Learn Control: Don't Let Rage Ruin Your Life

All people experience anger, but those with BPD and BPD traits have specific triggers that can set them off into an anger or rage episode. Knowing these triggers can help you learn to identify and control your anger and rage.

Anger or rage is likely to be seen from those with BPD when they feel like a failure, feel neglected, alone, rejected, or abandoned. Once triggered, the individual with BPD tends to wonder whether the caregiver, or love object or favorite person, cares and gives enough.

Once the individual with BPD experiences a rage episode panic typically follows in an often reckless execution (anger behaviors or gestures towards or others of themselves) to get the love object to provide the much wanted and needed affection and nurturance.

What tends to happen is that the love object may become frightened, angry themselves, anxious, or a whole host of other emotions that causes further distance out of fear that they need to protect themselves. When this occurs, the individual with BPD feels more alone but continues to engage in the anger/rage episode trying to get an external force to provide the needed control – inpatient placement may be needed. This regretfully becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy often seen in BPD.

Remember, knowledge is power and understanding your anger and rage and how it fits with your BPD can help you identify triggers, emotional buttons, and the type of anger you have to then learn and use anger reduction techniques to help get control over your BPD, your anger, and your life.

Daniel J. Fox, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist in Texas, international speaker, and award winning author. He has been specializing in the treatment and assessment of individuals with personality disorders for over 15 years in the state and federal prison system, universities, and in private practice. His specialty areas include personality disorders, ethics, burnout prevention, and emotional intelligence.

He has published several articles in these areas and is the author of:

The Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook: An Integrative Program to Understand and Manage Your BPD. Available May 1, 2019, but you can pre-order it now at: https://goo.gl/LQEgy1

Antisocial, Borderline, Narcissistic and Histrionic Workbook: Treatment Strategies for Cluster B Personality Disorders (IPBA Benjamin Franklin Gold Award Winner): https://goo.gl/BLRkFy

Narcissistic Personality Disorder Toolbox: 55 Practical Treatment Techniques for Clients, Their Parents & Their Children: https://goo.gl/sZYhym
The Clinician’s Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders: https://goo.gl/ZAVe9v

Dr. Fox has given numerous workshops and seminars on ethics and personality disorders, personality disorders and crime, treatment solutions for treating clients along the antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, and histrionic personality spectrum, emotional intelligence, managing mental health within the prison system, and others. Dr. Fox maintains a website of various treatment interventions focused on working with and attenuating the symptomatology related to individuals along the antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, and histrionic personality spectrum (www.drdfox.com).

YouTube:    / drdanielfox  
Dr. Fox’s website: http://www.drdfox.com/
Facebook:   / appliedpsychservices  
Twitter:   / drdanieljfox1  
LinkedIn:   / drdfox  
Instagram:   / drdfox  
Amazon Author’s Page: amazon.com/author/drfox

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Citation:
Berenson, et al. (2011). The Rejection-Rage Contingency in Borderline Personality Disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120: 681-690.