For over 3 decades I have worked with clinically, and studied closely, the connection between social avoidance and anger and rage. I have had numerous patients who have said to me something like “I understand why kids shoot up schools”. These individuals (my patients) are not psychotic killers. They would never act with violence, but they are expressing anger that is so prevalent and misunderstood.

In my professional opinion, It’s important to identify common characteristics of angry loners so that perhaps one day there can be a more productive preventive mental health approach for what is becoming an epidemic of violence. During the direct aftermath of Newtown I actually thought that mental health issues had a chance of coming more to the forefront, but it appears that these issues are once again taking a distant back seat to gun control.
My patients who communicated the previous remark had the following characteristics in common:

Social anxiety

Avoidant personalities.

They were picked on/bullied.

They were loners.

Expressed anger that people around them were happy and socializing.

They were low on the social “pecking order”.

The vast majority of loners implode with anger and rage. Implosion takes the form of panic, depression, substance dependence, and a myriad of stress related disorders. But since Columbine there has been a growing pattern of explosions by angry loners.

Glaring descriptions have become common of recent mass killers. These include “anti-social”, “didn’t speak”, “uncommunicative”, “abnormally quiet”, and “avoided eye contact”. All you have to do is look up news clippings of Adam Lanza, Seung-Hui Cho, and, James Holmes.

Would you be horrified or angry if I tell you that a few years ago during a television interview where Stone Phillips interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer in prison the serial criminal and psychopath was referred to as “very shy” as a child by his parents? Theodore Kazynski the “Unibomber” of years ago used to run up to his room and hide as a child when he heard visitors drive their car into his parents’ driveway. In both cases, characteristics of social avoidance evolved into serious psychiatric conditions!
Years ago, one of my patients brought me a movie to watch: “FIGHT CLUB”. It was interesting. A cult of men took out their anger on the unfairness of society. Their strength and power were based on the dynamic of self- inflicted pain. My patient, a 20-year-old who had experienced substantial social rejection and “put down” gave himself a black eye – self-administered pain – to create a sense of power!