Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

[shadesong]

I have a nasty temper.

Yes, I know, you're all terribly surprised. I heard the collective gasp. :)

So I just wanted to present an example and some personal history; slice-of-life, as darkmattr would put it.

So when I was 16, I was in this adolescent psychiatric institute or, as I put it in letters to friends, junior loony bin. I'll tell you the full story of this someday, I promise, but only the relevant bit for now.

This was a coed facility, boys in one hall and girls in another. And it was mostly the boys that "went off", as they termed it - got violent, had "episodes". Girls generally don't. They fight with the other girls, but they don't go off. And when they do, it's fairly mild.

This place had a system for dealing with kids going off - if it was relatively minor, RTC (the name of the place) staff would be able to handle it. By handle it, I mean physically wrestle the kid into the Quiet Room, shoot them full of Thorazine, and occasionally put them in restraints. If the kid was too much for RTC staff to handle, they'd announce a Code Yellow to the entire hospital, and some of their staff would come up. Code Red - an even less controllable kid. More staff. And the ultimate - All Available Males. Every man on the hospital staff that was not currently giving a patient an IV or whatever was summoned to the RTC. Usually, they upgrade during a situation - call a Yellow first, then a Red if they need more help. All Available Males was rarely used.

The first time I went off, they called Yellow, then Red, then All Available Males. Every subsequent time, they went straight to "All Available Males to the RTC, stat!"

Why?

I was the only female berserker they'd ever seen. Yes, berzerker, totally - I went feral on them. It took up to 8 men to wrestle me to the floor for my shot (I was 75 pounds then, mind you), and even then, I'd mind-over-matter the drugs. But it wasn't just that.

Imagine a female berzerker empath.

Yeah.

Lots of sensi tive kids get sent to the junior loony. Hear voices? You're schizophrenic! Off to junior loony.

When I start to lose my temper, I start to broadcast. And not only did they need full staff just to deal with me - they needed to deal with the other dozen kids that I'd set off.

Yeah.

Mmm. I also have the dubious distinction of being the only person held in 6-point restraints for over 6 hours. I was in for 36.... because I did not stop struggling and shouting imprecations for 34 hours after they finally got me in there. My rage is pretty much unstoppable. Didn't need sleep, didn't need food, just fed on the rage until my body got the better of me. Two hours after I fell asleep, they cautiously allowed the only staff member I trusted (big black guy, Brian something) to carry me to my bed in my room, where they secured me in four-point restraints and locked Brian in with me. When I finally woke up, I realized I was in restraints and started to fire up again, but Brian, knowing me, knew how to stall me - he started reading to me from the Barsoom books. He read about half of the first book before he was satisfied that I was really calm. 46 hours total in restraints.

That is how strong my capacity for rage is.

Read my bio. I can be your best friend or your worst enemy; you choose. My capacity for love is just as great as my capacity for anger.

The best thing for people to do when I get like this is to just back away. Antagonizing me will only get you verbally eviscerated, as a certain someone (who's had it coming for a while) found out today.

I'm okay now. And I apologize for the Vibes O' Fury some of you were feeling rolling off of me. I've taken a walk and listened to Great Big Sea, and I'm feeling Much Better Now.

*hugs* to all...


!

Comments

[skylion.livejournal.com]

::hugs::
honestly, it makes you wonder what you feel about me. i know you know. and I can only imagine your anger. i can feel my own. sorry if this comes off as sounding bad. but i am in a very bad mood myself. trying to be calm. but...
thorazine sounds good at the moment.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I'm not actively angry at you.... I'm just struggling with how to accept things. But none of those waves of fury are aimed at you...

They actually had to up me from Thorazine to Haldol; my body got too accustomed to the Thorazine.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

You *do* remind me of Katchoo. ^^;

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I identify with her pretty strongly. :)

[mfree.livejournal.com]

What I was posting earlier was more out of concern than anything else. I never mean to antagonize anyone, and I hope I haven't pushed you away in any manner.

Peace?

[gev.livejournal.com]

Where's the Earth-shattering KA-BOOM?

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

[elorie.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Projective empath, huh?

Been, there, done that, though not to the extreme. I am not pleasant when I'm angry, either, though I've never lost control. I have decked people a foot taller and 100 lbs heavier than I...I mean laid them out on the ground. I've made mundane strangers turn pale and step back with a look.

Grounding is your friend. Not only can you moderate your own emotions that way, you can use your connection to others to ground theirs as well. Before I learned that particular trick, arguments with my ex-husband...another empath...tended to get really ugly, really fast. Once I did learn it, we could have a disagreement and remain reasonable.

