Healing from an emotional trauma or extended traumatic experience is a like a long, intimate dance with reality. Or perhaps a three-act ballet. We are on the stage of our own minds, surrounded by the props of our lives, dancing to the music of our emotions. Our memories flash on the backdrop or float around like ribbons in the air. Down below the stage, in the orchestra pit, a chorus puts words to the feelings and gives us advice drawn from our parents’ rules, our church’s rules, all the rules from the movies and books and conversations that have ever colored our thinking.
And our job is to dance our way through the acts.
The first act is named “Magic Thinking.” We stumble onto the stage, stunned, confused and in pain. Our first dance is denial — the “it doesn’t matter” dance. Our second dance is bargaining — the “maybe I can persuade whoever is in power to fix this” dance. The third and last dance before the intermission is anger.
This article is about anger.
The emotional spine
Everyone here who has gone through the angry phase knows how complex it is. We are indignant, bitter, sarcastic, outraged, waving our fiery swords of blame. We are also — finally — articulate, funny, re-asserting power over our lives. We are hell on wheels, demanding justice or retribution. We are also in transition between bargaining and letting go, so all this is tinged with hope on one side and grief on the other.
Anger really deserves a book, rather than a brief article. It is the end of the first act of our healing, because it really changes everything — our way of seeing, our thinking, our judgments, the way we move forward. Like the element of fire, it can be clarifying, but it can also be destructive. To complicate the situation further, many (if not all of us) tended to repress our anger before we entered this healing process.
So it may be helpful to discuss what anger is, where it comes from. What we call anger is part of a spectrum of reactions that originates in the oldest part of our brain. The brain stem, sometimes called the lizard brain, oversees automatic survival mechanisms like breathing, heartbeat, hunger, sleep and reproduction. It also generates powerful emotional messages related to survival.
These messages travel through increasingly sophisticated layers of our emotional and intellectual processing. One of those layers, the limbic system or mammal brain, is where we keep memories of good and bad events, and work out how to maximize pleasure and avoid pain (often through addictive strategies). The messages pass through this layer on the way to our cerebral cortex.
There in the thinking layer, we name things and organize them. We maintain concepts of community and identity (right and left brain), and we manipulate them continually to run our lives as thinking, self-aware beings. Beyond the thinking brain is the even more advanced area of the frontal cortex, which maintains our awareness of the future, interconnectivity (holistic thinking), and the “high level” views that further moderate our primitive responses into philosophic and spiritual meanings.
What our thinking brains name “anger” is actually a sensation of physical and emotional changes caused by the brain stem in reaction to perceived danger. The spectrum of those danger-related sensations roughly includes alertness, fear and anger. While our higher brain may see a purpose in separating fear and anger into different categories, our lizard brain doesn’t make those distinctions. It just keeps altering our hormones and brain chemicals for all kinds of situations, depending on its analysis of what we need to do to survive.
The point of this long digression is this: alertness-fear-anger responses are a normal part of our ability to survive. They travel “up” into our higher processing as the strong spine of our survival mechanism. There is nothing wrong with feeling them. In fact, paying attention to them is better for us in every way than ignoring our feelings (denial) or trying to delude ourselves about what is happening (bargaining).
The many forms of anger
One of the most interesting things about the English language is its many verb forms, which express various conditions of timeliness and intent. I can. I could. I could have. I would have. I might have. I should have. I will. I might. I was going to.
Those same factors of timeliness and intent can be found in the many facets of anger. Bitterness and resentment are simmering forms of anger related to past and unhealed hurts. Likewise sarcasm and passive-aggressive communications are expressions of old disappointment or despair. Frustration is a low-level form of anger, judging a circumstance or result as unsatisfactory. Contempt and disgust are more pointed feelings associated with negative judgments.
When anger turns into action, we have explosive violence, plans for future revenge and sabotage. When anger is turned on ourselves, we have depression and addictions. The judgments associated with anger foster black-and-white thinking, which can be the basis for bias and all kinds of “ism’s,” especially if the anger is old, blocked for some reason, and thus diffuse or not directed primarily at its source. This typically happens when we feel disempowered to defend ourselves.
