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
Back to the topic of anger. Mine has been turned inward for quite some time and responsible for a horrific depression and a great deal of apathy. I saw a play last Friday night. And I must recommend you see it if and when it comes your way. Or read about it online when you can. It’s a one man monologue by a local comedian about depression. Seems to be a contradiction in genres but it was moving, sorrowful, funny in moments and oh so powerful. You see this comedien Brian was terribly debilitated by depression. His wife had left, he was raising three teens alone, he totaled his car in an accident that required extensive surgery in order to be able to walk again. He was angry. He wasn’t able to work. He was sad. He was in pain. But more than that he hurt all over. This was real life. And a true story. He bought a gun and this monologue is written during the ten day waiting period required in our state prior to obtaining possession of any firearm. He obviously made it out alive to tell the story. And it’s an important one.
He talks of depression as anger turned inward. He speaks of blame. He illustrates apathy. And he addresses fault. He addresses forgiveness. There was a moment at the crucible of his story that took these things wound them together and it spoke to me. It was so profound I new if it continued a moment longer I would have to flee the theatre. Tears silently streamed down my cheeks. I would have done anything to not be so uncomfortable at that moment I could have screamed. And then there it was. The breakthrough. The beginning of the end. The small light at the end of the tunnel. I came up for air and could breath again. And I understood how impossible it was for all of this spath induced hell to be all my responsibility. Yes I was the constant. But there were other things I didn’t know or couldn’t see at play. I had no choice but to offer myself a first bit of forgiveness. It wasn’t all my fault. How could it be? I had no where to put all my anger. So I turned it inward for years. Four years to be exact.
He also spoke of depression as he met others along his journey that were depressed as “one of us.” I found this to be powerful. Depression by its very nature and definition is isolating. The terms you, she, he, is or are one of us created the idea of community for me. You see Brian has an agenda. He believes that depression will kill you. And on his journey he met the family of a young beautiful 18 year old boy named Colton who Hirt all over so much and didn’t tell anyone that he laid down on a train track in Oakland last year to end his pain. His aim is to take the stigma out of depression. To make sure we are able to comfortably reach out and tell some one like we would of we needed insulin or blood pressure medication. And that as “one of us,” the individual struggling with depression is not alone.
The work is called The Waiting Period by Brian Copeland. I recommend it. But more imortant I support his message. Depression is a disease. It can be anger turned inward. But we must tell someone or it can kill us. And Donna. You were the one I told. I sat three years ago sobbing and typing to a a site I stumbled across called Lovefraud and into what I thought was another void. And you responded. And you told me how important it was to stay alive. And that was the beginning of my journey towards whole ness. It isn’t easy but I believe it’s been it. And I’m glad I began it. Someone said it isn’t over yet. The last chapter isn’t written. There’s another chapter left to write. Here’s the pen. And you best get started…
Lillian,
thank you for sharing your journey and also about The Waiting Period.
I’ve spent years thinking that I had clinical depression. But I don’t. I had a spath. Before that I had N-parents and spath siblings.
One day, while I was still with the spath, I mentioned to a guy at a health food store that I felt tired and lacking energy. He said, “it’s because you don’t have enough good things happening in your life.” I was kind of shocked because I immediately knew he was right. Still, I was unable to create good things in my life and I didn’t know why. Now I know why: spath would sabotage every and anything that looked like it could give me joy. He was diabolical and covert, he made it seem like a force of nature or a freak coincidence. Even when he was pointedly vicious, he made it seem like he was just in a bad mood and it was because someone had hurt HIM. I was simply not allowed to be happy.
Later, I met a man who told me his wife was a therapist. He said that almost all the people who came to see her for depression, turned out to be in abusive relationships but were simply not aware that this was the cause of their depression.
Even as a child I was frightened and depressed most of the time. It was from being around my parents. Sometimes, when I have doubts about whether I’m judging them too harshly, I just have to remember that little girl that I was. She didn’t deserve to be frightened and depressed. She didn’t have the resources to “lift herself by her bootstraps”. That’s what parents are for.
I have to disagree that depression is a disease because that implies an illness inside a person. Often times depression comes from being abused. If there is any illness, it would be called ignorance because the abuse victim simply doesn’t have the knowledge to perceive and escape from the abuse. Luckily, ignorance can be cured.
