My DD7 is similar as am I. I took many tactics that were not helpful.
What finally helped was talking her through it so she had a higher understanding of what was going on inside of her.
First, I normalized the behavior. I let her know that I too have felt that way, and still do but that I learned many ways to help myself through it.
Second, I validated whatever she was feeling. You felt scared, you felt mad, you felt sad.... then followed that up with talking about the behavior.
When you felt you were angry, you came in your room, threw your shoe and then jumped into crying and not knowing why?
Here is what worked REALLy well for DD7: "Was that scary for you to feel so out of control? I've felt that way too, like I couldn't control or understand why I was crying so hard..." and on & on.
I knew I hit the mark as she was shaking her head in YES, YES, YES!
From there on, identifying early warning signs that we're headed into the abyss and different concrete behavioral things we can do...get an adult, draw, read, run around outside... early intervention points.
Intense or not, bottom line is we are all entitled to feel our feelings - they are not right or wrong. How we express them is the key and helping DD7 understand self respectful ways to express & manage them seems to have helped.
