do you throw things around your apartment?

no

i do. it's like this thing i did in college, with books. and then it just kept on. but it's bad i think i'm gonna break something.

I had a friend who would hilariously punch a wall REALLY hard when he became upset, and he was one of those people who became upset very easily.

I voted no - I don't get angry, I get sad.

In rage - no
In laziness - maybe

i've thrown things OUT of my flat before, fuck around

Nah. If I need to satisfy some primal urge to break shit, I can get a bit overenthusiastic throwing a beer bottle into the dumpster, but never in my apartment. I am too attached to the Precious Things of the Apartment.

i want the indoors always to be a place of calm not-throwing-thingsness. throwing things violates the basic tenets of indoors, making it no different from outdoors. unacceptable.

have often been tempted to throw things out the apartment window at annoying people/things, but not really inside.

I often wish I was the kind of guy who could hurl bad novels across the room, but this would mean chipping the paint from my wall.

I have thrown and broken stuff in my house before in the throes of emotion, I don't do it very much anymore.

no

i settle for slamming doors and doing the dishes in a noisy, aggressive manner

Ah, see I included the slamming and the noisy, aggressive manner of doing things in the "throw things around" definition, mostly because my wife does. Man, she HATES when I act that way.

No. I once freaked myself the fuck out when I was about 16 and got into a horrible argument with my dad - I threw a coffee mug at him out of rage, but at the last millisecond (luckily) I changed trajectory so it hit his dinner plate rather than his head. When I realised what I'd done it scared me and thankfully I've never been like that since (moving out helped a lot).
I actually can't stand any violent movements or crashing noises now so I think I've calmed down.

A friend of mine freaked out and threw a porcelain bong shaped like a toilet bowl at her mom while she was tripping once.

I'm not a thrower myself though.

A friend of mine freaked out and threw a porcelain bong shaped like a toilet bowl at her mom while she was tripping once.

Fuck, that must've gone down well.

I have broken one thing in anger in my life--a hand-painted glass lampshade on a hanging lamp. I was sweeping and the lamp hit me against the side of my head. I punched it with my fist, it shattered, and my parents came over and started to cry. (It was a precious family heirloom, I found out later.) I told them that I had broken it accidentally, and they never found out any different. Breaking the lampshade sent my mother into a deep depression that lasted about a week, and I've felt horribly guilty ever since.

yes. there's usually a half-second pause while i consider whether it's worth it, and then it goes against the wall. i am pretty much okay with it; i will replace a few remote controls every year and tape together my phone in exchange for the therapy of externalising some angst.

just out of laziness, hence the stains on the wall behind my bin.

I did for a little while, since my husband did and I would too, as some sort of reaction. But then I stopped. It doesn't make me feel better, it only results in more glasses being broken. Now I tend to keep calmer (in fights) and not resort to throwing stuff around. And when I'm not in a fight, I tend to pick the stuff my kids throw around the house. lolol

I used to have a roommate who went through a couple of cordless phones that way. Maybe if he'd had his shit together as an adult more, it wouldn't have seemed so juvenile? But combined with joblessness, unkemptness, and a pretty self-centered outlook, it just made him seem like an overgrown toddler having tantrums.

I think I've thrown a sock or keys down to the ground in frustration (maybe at a person?), or flailed my arms. I have been accused of being too careless with records when I've tossed them on the bed or couch after looking at them.

I'm a door-slammer, not a thrower.

I learned the hard way not to throw stuff around, as the one time that something made me so angry and upset I started throwing things I damaged something really important - my back. And I spent the next week flat out in bed totally at the mercy of the asshole who had started the fight in the first place. Sigh.

I've tossed books aside out of annoyance with the content, and punched walls in anger, but breaking things tends to make me sad, not calm.

Although-- once, on my birthday, the barman at the pub we were in said "oh, it's your birthday!" and gave me a cheapo champagne flute-style glass, and explained to me that once when he and a friend had had no money and no jobs and been depressed and rageful, they had bought a bottle of cheap fizz and a box of glasses, and they'd drunk the fizz and smashed the glasses one by one by just hurling them at the ground. So he got out the bin from behiond the bar and said: throw it, as hard as you can. And I did! and it was fantastic.

it sounds fantastic! would only be improved by breaking the champagne flute in a fireplace, soap-opera style.

then laughing haughtily and slapping somebody.

