When was the most recent time that you lost your temper & when you do does it feel like who or whatever caused this to happen got the better of you?

I ditto the toxic confrontation thing, yelling at someone you love, threats, name calling, loud shouting when they are just a foot or two or three away. I don’t like to be treated this way, I don’t want to treat someone I love that way. This includes friends, family, associates.
But I have the ability to do this yelling/arguing, and I will to protect from a threatening person if necessary.

There was so much yelling when I was growing up, I vowed when I was 18 and moved out, I would not have any more of it, verbal or physical abuse in my life.

I can’t be around people who do this. So no, I don’t thrive in that, it kills me.
That behavior and cigarette smoke are deal breakers to me.

Disagreements are acceptable. I want the win-win.

I don’t like losing my temper, and I work hard to keep it in check. I am almost always sucessful.
The last time I lost that battle was when my wife and I were walking from the parking lot to the movie theater. She had been critical of my driving, and then began talking about how she wanted me to retire right now, and sell the house. I was calmly explaining how the market is bad for selling the house, and that I needed to wait at least till I am 55 to retire.
I was not angry, and I was keeping control.
Then, some asshole began going against a light, and almost hit me in the crosswalk.
I stood at his car door screaming obscenities at his dumb ass. If he had gotten out of the car, there was no way he would have made it upright.
I walked into the movie theater shaking from anger. It took the better part of the day to calm down.

I last lost my temper this morning….. at my computer. Modern, digital technology really winds me up, all the time. I liked the days when there were mechanical connections between things. You pressed a button & that physically switched something on. Not like this digital crap where you press a button, a control unit considers your request, then does it’s own thing. Sodding digital technology can burn in hell!!!!!!!

The answer to this, for me, kind of depends on how you define losing your temper. If you mean being so angry that you completely lose any sense of holding yourself back and you are willing to do anything to hurt the person you are angry at, then I think I’ve only done that once in my life and it happened thirty years ago. Of course, me being me, the only violence on my part involved me throwing a piece of rotten fruit at the object of my hatred. I think it was a pear.

If you mean merely losing control of your tongue and your anger, but not to the point of violence, that happened two or three years ago. I got really, really angry with my son for not even trying to play something he was supposed to be working on in piano practice. I screamed at him and I couldn’t have come closer to hitting him without actually hitting him.

I was immediately so shocked at my behavior and my feelings that I walked right out the front door and didn’t come back for several hours of walking around. One thought ran around in my mind over and over: no one loves me. No one cares if I disappear. I should just go, and never stop.

What I didn’t know at that time was that I was experiencing symptoms of my first mania. Indeed, I kind of thought I was crazy, but not diagnosably crazy. The incident scared me badly, and I have never let myself come close to that since.