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My son is a 24 year old alcoholic. He has so much anger and when he expresses it it comes out as ugly RAGE all the time!! What is the rage about? The littlest thing I say sets him off and he just explodes and yells and he is so mean and ugly!! Does anyone experience this behavior and if so how do you deal with it?
Remember that your son is in the grips of the disease of alcoholism. He has as much control over it as you do. The anger could be coming from many things, but in the long run, when my AH starts being nasty to me, I tell myself "that's the disease talking through him". It makes it easier for me to have some compassion for him.
The disease will find any way it can to have an excuse to drink, drink and drink some more. Sometimes it starts fights with others to create drama so the A will go and drink to ease the pain of the drama. Sometimes it chooses to take offense to everything and anything around them, and in their defensiveness, the go have a drink to feel better. Hey, look! The sun is shining! What a great thing to drink to!
It's completely irrational stuff flying out of them when they're in the full grips of the disease.
It's your job to somehow in your mind separate the disease from the person. Don't react. Don't yell, scream, cry, laugh. Just remain calm. But don't make that an icy-shoulder calm, either.
Have you been getting to any Al-anon meetings? Pick up some of the free pamphlets they usually have at the meetings. They contain a lot of great information about where all that rage is coming from. That could be a good starting point for you.
I was always asking "why" about the A's behavior. The issue is even if we know "why" there is nothing we can do to "make" them recover.
So the short answer is that you have to protect yourself when he is out of control and distance and detach. While you may not "feel" like doing that in fact absolutely nothing you can do will "make" him sober.
Of course you can do things like not "enable" him and actually one thing is to not tolerate his behavior. I used to think not tolerating was confronting morning noon and night, now I see that detaching (which is an art) helps more. It saves my energy for one.
I found at first when I stopped reacting, the intimidation and anger even increased. My prior reaction was to fix things and apologize for lots of things that I had no control over. So when I stopped stepping up or accepting the blame for whatever, it seemed to frustrate my AH more, drank more, even crazier then. Others have said they joined in on the fray by reacting with anger, no reaction helped more for this too.
My detachment became just listening and not fixing things that weren't mine to fix. If crazy, I just went to bathroom with locked door until he fell back to sleep or passed out. (the snoring was the give away) Once when he kept returning to me with the same complaint and intimidation, saying I can't talk about this now, could we talk tomorrow finally ended it. Stayed calm and kind. He still stormed off and went to bed, but I felt safer. It has been a tremendous help for me not to even try to talk to him when he's drinking or the next morning when he is hostile.
this is just my esh as the rage increased when I start to change. I agree with the others, it is the alcohol or the disease not the person who has so much rage.
hugs, ddub
-- Edited by ddub at 00:04, 2008-04-09
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"Choices are the hinges of destiny." Pythagoras You can't change the past, but you can change the future.
I found that with my own AH if I participated in the anger by makng a judgement or returning his anger with anger myself it only served to make it worse. I have learned to practice detachment with love.
When he is under the influence my AH is very argumentative. If I judge his drinking in any way, I have immediately become his enemy. This will cause him to erupt in extreme rage. I have learned that nothing can be acomplished when he has been drinking. I don't have conversations with him when he is drinking. I become involved with things that matter to me. Reading a book watching a movie, sewing etc.
Attending AlAnon meetings have become a life saver for me. I also read as much AlAnon literature as I can get my hands on. This has helped me to understand this disease called alcoholism.
I urge you to attend a face to face meeting. Keep coming back here we will be here for you.
Love and Blessings,
Claudia
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A person's a person no matter how small --Dr Suess
By being calm and not feeding into his rage, doesn't that lead him to believe it's ok to continue to be mean and rageful toward me? I understand what you're saying about detaching for my peace of mind and my sanity. But, at the same time I don't want him to think it's ok to treat me with the mean raging behavior. Does this make sense? What are your thoughts?
Actually not feeding into it is a way to set a boundary. Boundaries are set in lots of ways. I used to call the A frequently, daily and let him know in no uncertain terms how much I hated what he did to me and to our dogs. Now I simply don't answer his calls at all. Its the same message but I'm not exhausted by it. I know he has the message I am very very very angry at him.
There are lots of books on boundaries out there. They are a good resource to learn how to have them. Pia Melody has a lot of stuff on both internal and external boundaries.
Full force confrontation isn't the only tool. When I came into Al anon a long time ago one speaker I heard said the only tool she had was to bang on stuff with a hammer. In Al anon we learn a repetoire of tools and its up to us to use them. For some people that might be tellin the A not to call when he is drunk for others it may be leaving them and not speaking to the A again. Some people choose to deal with an A on an ongoing basis others don't. We have tools to help us either way. Practice helps.
When you tell him it's unacceptable for him to yell and scream at you, what are you looking for when you tell him that? If you're looking for him to suddenly have a lightbulb light up in his head and "understand" you and then tell you he's sorry, then you're simply trying to control him. Trying to "make him" see that he's behaving poorly.
If you want to tell him it's unacceptable for him to yell at you like that, then go ahead and say it, but don't stick around to make sure he "gets it". Drop your end of the tug-of-war rope the moment you've said your piece, calmly leave the room (no dramatics), go for a walk somewhere, just get out of his presence so you can collect yourself and give yourself some serenity.
I was reading in the AA book yesterday, and this really stuck with me. It's in the metaphor of an alcoholic using alcohol to solve his problems, but I took it in the al-anon way of my old ways of arguing and manipulating to solve problems:
...like a man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so he can't feel the ache.
I view my arguing with my AH and trying to get him to "understand" me just about as effective as the metaphor of beating myself on the head with a hammer. All it does is cause a lot of stress and pain for me and my AH. So why take up the fight?
So I'm working on taking the path of least resistance - which is actually through ME. Trying to push through my AH, I'm just met with barrier after barrier after barrier... but me? If I go through me I can choose to take down the barriers to get myself out.