Lillian ~ Powerful post. Thank you so much and bless you.
Hi skylar. Thanks for your response. And I agree totally. Taking all that further and applying what i know of brain chemistry I have a few thoughts to consider.
First I too was terribly verbally abused my entire childhood by my drunken father. I was told I was good for nothing. Life was terribly unpredictable. I was forgotten at school on freezing snowy days at the age of six and had to find my way over a mile home without a hat or gloves as it began to get dark. My mother could not deal with anything and if you upset her my father raged. My mother shook visibly and was agoraphobic for quite sometime. I handled everything myself that I could. And I was a 4.0 or 3.9 gpa student. I moved out at 15. My parents were not a safe haven either. So I know what you’re saying.
I would argue a couple of things. One that illness is bad and not just is what it is. And two that brain chemistry can be forever changed by certain outside forces be it trauma, medication, illicit drugs, prescription medication, lack of love as a child, abuse, abandonment, lack of sleep, prolonged fear, pain, prolonged stress etc. There can also be a predisposition for depression, biochemical factors and combined with outside forces it is often difficult to discern the reason or identify the triggers. But I know it can kill people.
My boyfriend in high school with a history of illicit drug abuse and family mental illness overdosed as he was so upset about the death of his friend while the friend was driving my boyfriends motorcycle. I personally struggled with depression on and off for years. At first i didnt know what it was but looking back i can identify it. I was so upset by the traumatic events that triggered my latest depressive state I tried to kill myself with prescription drugs unsuccessfully three times.
So please try not to judge depressive illness as you would not judge some one with blunt trauma brain damage, a broken leg or a diabetic. There are so many things we don’t know yet but we are learning and there is quite a bit about brain development at different stages, effect of outside forces and genetics that they do know. It’s not a death sentence that you will be depressed forever. Colds and flus come and go. Broken bones heal and new pathways are created in the brain all the time. Awareness is key. Information is power.
An informed depressive has a good chance of managing the issue and reaching out of they know it can be helped and it’s not a weakness or something to be ashamed of.
Lillian,, I would like to say to you that your posts today have been WONDERFUL and so informative. You are so right about depression, and about how environmental “events” can cause our brain chemistry to change, but also, according to research it also causes the PHYSICAL parts of the brain to change as well.
Thank you very much for your posts today. They are very much appreciated. I hope you will post more and not just lurk. It is the sharing of our stories and our healing that helps the rest of us. Thank you.
Hey oxy. Thanks for the kudos. In my fog of depression I felt I had no story or anything to say that was new. Ah yes the magical thinking. At it again. And I agree. When the chemistry changes it does just that. It physically changes the pathways brain mass and brain can actually be seen with sophisticated imaging.
Another interesting tidbit is that the study done on the brain of two repeat mt everest climbers showed that the lack of ozegyn at the high altitudes on the mountain shrunk their brains more each time and the brain did not go back in any way to its original size. The tissue actually atrophied and the list physical brain mass.
So yes the brain is a living thing and the theory is that it’s ability to adapt to whatever is a survival mechanism that may have a lot to do with our very existence.
Enough for today. I’ve out done myself. And must get on to other things. Ill try and post more often to give back it seems to be my turn and apparently i have a lot to say finally. Lots of love. Lillian
Sky,One/joy & Oxy,
I have never engaged in the past with anyone that was here trolling or looking for trouble. Always felt it was better to go the potted plant route.
I have been here long enough to see trolls come through. Especially late at night. Have also witnessed posters in the past interact with them and actually provoking them into the “game”. I never understood this. And it did make me uncomfortable. However, I knew it would be short lived and that Donna would shut down the trolling types that come through.
We ALL know that trolls lurk here behind the scenes….Most are not posting. But they are reading our deepest thoughts (and hearing our pain) when we post here every day. So they are learning from us and possibly even “sharpening” their skills. This is REAL and we all need to think about this every time we post.
We also have been duped by several long term posters presenting themselves to be someone that they were not. Just as One/joy brought up about our autistic couple.
My expectations to get the DEPTH & the truth of the information that I am seeking from Micheal was skeptical at best. He took the time and replied and answered every one of my questions.
It is up to everyone of us to take from someones posting to take what we need from that and leave the rest. Just like they say in AA meetings.