The other thing that dawned on me fairly recently is that the ability to project strong negative emotions, which can be pretty detrimental to one's personal life, can also be a very useful talent for a Warrior to have....and that that warrior energy, applied where it is useful and constructive, is then less likely to be misapplied unintentionally where it does harm. I've channelled some of it into being an activist, but haven't quite found my niche really....it's still an incomplete answer. But at least I'm more aware of the question.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Projective and receptive. Sucks sometimes!

*hugs* Glad to know others are on the same path...


X

[kidarrian.livejournal.com]

this isn't anger. this is rage. combine rage in a transmiting empath and you have fuel to fight on and on...this I know. Been there dun that...broke the bones.

I don't fight anymore because of that, I don't like comming to and seeing the results....it starts as fear, then blood is drawn and the feral bear comes out.....when its life or death nothing else matters...not good in a polite society..

I was lucky in that I was not required to take drugs for very long (the times I was they didn't do much good, I think empaths with rage abilities matabolize drugs way to fast)

I wish psychic and magickal abilities where more comonly accepted, there is a lot of very fucked up kids out there whom are going to be burnt out or permently tramatized and lose there gifts due to idiots who refuse to belive evidence right in front of there eyes....


I hope adding you to my freinds list was allright? seems we have something in common that we might benifit from a shared observations of phenomon

be well

[elorie.livejournal.com]

I know. Rage. It's just that I haven't been THAT far out in....many years. And while it's not strictly true that I haven't ever lost control....it was a long time ago, and when I go over the edge I don't yell or scream or fight. I become Very Very Calm and Very Quiet, but sensitive people flinch when they look me in the eye and if you get in my way...oops, I broke your arm. But very calmly and quietly. Have walked into..or maybe I should say, **through**...a door and bloodied my nose in that state.

I don't know that I have that much capacity for rage any more. Not for less than someone threatening my son, at any rate. I don't miss it. But I have felt a less corrosive and blinded version of that terrible calm, in recent memory...at the School of the Americas protest last November. It's in my LJ, in the middle of November somewhere....

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I think empaths with rage abilities matabolize drugs way to fast

Too true... they could never believe how fast I could burn them through my system...

I wish psychic and magickal abilities where more comonly accepted, there is a lot of very fucked up kids out there whom are going to be burnt out or permently tramatized and lose there gifts due to idiots who refuse to belive evidence right in front of there eyes....

Amen to that! I'm writing a comic book in which some of the characters "rescue" kids in situations like that....

And of course you're welcome to add me - well met!

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

I was lucky in that I was not required to take drugs for very long (the times I was they didn't do much good, I think empaths with rage abilities matabolize drugs way to fast)

*nod* It's not just rage that does it, though. Fear will trigger the same response. Plus a lot of us seem to be able to out-stubborn drug effects: if we're not willing to let it work, it's not going to! (For instance, iroshi is completely unaffected by alcohol when she doesn't feel safe enough to relax.)

Speed-metabolizing drugs can be unpleasant when you *want* the effects, though. I ended up doing the second half of a root canal without painkiller of any kind, because I was burning off about 30 minutes in under 5. After the second time, I declared that I wasn't having any more, and I would just hold still for the rest of it. (The burning-off process involved my heart racing and my whole body shaking, which scared the doctor and pissed me off. Plus the root canal pain was more tolerable than the shots. *shrug*)

[tarpo.livejournal.com]

GBS is a great cureall when you are running high isn't it? Always helps me unwind and clear my head

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Yep.. I think sometimes yendi only relaxes when he sees me reaching for a GBS CD. It means I'm Done. :)


/

[mightywombat.livejournal.com]

I'm on exactly the other end of the spectrum, I think. I mean, I can feel angry, but I've never felt that haze of red Rage that you're writing about. I don't even think I have the capacity to feel it. I'm a very receptive person; very much the water sign. Actually, I rarely feel any kind of emotion burning like that... like a fire in my heart, and that, more than anything, scares me. I'm not an unfeeling, uncaring person. If anything, I'm too sensitive, but my range of emotion is very narrow, and I'm not very expressive with anything but laughter. I worry sometimes that maybe I've trained myself to never feel any emotion in any great extreme, and that now I'm just stuck in this half depression shadow of emotion that I feel pretty regularly nowadays. Not a happy thought...

