Anger Management: The Rageaholic's Mind

Have you ever been so angry that you felt like you could breathe fire? Anger is one of our most primitive emotions. Feeling angry creates an adrenaline rush in our bodies and our brains. This feeling overcomes you and you feel like superman taking over the world. The rage keeps the adrenaline pumping and for most this is a great feeling and we want to keep feeling it so we stay on a semi-constant state of range. We stay on the verge of outrage. It's almost like being drunk. You become a rageaholic.

Rageaholics react to strong emotions, such as feelings of fear, sadness, shame, inadequacy, guilt or loss with rage. Raging gives the rageaholic a feeling of power. Rage sets up a neurochemical reaction in the brain that can be addictive, producing what is know as rageaholism or rageaholics.

A rageaholic is someone who feeds on expressing rage. Like the alcoholic, the rage-aholic is addicted to blowing up. This is usually caused by the rageaholic stuffing back real feelings and emotions until it builds up the point that the rage-aholic snaps and goes crazy. Stress of any kind can be a trigger. It is a cry for love, but a fear to accept it.

All addictions have symptoms, which allow us to recognize these problems as addictive diseases. The signs of addictive diseases are self-stimulation, compulsion, obsession, denial, withdrawal and craving syndrome and unpredictable behavior.

Rageaholics feel that expressing anger is self-stimulating. It triggers the compulsion for more anger. Rageaholics can be compared to Alcoholics. The more an alcoholic drinks the more they want to drink. It's the same with a Rageaholic. The more they rage, the more they want to rage.

Compulsion or loss of control is the inability to stop expressing anger once we have begun. The inability to control angry words is a certain sign of rageaholism. The loss of control is an addiction. Anger addiction or "rageaholism" is the compulsive pursuit of a mood change by repeatedly engaging in episodes of rage despite adverse consequences. Rageaholics will continue to range compulsively without regard to the negative consequences.