All of that sounds pretty terrible and toxic. But, in fact, the most toxic forms of anger are the ones in which the anger is not allowed to surface. The lizard brain does not stop trying to protect us until we deal with the threat, and so we live with the brain chemicals and hormones of anger until we do.
Anger can also be healthy. The anger of Jesus toward the money changers in the temple is a model of righteous anger. In response to trauma, righteous anger is a crucial part of the healing process. Anger has these characteristics:
• Directed at the source of the problem
• Narrowly focused and dominating our thinking
• Primed for action
• Intensely aware of personal resources (internal and environmental)
• Willing to accept minor losses or injuries to win
Anger is about taking care of business. At its most primitive level, anger is what enables us to defend our lives, to kill what would kill us. In modern times, it enables us to meet aggression with aggression in order to defend ourselves or our turf. We expect to feel pain in these battles, but we are fighting to win.
However, anger also has its exhilaration, a sense of being in a moment where we claim our own destiny. For those of us who have been living through the relatively passive and self-defeating agony of denial and bargaining, anger can feel wonderful.
As it should, because anger is the expression of our deepest self, rejecting this new reality. We are finally in speaking-up mode. We are finally taking in our situation and saying, “No! I don’t want this. I don’t like it. I don’t like you for creating this in my life. I don’t like how it feels. I don’t like what I’m getting out of it. And if it doesn’t stop this instant, I want you out of my life.”
Getting over our resistance to anger
Of course, we don’t exactly say that when we’re inside the relationship. In fact, we don’t exactly think it, even when we’re out of the relationship. And why is that? Because — and this only my theory, but it seems to be born out here on LoveFraud — people who get involved with sociopaths are prone to suppress their anger, because they are afraid of it, ashamed of it, or confused about its meaning.
When faced with a painful situation, they suppress their inclination to judge the situation in terms of the pain they’re experiencing, and instead try to understand. They try to understand the other person. They try to understand the circumstances. They try to interpret their own pain through all kinds of intellectual games to make it something other than pain. To an extent, this could be described as the bargaining phase. But for most of us, this is a bargaining phase turned into a life strategy. It’s an unfinished response to a much earlier trauma that we have taken on as a way of life.
Which is very good for the sociopath, who can use it to gaslight us while s/he pursues private objectives of looting our lives for whatever seems useful or entertaining. Until we have nervous breakdowns or die, or wake up.
We can all look at the amount of time it took us to wake up, or the difficulty we’re having waking up, at evidence of how entrenched we’ve been in our avoidance of our own anger. It retrospect, it is an interesting thing to review. Why didn’t we kick them out of our lives the first time they lied or didn’t show up? Why didn’t we throw their computer out of the window when we discovered their profiles on dating sites? Why didn’t we cut off their money when we discovered they were conning us? Why didn’t we spit in their eye when they insulted us? Why didn’t we burn their clothes on the driveway the first time they were unfaithful?
Because we were too nice to do that? Well, anger is the end of being nice. It may be slow to emerge. We may have to put all the pieces together in our heads, until we decide that yes, maybe we do have the right to be angry. Yes, they were bad people. No, we didn’t deserve it. And finally, we are mad. At them.
Anger in our healing process
Anger is the last phase of magical thinking. We are very close to a realistic appraisal of reality. The only thing “magical” about it is this: no amount of outrage or force we can exert on the situation can change it. The sociopath is not going to change. We cannot change the past, or the present we are left with.
But anger has its own gifts. First and foremost is that we identify the external cause of our distress. We place our attention where it belongs at this moment — on the bad thing that happened to us and the bad person who caused it.
Second, we reconnect with our own feelings and take them seriously. This is the beginning of repairing our relationships with ourselves, which have often become warped and shriveled with self-hatred and self-distrust when we acted against our own interests in our sociopathic relationships.
Third, anger is a clarifying emotion. It gives us a laser-like incisiveness. It may not seem so when we are still struggling with disbelief or self-questioning or resentment accumulated through the course of the relationship. But once we allow ourselves to experience our outrage and develop our loathing for the behavior of the sociopath, we can dump the burden of being understanding. We can feel the full blazing awareness that runs through all the layers of brain, from survival level through our feelings through our intellect and through our eyes as we look at that contemptible excuse for a human being surrounded by the wreckage s/he creates. Finally our brains are clear.
