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
One more thing… the DBT theory is based on Buddhist prinicipals. If you have dabbled in them. you will find the ideas familar.
Elizabeth Conley: Good rules, to preserve sanity when the ‘worst things happening’ gets even worse. Just be careful. Smart S’s can turn it against you if all your bases aren’t covered.
And good stuff, Kathleen. My perception of your core points:
1. It’s much easier (and more practical, efficient, moral…) to nip it in the bud, than it is to waste vast amounts of time and effort suffering in silence and then plotting revenge.
2. Know enough about the dark side to discipline paranoia into hypervigilance, rage into effective self-defense, making oneself stronger…
Now, I don’t know any catholic priests, but I do need to confess one more act of revenge, which nobody else knows about. This was against my first workplace sociopath, who was closest to a psychopath as anybody I’ve ever met. Some of his charms:
1. Bragged about using women for sex.
2. Bragged about railroading people out of work just because he didn’t like them.
3. Bragged about shooting cats visiting the dumpster behind his apartment, then intimidating his neighbors into silence.
4. Enjoyed “cat and mouse” “psychological warfare” against “the weak” (his words).
5. Moved up the corporate ladder by knocking off every person directly above him in seniority. For example: ’Big Ron’ was an easygoing teddy bear type who enjoyed telling stories. By the time S was done with Big Ron’s reputation, Big Ron was a ’lazy worthless pathological liar who deserved to get fired’. The method S selected for me (a quiet, hard working, ethical, naive type) was overt bullying and namecalling, justified with persuasive rumors to the boss that my resulting anxiety and depression was actually being caused by drug addiction (I didn’t even drink). I hung in there until S was promoted to another location, but psychological scars remained.
Disclaimer: These are things I may or may not have done. Some details have been changed to protect the innocent.
I remembered that S had bragged to me that he would someday own a luxury view property. Years later, after perusing various resources, I found out to my disgust that he had indeed purchased an expensive view home. “On the backs of his victims”, I scowled to myself. So I went to investigate. It turned out the house was downhill from the street, at the end of a long straight and very steep concrete driveway. That evening my tub of used motor oil found a new home. He responded by trimming some bushes and leaving the lights on. I then responded with concrete filler coat on the next rainy evening, which sealed the horizontal grooves which had once made it possible for cars to go up and down such a steep driveway without spinning out or sliding into the house. He responded by putting in an expensive electric security gate at the top of the drive. I responded with a massive old chain and padlock, and (re)moved the security equipment to where he couldn’t find it. And so on… I did make sure to notify his neighbors via postcard about what was going on, to alleviate any worry on their part, and possibly give them some amusement. The feeling of getting even was exhilarating. Then one day I drove past and saw what was obviously his pre-teenage son playing on the street. We locked eyes, and I sensed a fearful sadness there (his mother is one of those “sweet girls” which S prized). That’s when I stopped my game. Instead of skulking around at night wearing ski masks, I’ve been focusing instead on picturing S on my heavy boxing bag and makiwara, which I’ll now admit is a far more efficient use of my time. Nip it in the bud.
Learnthelesson: I actually got that lightbulb moment after pondering, then researching “What gives sociopaths that fabled superhuman gift of reading people?” Turns out, it’s probably mostly trial and error on top of perceptive ability which comes from not being as self-conscious as the rest of us are. They’re really not all that smart. They’ve learned through experience just who they can get the most out of for the least amount of fuss and bother.
Since most of them are also such practiced actors, “agreeableness” and “conscientiousness” sometimes has to be ’smoked out’. I’m still working on those two. But I know that noting a discrepancy between how they, and their closest associates, are treating you is important. My second S chatted away gleefully, charmingly on the phone with his “buddy” and “bro”, until hanging up and turning to me saying “Yeah I know, everybody thinks he’s an asshole but I’ve gotta play the game.”
Noting how they will treat “the help” when under the ’stress’ of not getting what they want is an oldie but goodie. Observing them while they’re intoxicated, or in some other situation where their very thin thread of inhibition is cut, is useful. Gut feel is good because it’s simply a form of implicit memory. I could use some help with that last one, as in how to surface and clarify a feeling of ’weirdness’ or incongruity from my subconscious into conscious clarity.
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Student Of Sociopathy
Dear Aloha,
Welcome back! Miss you when you aren’t around!
