I did check to see if there was a current thread on sudden episodes of anger/rage/panic/anxiety - whatever. But there doesn't seem to be.
For whatever reason, I have a hair-trigger temper. Before I was diagnosed six years ago, I knew I could be hot-tempered but losing my temper happened only a couple of times a year. Since then, anything can anger me and that will immediately escalate. Generally, I manage that by avoiding people. (Don't get side-tracked by that, I really do prefer solitude and it's always been that way. There are people who have a fulfilled life with three or four friends capable of stimulating conversation. We're known as introverts.)
Yesterday, I was embroiled in a situation that I could not have been prepared for. Sitting alone on a station platform, the nearest person more than 50ft away and on the opposite platform, I could not anticipate becoming the subject of ridicule of the crowd of strangers over there. Who would?
Yet, there I was, sitting on a sunny seat waiting for the train I've taken over two hundred times in the past year, a train I knew would arrive at the opposite platform at 13:42 and was more than ten minutes away. I was aware of the shouting and whistling from behind me and ignored it but it was clearly aimed at me so I turned round and the station guard was shouting at me about being on the wrong platform. I said I knew that and I was just sitting in the sun. This against a background of catcalls of "Should we all go over there to catch the train that's coming in on THIS platform?" and more whistling.
He walked off the platform and I crossed the footbridge to have words with him. I pointed out that whatever his need for drama, I did not appreciate being conscripted into his lunchtime theatre and being publicly ridiculed. I made the point that since he knew I made that trip every other day, and we'd last spoken just two days ago, he couldn't possibly defend his position that it was his job to let me know I was on the wrong platform. He ordered me to stop shouting and I shut that down by pointing out his shouting at me was the topic under discussion.
Anyway, enough of the venting. My problem is that when something triggers my anger, I can no longer rein it in. It just escalates and it lasts for hours. Now I know that people who know about these things refer to CBT but I think that doesn't really help if the rage is caused by a chemical imbalance that are the result of out of range glucose levels.
So there's no point in me telling myself that this was an innocent mistake and that the guy had failed to recognise me because I was sitting with my back to him - because I'm still livid about him exposing me to public ridicule. He could have just walked away when he saw my face and I shouted back that I knew all about the train and I was just sunning myself.
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