1Hormones are part of this for everyone, not only for men and not only in adolescence. If your flares seem to arrive with a rhythm, that rhythm is worth writing down.
Episodes that look random from close up often turn out to have a shape once there is a record of them: a point in a monthly cycle, a change of medication, a course of steroids, the months after an illness. A pattern like that points somewhere practical, which is putting the hard conversations on the easier days rather than trying to be a better person on the difficult ones. Anabolic steroid use has a well known reputation for rage and needs medical help rather than psychological technique.
Islamic evidence
He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful (Quran 32:9). The body and its workings were given to you, so learning how yours actually runs is part of looking after what you were given.
“Then He moulded him; He breathed from His Spirit into him; He gave you hearing, sight, and minds. How seldom you are grateful”
Qur'an 32:9
Psychological evidence
In a placebo controlled experiment, a single dose of testosterone rapidly increased aggressive behaviour, but only in men who were already high in dominance or impulsivity. The hormone did not act on its own, it worked through the person it was given to. That is a useful correction to the idea that body chemistry settles behaviour by itself, and it also means a pattern in you is worth knowing rather than worth fearing.
Carré JM, Geniole SN, Ortiz TL, Bird BM, Videto A, Bonin PL. (2017). Biological psychiatry · doi
Review detail
Why it works. When the body is already primed to react, the same event costs more to handle than it would a week earlier.
When not to. If a physical pattern is clear, take it to a doctor rather than trying to manage it as a psychological problem.
Feedback
none yet2Anger has a chemistry of its own. There is nothing to pour down the sink and nobody to stop selling it to you, which is why letting it go feels like losing something rather than putting something down.
The lift is real. Heat, clarity, energy, a body that suddenly knows exactly what to do. Take that away and leave a gap where it was, and within a month the gap gets filled by the same thing again. What tends to work better is finding something that offers a version of the lift, hard physical effort, work that fully absorbs you, prayer, so that the anger becomes less necessary rather than only forbidden.
Islamic evidence
It is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). What settles the heart is offered here as something to turn towards, not only as something to stop doing.
“those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace”
Qur'an 13:28
Psychological evidence
In a randomised placebo controlled trial, prazosin, a drug that blocks the effects of noradrenaline in the brain, reduced agitation and aggression in Alzheimer disease. That is a long way from ordinary anger in a healthy adult, but it does show a physiological state feeding behavioural volatility rather than the other way round. It says nothing about what any particular person should take.
Wang LY, Shofer JB, Rohde K, Hart KL, Hoff DJ, McFall YH, Raskind MA, Peskind ER. (2009). The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · doi
Review detail
Why it works. A reward that is merely removed leaves a space, and the old thing is what fits that space best.