And last, but at least as important as the rest, is the rebirth of awareness of personal power that anger brings. Anger is about power. Power to see, to decide, to change things. We straighten up again from the long cringe, and in the action-ready brain chemicals of anger, we surprise ourselves with the force of our ability and willingness to defend ourselves. We may also surprise ourselves with the violent fantasies of retribution and revenge we discover in ourselves. (Homicidal thoughts, according to my therapist, are fine as long as we don’t act on them.)
It is no wonder that, for many of us, the angry phase is when we learn to laugh again. Our laughter may be bitter when it is about them. But it can be joyous about ourselves, because we are re-emerging as powerful people.
The main thing we do with this new energy is blaming. Though our friends and family probably will not enjoy this phase (because once we start blaming, it usually doesn’t stop at the sociopath), this is very, very important. Because in blaming, we also name what we lost. When we say “you did this to me,” we are also saying, “Because of you, I lost this.”
Understanding what has changed — what we lost — finally releases us from magical thinking and brings us face to face with reality. For many of us this is an entirely new position in our personal relationships. In the next article, we’ll discuss how anger plays out in our lives.
Until then, I hope you honor your righteous anger, casting blame wherever its due. And take a moment to thank your lizard brain for being such a good friend to you.
Namaste. The healing warrior in me salutes the healing warrior in you.
Kathy
STJ:
I don’t have any kids, but the X spath does. I was talking about his kids. I just pray they turn out OK.
Micheal
Thanks first of all for your contribution and so far it has been informative.
My ex Husb P always answered a question with a question. In my innocent days before I knew about the extent of his psychopathy I used to call him affectionateley ‘slippery sam’.
Skylars question is quite simple. What in YOUR eyes was the worst thing that you did to your wife. Was it conscious and deliberate. Intended to hurt. Or was it just a product of a psychopath’s selfish need to satisfy self without regard for others.
My ex liked to punish.
STJ
xxx
Louise
That’s all you can do. Is pray.
STJ
xxx
Michael,
Thank you. I like hearing how other people experience the world.
You asked:
“Empathy can be felt that deeply? I thought it had more to do with body language. Like, if you see someone crying, you feel bad and want to comfort them.”
It’s a little different for an empath. It’s not just about seeing someone crying and wanting to comfort them because I know they feel bad. I actually feel the emotional pain in my body. Often I will cry with them. I can also tell the difference between someone comforting me because they see me crying, and someone who is truly empathizing with me. Many men do the former, and many women do the latter, but it is not always gender specific. For instance, I have a direct supervisor at work who is not particularly empathic. In a way she reminds me of how you describe yourself. She wants to be a good boss, and she knows a good boss understands her employees’ motivations. So she tries to be supportive and understanding. And she succeeds to the extent necessary most of the time. But because she lacks empathy, she sometimes makes errors in judgment and doesn’t understand how this could hurt someone. Often, her employees will become enraged. I myself have tried to have conversations with her where I was shaking and upset. I could see that she tried really hard to understand but she just couldn’t or didn’t empathize. She only saw me getting upset and then she felt attacked. She would put my communication through a logical intellectual filter, rather than just empathizing. HER boss, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. She empathizes with everyone to the point where people get away with practically murder in our department. She is someone I consider my friend because I can truly talk to her. I have learned with the immediate supervisor to accept her the way she is and not expect that she be empathic. She is a good boss in other ways, so I focus on those things, and it works most of the time. Until she does something that really upsets me.
I don’t feel this “empathy” I have is good or bad one way or the other. It does give me a particular edge as a healer. I can often feel what someone else is feeling. And usually I am automatically motivated to help relieve their suffering in whatever way I can. I seem to make this choice a lot. Even when I was in a dangerous profession as a stripper, I often empathized with my clients’ neuroses. A few times I talked them out of the session and told them to go home to their wives, even at a financial loss to myself, because I saw them suffering with guilt. (They called me the “sensitive stripper” LOL). I don’t know if this is some sort of drive for basic goodness or if it’s just a series of choices I make, and that I have learned that doing good things for people makes me feel good inside, because I empathically receive the good feeling I have given to someone else. I can also be a selfish S.O.B. at times too. But I seem to have this pull to always want to do right by people, after all the dust has settled in a situation. I have to remember to include myself in that scenario, too, and do right by myself, too.
