence such as ADHD, medication side effects, or any combination of these things. They may even find that you felt or acted in an entirely appropriate manner given the contexts and help assuage your guilt.

Oh yes. Adhd, autism here, so severe over stimulation, impulse issues. Also. Grew up in abusive, violent childhood, where the only conflict resolution taught me was to yell, scream, throw things, lose it. Took me years of therapy to to try to overcome. These are what helped the most, some I do daily.

Dbt, cbt. Focusing on chatter in brain, learning to control it. Various centering, grounding exercises, including

Narrating my actions. Now I’m opening the door, now reaching into pocket…

Close eyes, focus on each of the 5 senses in turn.

Close eyes, just move, without thought, I do this a lot, it looks kinda like Tai chi.

I have a lot of mantras, including:

Let go of the anger, let go of the hate. Don’t become emotionally attached to an abuser. No assumptions, no expectations, no judgment. This is not all of me. Observe, describe, participate. I am both observer and observed.

I’ve learned anger can be useful. Helps recognize problem. Spurs to action. But it’s self sabotaging long term. I don’t like feeling out of control, consumed with hate. I don’t enjoy hurting ppl.

Becoming a violent, out of control abuser, to me, is embarrassing. It’s low class, uneducated, and I’m so much better than that. I try to learn from my mistakes, gain greater control over myself.

To be filled with hateful anger towards someone, that means they have power over me. It’s a form of intimacy, commitment, and why would I expose myself , become that intimate with someone I don’t like?

Ymmv.

You talking about your situation, and for me, I call that my “flash point” where I “breathe fire”. I get to a point, after being pushed too much or too far that I breathe fire. That’s what I call it.

I can take only so much… and usually, in my life, I can take it for a while… course this all depends on other issues around me… kids, bills, finances, car troubles, job, stress, sleep, exhaustion etc. I also encourage you to talk with someone, you are not alone, and hope you find a way to tame the flame.

Side note though… imo standing up to injustice and assholes who are out there purposely causing misery to others and yourself through their misdeeds isn’t always a bad thing.

You may have rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by the perception that a person has been rejected or criticized by important people in their life. It may also be triggered by a sense of falling short—failing to meet their own high standards or others’ expectations.

When this emotional response is externalized, it looks like an impressive, instantaneous rage at the person or situation responsible for causing the pain.

The first medication mentioned as a possible treatment, guanfacine, changed my life to such a degree I did not think was possible.

I encourage you to read through the entire article and maybe discuss with your doctor on possible treatments if this sounds like what you experience.

becomes an unskippable cutscene

I think I hate injustice. You know, a few months ago a lady kicked my dog because she thought he attacked her daughter – he didn’t. What happened was that my dog collided with the mother’s leg while playing with another dog (who dodged mine) in a public park (full of unleashed dogs running around, owners present). As a result, the mother’s leg pushed her daughter, and the mother’s immediate reaction was to kick my dog. I mean, I kinda want to understand, but I don’t, I really don’t. Anyways, I quickly confronted the mother face to face – who was distracted and missed what really happened, while I saw everything – and my peripheral vision went black and her face became blurry. I think I repeated the same phrase, “Why did you kick my dog?”, at least a dozen times while completely zoned out, full automaton style, for 10-15 seconds. I had never experienced anything like that before. I remember the woman whispered to me with a smile, “Hit me, come on, hit me if you’re so tough”. The fun part is that I’m quite muscular, so instead of empathizing with me and my dog, others threatened to call the police (what?) and wanted me to leave the place – a public space. I tried to explain that I wouldn’t harm her or anyone around (I’m generally a super chill person), I just wanted an explanation of why she acted violently when it was clear it was an accident, nobody was hurt, her daughter didn’t even move half a meter and remained unharmed. But in the end I decided to leave the place, still filled with anger, because nobody was willing to listen and everyone was looking at me like I was a caged animal about to snap. That shit ruined my week.

You sound like me when I was young. I would easily explode for no reason and it felt like rage would burn me from inside. To be honest I never found a better way to deal with this other than simply getting older. At 48 I’m much more relaxed and don’t get that easily upset anymore. There are of course still things that annoy me but it’s by far not that intense anymore.

I experience all of my emotions as a flash in the pan. Anger, shock, fear, sadness, joy. All of them, very, very intensely, but only for a moment before I’m back to zero.

That you’re going straight to nuclear at 1 is troubling. You may need to get some professional help for that.

I consider my anger as a result of passion. Neurotypical people don’t usually get as passionate as me so they can’t relate to the boundaries I made up in my head to protect the validity of my emotions I attach to the stuff I care about. If I keep in mind that we all have our different understandings of what reality is I can relate to other peoples issues better.
But honestly I like to shout at people how much they suck with deep passion if they clearly screw someone over who has no bad intentions. I don’t consider this a negative character trait.

For me it’s not just anger, I seem to feel things 10x more. Usually just the negative emotions 🙄. So anger, shame, guilt, sadness, etc. I always thought this was normal, but I’ve learned it is part of emotional dysregulation. I finally got diagnosed with ADHD, but it was hard to say if it was ADHD or major depressive disorder initially. So my doctor and I tried a bunch of things until I hit on Vyvanse, and I finally feel like I have control. The anti depressants did nothing and I’ve stopped taking them once I started Vyvanse (with my docs approval). So that pretty much confirmed it was ADHD for me.

So it might be ADHD but it could also be part of depression. Find a psychiatrist that specializes in ADHD to help you navigate this since the treatments for each can be very different

Duuuuude. I can relate a bit.

I’m usually super chill, and I can count the times on one hand that I have directed my anger at a person.

But a couple weeks ago, I went to push the rack back into the dishwasher and the rubber seal came off the edge again and I lost it.

Loud swearing, ripping the whole seal off, throw the rack on the ground, swear at it some more.

It doesn’t happen often, but I do get that super rage build up and because I was alone I just let it out.