It was my hope to learn even just one thing from Micheal’s response. And I did.
Something that I already suspected from my personal journey with my son was confirmed. I was able to put a piece of the puzzle in place.
I don’t suppose that he will be here very long because his presence makes so many uncomfortable. That is still up for Donna to decide.
I do apologize for my part in engaging with someone that makes so many uncomfortable.
In all honesty though I am glad that I asked these questions before I understood that he was making everyone so uncomfortable. Because I did take what I “needed” from his reply to me & left the rest.
Witty,
Just want to say, I didn’t mean for you to feel bad for your interaction. Sorry if it came out that way.
I was only observing the conundrum of talking to someone who is an admitted liar & deceiver. (since all spaths are “people of the lie”)
I think part of the reason people will interact with him is like why people will try to solve a puzzle – such as a rubiks cube. We think we will get an Aha! moment in the end that will finally allow us to make sense of the spath.
But that’s not possible because if the spath thinks you are getting close to seeing his real self, he will immediately go into full deceit mode. The last thing he wants is for his real self to be seen – obviously – or he wouldn’t wear a mask to begin with.
I don’t consider someone who attacks openly to be a spath. For me a spath is defined by the MASK, the LIES, the DECEIT. Their approach has a benign appearance because it’s about getting you to drop your defences. And it is very COMMON for a spath to admit to a kernal of truth, in order to deceive you about the rest of the story. Human beings naturally seem to think that “if he is telling the truth about that, then the rest must be true too.” Defendants use that trick in court all the time, BTW. So Michael’s tactic of admitting to his PD is not really a novel tactic.
Someone with cog/dis might say, “well how can you KNOW that he isn’t being sincere or truthful in his answers? why do you have the right to ASSUME you know what Michael is thinking?” That’s circular reasoning since he TOLD us that he is a psychopath and that’s what they do. PD’s are PREDICTABLE, that’s why we name them and classify them according to their PREDICTABLE behaviors. If we aren’t willing to accept this predictability, then what’s the point in having any discussion or trying to learn the RED FLAGS?
That said, Michael doesn’t bother me at all. Nor does the interaction. It’s all part of the learning experience as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I’m more perplexed by the need by some people to control who other people talk to or don’t talk to.
Also, when you consider how many spaths come here disguised as victims and we keep talking to them for long periods of time without awareness, then it makes getting rid of Michael seem pointless.
We can’t avoid spaths, they’re everywhere. Just turn on the evening news for evidence of that. We might as well practice being aware of what they look like and how they present themselves. For that, I’m grateful to Michael.
Lillian
Bravo for writing such a powerful post.
I have been told to stop having a pity party, which to me meant seeking someone to share/understand my pain was NOT acceptable. So I stopped, for the most part.
I didn’t have bad thoughts and needed to stop thinking those thoughts. I had years of abuse and there were chemical changes in me that resulted in mindnumbing life altering depression. Things got better after my divorce was final but the chemical depression has not gone away. You can not WILL chemical depression away.
Thank you for giving me the permission to acknowledge my depresssion. It is only with acknowledgment that I can DO something about it. Denial just perpetuated it.
God Bless You. Am going back to read the rest of your posts. Just had to thank you for the first one above, it has meant more to me than you could possibly realize, or b/c you’ve been through this… you probably CAN realize your gift!
All my best
Katy
Sky,
I also firmly believe that there has always been a TINY kernal of truth in what my son says to me also. I didn’t learn that here…. Or in a book.
I learned that just by observing him.
It could be just a teenie tiny inkling of truth that is meshed into a web of lies….But it never ceases to be there.
I am still glad that I interacted with him before I understood how uncomfortable it made everyone else feel. Now I know.
I have NO intention of going to Sams site or any other “like” site to interact. It felt safer for me to ask him questions about his childhood here.
THAT is still where my interest lie….I don’t care so much about the adult S/P/N because that information is so much easier to come by both on this site and through the many wonderful books that are available.
My interest will always be in what came before adulthood. I can’t help it. From my perspective this makes alot of sense why I would be interested in this from HIS perspective.
And then to see if there was anything that he did share with me that I could believe or take for what it was worth.
I did find one thing that really did make sense to me.
It was a good thing to add to my learning experience so I am grateful for that.