There is a difference between listening, caring, and empathizing. And that difference can effect the degree of healing the recipient gets from the interaction.
When I’m working with a massage client, I can usually see their body armoring. But also I “feel” it in a way – I kind of take it on. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it happens energetically. So I can be very helpful to them as a massage therapist because I know exactly what pressure is needed to release the pain and exactly where it is needed. I just “feel” it. I’m not sure how to describe it. It is not logical. I have a few clients who are also healers. I am able to have a really unique connection with them because they also naturally give to me with their presence. So a session with them is often regenerative for both of us. I don’t know if that makes any sense. With them, I have to cancel if I am in a really bad mood, because I know they will take it on.
I was unaware about the two kinds of psychopaths or about Doren’s book. I find this fascinating. I was a graduate student at one time studying psychology, and this would have been good reading and possibly good material for a thesis. I may read it one of these days. I take it that the secondary type would be more of the violent abusive stalking types we hear about here.
I don’t know what type the one I dated was because I didn’t date him long enough to find out. I think he was more the primary type. He would do things that would really upset me. And he was completely calm while I was upset. It’s as if it didn’t register as anything different from me telling him about the new dress I bought or the cute thing my cat did.
Yes, I was referring to posting under different personas. Those types of games can be upsetting to people – they are a form of betrayal of trust, even when just posting on an internet forum. Sorry for not being clear about what I meant.
“To avoid the controlling, narcissistic douchebags, it’s also helpful to be confident in yourself and enjoy independence. Without being blatantly bellicose, simply question things that don’t make sense. Don’t be afraid to speak your own mind. If they throw a fit about it, just feign disinterest and go do something else. I do this to the narcissistic folk all the time. It drives them mad. There will usually be some backlash, what with rumour spreading and that. But with such people, there’s likely to be rumour spreading anyway.”
I can really see in the paragraph above that you do enjoy playing with people and watching their reactions. No judgement on this – just an observation. If a narcissistic person threw a fit like that around me, I would probably feel “toxic” and remove myself. Then I just wouldn’t be around them again if I could avoid it. I suppose if I didn’t have the “toxic” reaction (what we call being “slimed”) I can see how you could play games with people like that. Not sure that I would be motivated to do it, but I can understand how someone could do it if they could emotionally be removed from the situation.
Just a few more questions…. You said before that you don’t think you could ever be as happy as your uncle, or something like that. Why do you say that? Is it because of the empathy thing? What is your idea of happiness, and what is the happiest you’ve ever been?
Thanks immensely for sharing your experiences!
Wow, you set the bed on fire? That would have scared the bejeesus out of me! You certainly have an interesting way of thinking.
Star if you’d like I’ll send you my psychopathic son’s address in prison and you can get information from him about how caring and compassionate he is and how smart he is…he really is quite bright, scoring in the 99th percentile of IQ….and he can make you think he is the most spiritual and moral person in the world. Psychopaths do “get off” on fooling “sheeple” which is what they call us. Oh, do they get off on getting attention and just playing the game. LOL ……………………………………………………………..after his death, they found letters in the cell of Jeffrey Dahmer where he had been carrying on “love relationships” with 14 different women and telling each one that she was his soul mate and he loved her. He had also gone to great lengths to “be baptized” and “become a Christian” and spent great amounts of time with a minister who later wrote a book about it. WHY? the religion? WHY? the women? IT WAS “THE GAME” and the only purpose was to get the “duping delight” of fooling these people into thinking he was SINCERE!……………………………………………………..people who are far enough gone into psychopathic traits to score a 30 on the PCL-R are going to be so far down the bell curve on “empathy” and so HIGH on the bell curve for manipulation that they just get FUN out of farking with us. Let me know if you’d live to correspond with Patrick, I am sure he would just LOVE to convince you what a great person he is, how he has found Jesus, and that he is just so interesting.
