What it is
Some psychologists mean by auto-aggression negative emotions directed towards oneself: anger, rage, irritation and others. Others are self-destructive behavior, harming themselves, their well-being and peace of mind. I adhere to the second understanding, because emotions are a delicate thing and must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. With behavior, everything is usually clearer.
Auto-aggression can manifest itself in different ways. Sometimes a person is aware that he is angry with himself and harming himself, and sometimes he does it unconsciously. In this case, the person does not recognize auto-aggression, but something happens to him, as if “by chance.” For example, he loses caution and gets injured at home, or begins to intensively seek conflicts and provokes a fight. Or he works without rest and ends up in the hospital with an exacerbation of a stomach ulcer.
Auto-aggression does not necessarily mean active actions such as inflicting wounds on oneself. Unconsciously, it can manifest itself in careless driving that causes accidents, alcohol and drug abuse, or breaking the habit of looking left before crossing the road. Unhealthy habits like smoking and overeating are also auto-aggression. By the way, some psychoanalysts consider smoking and drinking alcohol as signs of fixation at the oral-sadistic stage - the period when the child bites the mother's breast and thus realizes his power over her. After all, alcohol and smoking give burning sensations concentrated in the oral cavity. But passion for extreme sports is more often caused by the desire to fill some emptiness in life and make it brighter due to a surge of adrenaline - in my opinion, most of these sports in reality are not as dangerous as they seem at first glance. Drinking alcohol or driving aggressively is more destructive than, for example, mountain biking.
Sometimes auto-aggression is not expressed in any actions, but manifests itself in psychosomatics. A person does not release negative emotions, accumulates stress and gets a real disease. Most often these are diseases of the cardiovascular system (for example, hypertension) or the gastrointestinal tract (gastritis, ulcers, esophagitis).
Exercise to Identify Anger Symptoms
Now I encourage everyone to do a special exercise2 in which you will become familiar with your own components of anger. This exercise alone will not turn your world upside down and make you calm like a Tibetan monk. But this is a small step towards full-fledged anger management skills.
You will need: print out the exercise and 2 markers of different colors (ideally
