You really need to get to the bottom of the "why", and while you're young and still have the rest of your life ahead of you this would be a great thing for you to learn to control. Therapy to learn these tools is great, but here's an idea to maybe give you direction. If you don't know where you're going you won't know when you get there.

My mother has a borderline personality disorder, which among other things includes what I've heard referred to as "adult temper tantrums". She'd have one of these temper tantrums when she was angry, when she didn't get her way, or when she hurt herself. Like if she'd stub her toe (mild ouchie) she would get VERY angry, scary angry- she'd shout every swear word she could think of, stomp her feet, possibly break things or hurt me out of sheer anger.

I grew up and was in my mid 20's before I realized that was not normal, or ideal to emulate. My reactions were much milder and really only related to pain- like a 5/10 whereas my mom was a 10/10- but a few people including a colleague gently mentioned that it seemed like an overreaction, and the danger was that in a chemical environment (chemical plant) it could be perceived as a larger emergency. It also wasn't attractive. Ooh, that hit me, and I started to think about why I was like that and my mother came to mind. So I started keeping an eye out for a better reaction to emulate, and settled on The Family Guy method of dealing with an ouchie: the long, slow, drawn out series of "owwwwwww" and "ooooooooh".

If you can imagine how hard it is to control yourself in general- imagine dealing with pain stimulus, and having to learn how to control your outward reaction... it was a very conscious effort of change, and it wasn't easy- but I am proud of my improved reaction which is much more reasonable. You may have a mental illness that somewhat prevents you from being in control (borderline personality disorder?), or you don't know the tools to control your outward reaction.

You'll need to:

• Be aware of your emotions at all times. Do frequent "check ins" on how you feel.
• Your mouth may be reacting quicker then your brain- give yourself time. Focus on breathing, give yourself at least one good breath in/out before you react to be sure you're landing on the appropriate reaction.
• Imagine a wheel like in Jeopardy, but with emotions- instead of you taking the time to become aware of how you truly feel, are you relying on "spinning the wheel" and exhibiting whichever emotion comes up?
• Once you become aware of your actual feelings and can pause your irrational anger to "check in"- then it's time to familiarize yourself with how to bring your feelings up to a higher/more desirable level. Check out the Emotional Guidance Scale by Abraham Hicks, it's a 1-22 scale where #1 is Joy/Appreciation / Love, and #22 is Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair. If you're feeling angry (#17) you can't get to #1 by snapping your fingers- you can however nudge yourself gradually up the scale to #11 overwhelmed, then up to #7 contentment (for example).

If you can't control yourself- no one else stands a chance of doing it either. I hope these tips help!