Micheal,
I am wondering if you would be willing to dig deeper? Specifically into your puberty years, & shortly there after years.
A few years ago when my son was in puberty I was on a different site before I found this site. It was a supportive site such as this one however there was a young man of 19 yrs old (at the time) that was a sociopath and he really opened up. He really seemed to like to talk about himself when given the slightest nudge. And he WAS given alot of attention on the site. Many wanted to pick his brain
And although he also often “played us like a fiddle” on this site …..He could also on occasion give some real insight into this disorder. From his perspective.
I was in a particularly bad “place” during this time when I chatted with him because of the never ending turmoil at home with my son….I was at my “wits end” as my user name here suggest. And therefore wasn’t able to process some of this the same as I would be able to now.
My son is now 19 yrs old. He was Dx when 16 as Bipolar. He was not med compliant and never accepted his Dx or would follow a treatment plan.
Although he definitely fits into the criteria of a mood disorder he also has many other components to his behavior, personality, and such that are of another nature.
Much presented in puberty that was simply not who he was before puberty. So if you are willing I would love to pick your brain.
Do you recollect a major change in yourself from who you were as a child to who you morphed into during your puberty teenage years?
Did you EVER feel empathy? As a child?
Do you or did you lie alot as a teenager? Did you ever live in delusion of believing your own lies? Convincing yourself that your lies were your truth?
What was your relationship as a teenager with your mother? With your siblings? With your father?
Did those family of origin relationships go through any MAJOR changes from childhood to adulthood?
What was your peer relationships like as a teenager. Do you have a bond/connection with friends or are you friends with them for the time being but detached? If they went away just relpace them with another?
What emotions did you or did you not feel during the teenage years?
WHEN did you know that you were different when it came to emotions and feelings than others around you might have been feeling?
And more importantly how did you know? What clued you in?
Do you feel love for anyone? If so how would you define it?
Do you have grandious ideas or thinking? Did you as a teenager and if so how has this changed (if at all) as an adult?
Can you tell me what you DO feel towards those that do love or care about you? (not the P/S/N’s in your life but towards the empaths)
My observations of what I have read of your post is that you really do enjoy the attention of those that are asking you questions. And you do like the challenge of “playing” with us…..Not judging you, just saying…..
Although your trying to share (in your own way) you are not digging deep.
There is a shallowness involved in the depth of your sharing.
Are you capable of giving more? I personally don’t know the answer to this.
What I do think I know from what I have learned about this disorder, no you can’t.
Prove what I know to be wrong.
Of all the studies that have been done I think more studies need to be done during the adolescence years when this often presents itself.
Tell us something real.
Not to you, Michael….I am NC with my son Patrick, except to keep up with his upcoming parole dates which I get from my attorney, so that I can fight his upcoming paroles.
I have no interest in attempting to “communicate” with psychopaths, self proclaimed or diagnosed, and there IS no way to TRULY communicate with them as they are “liars when the truth would fit better.” The only reason a psychopath would attempt to “communicate” with someone else is to scam them, or just for “duping delight.”
Michael,
Empathy indeed means experiencing and feeling the pain of another for yourself. A couple of years ago I watched a symposium of scientists set up by Richard Dawkins: neurologists, astronomers, biologistis, sociologists gathered together and exchanging new discoveries.
One of the lectures was about the vole and the male version of oxyticocine. But there was also a neurological lecture on empathy. Test persons received a needle prick in their finger wile their brain was monitored for activity, and where it would light up. Then the same person was made a witness to someone else being pricked in the finger. The exact same frontal cortex region and neurons lit up. So, empathy means experiencing pain without the person actually being subjected to pain from an external source. For the brain though, it doesn’t matter wheter it’s the pain of another being or of the owner of the brain.
For myself, I know I can learn a lot for myself when I empathize with someone else. It doesn’t just help me to understand another person, but to understand myself: I can feel their pain, anger, happiness, etc as if it was my own, and thereby use it as a safe way to learn from another person’s life without having to go through the exact same thing. In some occasions empathy was exactly what helped me to resolve issues I had lingering, issues I was not aware of that I still may have had. It’s like an emotional, mental and spiritual massage.
