I got really mad at a friend of mine the other day after he made a joke about something serious and I started getting passive aggressive. I haven't done something like this in like a year and last time I did, it led to me losing all my friends.

Now I've decided to isolate myself because I don't deserve to have friends if I'm going to behave this way. I've been in therapy for various mental health issues, especially depression, severe ADHD and OCD, for eight years, and while it's made me feel a lot better and decreased the frequency of the episodes of anger it hasn't fixed me. And I feel like, if it hasn't done that by now, how can there be any hope for me?

I feel like I have to punish myself for how I react. My friends (ex friends?) think of me as a kind and caring person, but deep down there's nothing to me but rage that I feel about all kinds of things. A lot of my friends lean on me and vent to me about bad things happening in their lives (abusive family, cruel bosses, sexual assault etc) and the rage at the people who hurt my friends just builds up until it gets misdirected at someone innocent.

I have dreams about murdering my friends' abusers and I think that makes me a bad person. Isn't it better for me not to have friends, if I'm going to act this way? Ever since preschool I can remember people thinking I was too angry, a lot of teachers thinking I was unstable and sending me to sit alone in dark classrooms to cool down. But I'm an adult now and I know that no one will do that to me, so I have to be the one to isolate myself.

Is this right? Is it acceptable to leave all my friends behind? It feels like my heart is breaking but I'm not sure I deserve them. Will punishing myself ever make me a better person, or am I just hopeless?