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Oh, c'mon over here. I'll piss you off. I'm really good at that. :)


Seriously, though... *hugs*

[snowelf.livejournal.com]

Whoa, Song...I thought I had a bad temper...

But I know what you mean...I don't explode often, but when I do...

Somehow, even though I have read your bio, it never occurred to me that you could be an enemy of mine.

But I know what you mean about the best thing being to back off...I'm the same way.

I didn't really notice your fury, I have had enough with my own...I was so mad I was ready to KILL someone...which scares me.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could ever be your enemy. :)

How're you doing now? Better?


ÿ

Re: Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I've also been a projecting empath but in the other direction. The only thing I tend to project is a grounding energy. It's come in useful at times...

Re: Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think I need you!


b

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know, you're all terribly surprised.

Not in the slightest. You're too much like me in too many ways for me to be surprised at very much about you. If I had less understanding parents, or worse things happen to me as a kid, I would've joined you in the junior loony bin. Actually, I had at least one psych tell mom I needed to go there, anyway. But my mom was the kind that let the doc put me on the tranqs they wanted me on for my hyperness...and took me off after a week without bothering to ask the doc, because she'd rather deal with me hyper and occasionally bezerker than mind-numbed zombie. When the psych in the hospital told her I'd need two years of therapy (at least) to become a "functioning member of society" she came very close to laughing in the doc's face. Mom thought I was a pretty well functioning member already. (I didn't like the doc, you see. She was condescending. I refused to speak in her presence for the entire week I was there. ^_^)

My mom may not have understood that the reason I went off on rampages for no discernable reason was channeling other people's emotions and eventually overflowing, but she managed to discover that the best way to deal with it was not to punish me, but just to send me to my room (hey, alone time!) until I calmed down. It worked. Whether she believed me at the time about George-the-ghost I'll never know, but she never, EVER, told me I was making it up. (You know, except the time I blamed him for splattering the ketchup on the wall, and even then I got spanked for *lying*, not for splattering the ketchup. :) If I heard voices, she encouraged me to treat them like any other voices...don't take their word for anything, but be willing to listen. She taught me to think for myself.

As much as I may dislike her lying mouth, and not trust her...my mother gave me many precious gifts, and I love her dearly.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Sarcasm, Ro! It was sarcasm! :) *hugs* I know you get me...

My mom had a real unwillingness to hear anything out of the ordinary. The only other sensitives I knew growing up - my abuser and his son. Reeeal healthy.


e

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

*chuckles evilly* Fools. They always underestimate the small women. They think we're weak, just because we're little.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm a deadly combination - a short chick, a mama-wolf to her friends, and a mother. :)


`

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you posted a link to this.

I've not been where you have.
But I struggle a lot with my anger.
Because I come from a family where the men don't just get angry - they see red, they lose control, and my brother (for example) has had times where his friends have said his eyes literally go red and all they can do to deal with him is line up and let him work out his anger on each of them until he's no longer dangerous.

So this is what I've learned anger is.

As I said, I've never been where your past took you.
Where I've been has been sobering enough.
I'm not a scary person. I'm short, I don't know how to throw a punch, I'd rather avoid a confrontation of any sort. I'm the one people expect to bring peace to situations.

But when I'm angry..I have a friend that has asked me to never talk to her in rage again, because my voice goes soft and low and cold. It scared her more than she could relay. And that was just my voice. Over the phone.

An ex-boyfriend (over a foot taller than I am, and much stronger) made me angry, several years ago. We were sitting and talking, and he crossed a line. I don't know what I did or how I reacted - I literally cannot remember - but when I could see again (and oh how I wish I was exaggerating), he had turned white, was restraining me, and asking me to please not him him.

And with my husband..over the past year and a half, when I get angry - which is rare - I no longer blank out. But I absolutely want to fight. I want to throw a punch, and I want him to fight back. Again, it's irrational, and it scares him. Imagine a grizzly bear and a deer - the bear, heavier, stronger, not wanting to hit back and struggling not to - the deer snarling, "Bring it on - treat me like a man - hit me."

It's not rational.
And it's probably related to my anxiety disorder, and the fact that I don't know how to get mad in appropriate ways - so it explodes, and it's embarrassingly Hulk-ish.

And until I read this post from you, I rather thought I was alone in it.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

I'm not a scary person. I'm short, I don't know how to throw a punch, I'd rather avoid a confrontation of any sort.

Heh. I'm 4'11" and small-boned. :)

You're definitely not alone....

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

note to self: never get 'song mad. Ever.