“Why Can’t I Express Anger?” Part I

“I feel all bottled up. I have no outlet for my thoughts and feelings. It feels like I have no control over my feelings especially my angry feelings. I feel if I talk about my feelings, they will explode over everything and everybody. I feel I will fill up the whole room with my anger and these feelings will never end and destroy everything in sight. So I must keep them inside where they do not see the light of day. I must stay bottled up to protect everyone from my overwhelming feelings.”

What is this autistic boy telling us? He seems to be telling us that at times he is in touch with his feelings and when he is, it overwhelms him to such a degree that he feels he needs to control them versus to let them out. He also seems to feel that he has no control over these feelings so he works hard to keep them inside.

Anger is a normal response to feeling frustrated, a loss of control and disappointment. To express one’s anger in a way that others can take is difficult for most people including those with autism. Why do we all have a hard time expressing anger? I believe the young autistic boy at the beginning of this blog stated what many might feel “we feel it will destroy others and we do not feel in control of ourselves when we feel angry.” When someone is expressing angry feelings toward us, we may feel triggered and then become angry back. As a result anger gets anger. Other times particular people or situations may make us feel angry. For example, an authoritarian boss may micromanage us. In turn we might feel controlled and angry. We learn to manage our anger through our early family relationships. Some people manage their anger through competition and explosion, others may be passive and hold in their anger, some are passive-aggressive, and finally some can be assertively angry.

Thus various personality types, people and situations may trigger one’s anger. We all have our own triggers that have evolved and remain with of us as residue waiting for that next trigger to cause us to feel angry. Unfortunately many people have not learned to express their anger assertively and instead rely on early methods of expression such as aggressive explosions, passivity and passive-aggression. We cannot change other people and certain situations, but we can learn and change how we manage anger.

Managing anger for the autistic person is far more complicated than what has been mentioned thus far. Not only does the person with autism have to deal with normal daily triggers, but also their own communication limitations. The autistic person does not have the same outlets for their anger that the ‘typical’ person has. They do not have easy and direct access to their feelings and thus many times when triggered, either explode or keep their anger and other feelings within. They literally cannot manage their feelings because their feelings are dissociated. Dissociation means that parts of the self are not conscious to or available to the person to use in their communications with others. It is this state that the ASD individual lives. Bromberg (1994) believes individuals begin life made up of multiple self-states. Our wholeness develops through a relationship with another person. * Because the autistic person lacks an attachment, he remains in a non-whole state. Thus the individual has different parts of himself that have not integrated. What does dissociation look like: 1) the person who is talking about one thing and then switches to another topic very dramatically, 2) the person who cannot talk about feelings, but can talk about an obscure topic, 3) the person who has a special ability such as remembering dates, but cannot attend to the topic at hand.

Thus the dissociated state of the ASD individual prevents him from being able to consciously access his feelings and therefore be able to express those feelings in relationship to others. Next week I will discuss how one might work with the angry feelings of an autistic person.


* For more information see: Bromberg, P. M. (1994), “Speak! That I May See You” Some Reflections on Dissociation, Reality, and Psychoanalytic Listening. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4 (4): 517-547.