Aggressive after attack

First, recount the incident in the third person (using "he" instead of "I") and report the incident as if it were an article in a newspaper, beginning from before the attack and working through at least until you'd been treated in hospital. Often this in itself triggers the process of finding new interpretations for what happened. Commonly this will mean that you start to realise there wasn't anything you could have done to prevent this (perhaps random) attack. You may start to realise then that there's nothing specific about you which invited this attack. Your counsellor or friend may offer useful insights to help this process. Then you go through it again, saying what you thought about yourself, the attackers and your place in the world, and what you think now. Usually people discover they'd developed some unrealistic views on these subjects, including your vulnerability and whether or not you deserved the attack. You didn't! Whatever you'd been doing or not doing, the aggressors had the choice about how they'd behave and you are not responsible for their actions. This also allows you to start realising you were powerless in that situation but you do have power in other situations. Then go through a third time, investigating your feelings. Commonly the person who's been subjected to this level of abuse feels guilty, inadequate and vulnerable. Again the process of relating this in the presence of someone else helps you to see that the guilt belongs to the aggressors, and that you're not inadequate. Some forces are overwhelming, and would be for anybody. There's no way you could suddenly have turned into Rambo or The Terminator because these kinds of "cartoon" figures are unrealistic, so there's nothing wrong with you if you weren't able to defend yourself under those circumstances. But you're not always in those circumstances, are you? You can now make good decisions about where you'll go, who with and doing what to give yourself the best chance of staying safe.

The next part is to address your issues around anger, which have been triggered by your helplessness in those circumstances. Take a piece of A4 paper and across the top write: emotions, bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, so you now have 4 vertical columns. Down one side of the paper put the numbers 0-10. 0 is perfectly calm, appropriate bodily sensations, thoughts and actions. 10 is absolute rage where you feel out of control and do and say things you later regret. 1 is "mild annoyance", by 5 you've got to "cross", and by 7 you're likely to be angry, with certain other emotions (e.g. fear, hopeless, helpless, sad, frustrated, powerless), with bodily sensations perhaps including tight chest or throat, head feeling full and hot, thoughts including "I'm powerless, I can only defend myself with violence" and actions perhaps including shouting, balling fists, abusive language or whatever. On average it takes people around 2 weeks to fill in all the parts of all the columns. The purpose of this is twofold. Pretending you're not angry doesn't work as it means you're likely to go straight from 1 to 10. Realising you, like everyone else, have degrees of anger gives a greater sense of being in control. And it helps you recognise your trigger-points so when you, for example, feel yourself balling your fists you can walk away until you've got yourself sorted out. Anger in itself is neither good nor bad. It's a tool, like a knife, which can be used to stab someone or butter bread. Similarly anger is a tool to protect yourself, but sometimes we're tempted to use it in ways that are ultimately damaging to ourselves, as you fear you may be alienating your friends. You can tell your friends when you're calm and OK that as part of your anger-management process, you'll be walking away when you start getting very angry, and that you're not abandoning them. You're giving yourself space to calm down so you can come back and address the issue with them within the next 10-30 minutes. In the meantime you might choose to avoid potential trigger situations such as mock-fighting.

Your backlog of anger won't just go away. If you bottle it up, you've noticed "it" (that's you!) blows up at inappropriate times. You may decide you'll express some of that pent-up anger in ways that are safe for you and everybody else. You might, for example, stand under a railway bridge when a train passes over and yell. You might yell and hit cushions. You could join a gym and use a punchbag. You could write a poison-pen letter to the aggressors, as vicious as you like, but promising yourself that as you're using your anger safely you won't let anybody else (including them) ever see the letter, so you put it away in a secret place. A week later you might take it out and rewrite it more calmly, taking pleasure in destroying the vicious version. Again put it away for a week and then write a calm, polite version, saying how you feel and what you want, and destroying the medium version too. You may decide to destroy the third version, or let a trusted friend or your counsellor see it.

What are the good things about all this? That you'll learn to manage your feelings, all of them, more appropriately and in ways which will give you the best chance of getting what you want. You'll work out who are safe people to be around, and who are good friends and potential girlfriends. You'll realise you don't have to devote lots of time to people who aren't putting 50% into your relationship with them. You'll be assertive (which is neither aggressive nor passive, but acting with mutual respect to get more of what you want). You can start saying, "When you do that, I feel this, so will you do (something specific and constructive) instead?" Once you can use your feelings assertively you'll realise that sharing them appropriately is a great way of building better relationships, especially with yourself.

Lots of events are random. They're not part of any grand plan of the universe, they just happen. But you can process them mentally so that you use them to make new, self-supportive decisions about yourself, other individuals and your place in the world.

I do sympathise, Evan, and I wish you peace of mind. Good luck.