Rage is an experience of excessive anger.
Rage is an event triggered when you have too much anger to handle normally. Basically, raging represents an emergency alternative to how you usually deal with anger. When talking with the person you’re upset with goes nowhere, when “stuffing” your anger doesn’t work, when taking a time-out is useless, when thinking about a problem just makes you crazy, when nobody understands, when relaxation is impossible, when everything the frontal lobes of your brain suggest fails—that’s when you are ready to rage.

Rage is a transformative experience.
Something changes inside you during a rage. The measure of that transformation is one or more of these three possibilities: you lose conscious awareness of what you say and do; you feel like you are a different person in a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde temporary personality switch; you lose control of your behavior, saying and doing things that normally you would and could control.

For every total rage, you probably have several partial rages.
Not all rages are consuming events. Many are smaller mini-rages, in which you only lose partial control. You need to learn everything you can about these partial rages to maximize self-control.

You may often have near-rage episodes as well.
These are times when you come very close to a meltdown, but somehow you stop. Here too, you need to study these events. Perhaps by doing so, you can discover the small but critical differences between almost having a rage and actually raging.

Not all rages look alike.
One big division is between sudden and seething rages. While sudden rages occur very quickly and often with little warning, seething rages build over days, weeks, months, and years. If sudden rages are like tornadoes, then seething rages are like underground fi res slowly burning up everything in their paths.

Another way to divide rages is by the threat that each rage addresses.
Survival rages defend against a perceived life- threatening physical assault. Impotent rages battle a deep sense of being unable to control important aspects of your life. Shame-based rages try to annihilate anyone who has intentionally or unintentionally shamed you. Abandonment rages are out-of-control protests against the threat of someone leaving.

If you are a rager, you aren’t the only one in the world with this problem.
Probably up to 20 percent of the population has had at least occasional rage episodes. Most of these rage events are partial rages. Nevertheless, raging is always dangerous and can be fatal.

Rages can be prevented.
Rage prevention is the name of the game. It is the key to a better life. Frequently, you can stop a rage before it happens if you take a time-out or use other standard anger management techniques. You may also want to try certain medications that keep your brain from having a meltdown.

Each kind of rage needs to be treated a little differently.
Each type of rage has its own set of options for change. Study these ideas very carefully. You may also figure out other good ways that help you handle your rages. Please remember that you don’t have to do this alone. You may need to recruit family, friends, professional counselors and doctors, spiritual advisors, and others in the very worthy cause of helping you quit raging.

Here’s the bottom line: Raging can be stopped. You can quit raging. You can have a better life.

Excerpt from Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger by Ronald T. Potter-Efron, MSW, Ph.D.