Michael,
The information you shared has helped me more than just about anything else I’ve ever read in understanding some of the men I’ve dated. I realize after reading your accounts that the one I lived with for three years was very high in sociopathic traits. He also told me early on in our relationship that he was sociopathic. I don’t recall him telling me he was a sociopath or that he had ever been diagnosed, but I remember him telling me very seriously and matter of factly that he was “like” a sociopath in that he could just easily cut people off. I didn’t understand what that meant at the time. I shouldn’t have been too surprised when he did it with me 3 years later.
He also was very driven and constantly in motion. He had about 6 jobs – all finance related, and was always at one of them or on the internet doing day trading or some such or training for his next triathalon. I never saw him take a day off or even lie in bed with me late in the morning. His busy-ness was one of the points of contention between us. His ex wife was mentally ill and a total wreck, not surprisingly. His grown son also behaved very anti-socially, too. It is all making sense to me now…… Rather than having real close friendships, he had sports-related friendships (he was a triathalete), and also a few people who worshipped him and looked up to him. He enjoyed the power over those people and often mocked them behind their backs.
On my end, I had severe abandonment issues. So his coldness and aloofness often pushed me into abandonment rage or pain. I would often show him my pain, but he couldn’t connect with it, which caused me more pain and frustration. The few times I talked with him calmly and told him what the consequences would be if he didn’t change, he responded very positively. I just took this as a guy thing. But I don’t think all guys are that insensitive. I also did not have a strong sense of confidence or self at the time. I’m sure if I had, I would have left him long ago or at least had the leverage to leave him long before the final discard. I was not the right kind of woman for him. And he was not the right kind of man for me. I felt like I could never truly get close to him.
I think with the sociopath I dated for 3 months, he did seem to have some ability to feel affection for his young daughter and maybe even for me. I can see now that his disappearing acts were probably very much like yours – just something he had to do. I don’t take it personally. I never really did. Funny, I do have compassion for this personality type and for the lack of ability to feel genuine happiness. But not to the point where I want to get all warm and fuzzy with either of these guys again. I would never throw my arms around them and tell them I forgive them. I really have no desire to even see them. But I do feel some compassion. I think normal people reach out to bond with others. They are mistaken to think the sociopath bonds with them in the same way. I think that’s where people get hurt. At least, that’s my take on it. I would never be able to stay with that first guy – the one I lived with. Because he would never have satisfied my needs for true emotional intimacy. And yet, I thought some day magically, he would, that he was capable of it. I realize now – with sadness – that he was not capable. Wow! It really helps me to see this. All these years, I imagined that he had moved on to actually “love” someone else, where he couldn’t love me. I now think that he can find someone who is capable of being with him more than I was. But I doubt he could “love” them any more.
I recall being in Costa Rica in 2010 on a 3-hour bus ride with a guy I met there and got intimately involved with. We became very very close – emotionally and physically. The bond (which still exists) is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I will never forget that bus ride because it was one of the happiest times of my life. We were holding each other and kissing and looking out at the beautiful Costa Rican countryside. I remember savoring those three hours – it was as if time stood still. I was so happy, tears were running from my eyes, and I could not stop it. I couldn’t imagine giving up these kinds of moments – moments of true joy and happiness. I cannot imagine what it is like not to be able to experience that.
But in a sense, what you describe about being “content” is probably more common amongst normal people than you would think. Most people are striving for something more than what they have and have a gnawing dissatisfaction. Or they have settled with complacency. This is discussed profusely in the Buddhist texts – it seems to be the human condition. And yet we still have moments of extreme joy and sorrow.
Being someone with BPD traits, the most difficult thing for me is that when someone does something upsetting to me, it triggers the entire wall of repressed emotion. So I do not feel safe to express my upset with the person. I often don’t know what is legitimate upset, and what is just the borderline stuff getting triggered. So I have kept it inside most of my life. This is cause for a lot of loneliness and isolation. I was just realizing today as I was out driving that there are a few people at work I need to set some limits with and tell them how some things they did upset me. These conversations are always uncomfortable for me. But it’s part of my journey to wholeness.
Thanks again for sharing how you see the world. And now my curiosity has turned to your prison experience. What was it like?