Yes. In moments of rage, I have thrown the following:

A pen at my wall (exploded all over the wall, leaving abstract blue art)
A stack of cds on several occasions (breaking my Speak English or Die cd on one occasion)
Multiple video game controllers, breaking three PS2 controllers in the process, and leaving dents in my wall.
My desktop keyboard (nothing other than making keys stick)
My cell phone (no damage, though I stopped doing this once I got a Blackberry)

I also used to punch my bedpost, which usually bruised my knuckles. I haven't done any of these things recently, which is tantamount to how much less 'uber-ragey' I've been the last 4 months.

I threw my glasses at the wall in anger the other day. They were getting in my way as I struggled to take off my sweatshirt, but the actual anger was to do with something unrelated.

I have never been able to do this. I don't know why not! It sounds really cathartic & satisfying. I'm just too uptight. I always sort of felt like I was never able to *deal with anger* because of the idea that it is done this way (by physical release), an idea I believe I learned at a young age this Mister Rogers song:

What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...
And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?

It's great to be able to stop
When you've planned a thing that's wrong,
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:

I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish.
I can stop, stop, stop any time.
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine.
Know that there's something deep inside
That helps us become what we can.
For a girl can be someday a woman
And a boy can be someday a man.

I don't, but my beyonce does. Especially annoying when the "thing" is wine. Last time it happened was a major, major disaster and we had to get a new couch.

omg waht

passion is the fuel of life, and love

I occasionally punch doorframes, desks etc out of annoyance. Mainly this just serves to hurt my hands and make me feel stupid, which is not so satisfying but pain and embarrassment is one way of calming down pretty quickly.

The only throwing incident I can remember, I broke a pretty good new hairbrush. Wasn't expensive or anything but it was annoying and I really hadn't expected it to break. Can't even remember what I was angry about now. If I get tempted to throw shit again I hope I can hold off for long enough to remember this and not do it.

Mind you, my flat looks like I throw stuff all the time, because I have a bad habit of dropping everything on the floor/sofa/bed or other nearest flat surface when I don't need it any more.

I get grumpy, and I get pissy, and I get angry, but when I get really angry, I get all cool. I'm the woman in the Richard Pryor routine. "I'm going for a walk." "A walk? But I wanna fight!" Thing is, being all cool now doesn't mean you're not still going to have the fight later, it just means you're not going to be at maximum temperature when you do it, which is still better.

I don't throw things, I don't punch the wall, I don't throw hissy fits. I'm letting my anger turn into heart disease, little by little.

I think sometimes that it turns into farts, actually. Because some of those are pure viciousness.

At least when my anger turns into farts, it's immediately apparent to everyone in the room how ugly it really is. It cuts down on the usual lag time between lashing out and feeling bad about it.

All this throwing and punching and smashing is freaking me out, y'all. Wy y'all so angry :/ Anyone gets mad enough to hit a wall/object or smash something, I'm in permanent "you freak" zone with them.

Um that said, I did once chuck a glass at my flatmate's head. It (intentionally) missed him, comically bounced off a wall, and didn't break, and I felt like a dickhead.

I remember I threw a phone at the wall once and broke it, not during but after a conversation with my girlfriend. This was senior year of high school. Right after I did it, I felt like a dumb-ass. I can't think of anything else I've thrown and broken. (Ex-gf's may remember things that I don't, of course.)

(Your heart doesn't count, but sorry about that, anyway.)

Multiple video game controllers, breaking three PS2 controllers in the process, and leaving dents in my wall.

yeah, i went through a period of routinely smashing video games controllers, but i stopped after the day i hurled a full mug of tea at the far wall of the room in protest at a last minute defeat to alan curbishley's charlton in front of my younger brother and his girlfriend. 'externalising frustration' is definitely a valuable exercise but in the main this kind of thing is really just childishness ime.

special mention (cross thread) for my neighbours, who spent most of last night throwing each other around their place from the sounds of things.

In a bad way, I take it?

I guess there's no good way, if you're in the other apartment.

heh. i live in a house with concrete block walls. and it was not in a friendly way.

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fuck you all for making us "yes"s feel like freaks :( :(

1 in 4 ppl throwing shit around is a pretty high proportion!