When I was so devestated right after my son murdered tht girl, I went to work in a psycho hospital and THAT experience was healing for ME—maybe more so than most of our patients, many of whom were Borderline PDs or PPDs! It made me now feel alone when connecting with the families of these kids. Believe it or not, I found out that my kid killing someone wasn’t “as bad” as some of the things these teens had done! YIPES!!!
You are so right, they will step on the land mines sometimes even if you point them out. It seems almost like they are compelled to do so. (((???)
Glad that your experience in working with these young people is healing for you as well. I think any time we help others with healing we also heal ourselves more than anyone else.
I read an article by Sandra Brown today called “Gasoline and Fire” about TWO disordered people “hooking up” and the sparks and fire that follow. I also read another article about how victims need to keep on talking to the world, and VALIDATING that DV does exist.
It is “common knowledge” that cops hate DV calls because if the man is beating up on the woman as soon as they start taking a hand in “defending” her, she is likely to attack THE COPS to defend her partner that was beating her moments before.
Putting the TWO articles together in my mind, I think that it expresses something I have “known” a long time, but just didn’t put into such words. When I was doing the pro bono health care in my clinic for the DV shelter women and children, I noticed that many of these women exhibited signs of BPD as well as their partners being Ps. Of course that is FIRE AND GASOLINE, and of course the “dance” goes back and forth with the partners “taking turns” being the abuser, being the victim, and being the rescuers! No way to “heal” either partner or to dampen down the intensity of the blazes as they occur. IN actual fact, I think, this TYPE of DOUBLE ABUSER relationship is what “gives a bad name” to ALL victims of DV. It is part of I think why WE are invalidated as victims of domestic violence or abuse of any kind, because it is ASSUMED that we are “part and party” to the problems.
Sure, we may have ENDURED the abuse/trickery, but it doesn’t mean that WE Are also abusers or personality disordered, but because there are SOME cases of “GAsoline and Fire” relationships where the parties are “co-abusers” (for lack of a better term) it gives us ALL a “bad name.” Makes it easier for society to “blame the victims” as well.
Some real food for thought gleened today from various articles here and elsewhere.
S O S:
I laughed my ass of on your revenge. I got my revenge using the tax code against my S (I’m in the midst of writing an article on that). But, that really wasn’t revenge — it was taking care of business.
That said, after I took care of business, I realized that wasting another minute of time of that human impersonator was a minute too long wasted.
I used to think mine was psychic. Now I just see that he was good at sizing up people for what what he could take them for — provided it wasn’t too much of a bother.
And their claims to he contrary, they really aren’t all that smart. When I went after S for the money he owed me, I was actually disappointed in how easy it was to manipulate him right where I wanted him. Basically, I think if I taped a stick to his head and tied a carrot to the end of it, he would follow it right off a cliff — or down an oil-slicked driveway.
Matt,
If the fence hadn’t gone up I might have gone bowling. My plan would have required pouring concrete into a large rubber play ball I’d found (and it’s support mold), in place, in the back of my truck, with tailgate removed and sliding ramp contraption ready. The 24” diameter ball would have weighed around 600 pounds and smashed through the house at around 20-30mph. Teach that asshole not to screw around with people smarter than himself.
But in hindsight, I realize that I had become obsessed. It would have taken weeks of planning and building and expense just to build a successful wrecking ball. And then all that worry when it made the local news. But then, a note to the TV studio explaining how sociopathy drives decent citizens bonkers might have gotten some airplay and traction.
It would have just been a lot easier to just hang out around here for a while.
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Student Of Sociopathy
Dear SOS,
Cute! I think we all from time to time have “visions” that should not be actually accomplished! Believe me, I lay awake nights thinking of all kinds of really imaginative “revenge” scenarios to “get even” with some of my Ps.
Many times we never get “justice” —which we are entitled to IMHO—so we get the thirst for “revenge.” Even if we DO get “justice” the Ps perceive it as “revenge.”
But I think our ULTIMATE REVENGE is leading a good healthy life after the situation(s) with them. My son C, who was married to a P, who, with her BF accompliace, tried to murder him, is still healing from the almost 8 year long relationship with her. He just got back from a trip to NY to help out a friend of his, and while he was coming back, he said (after he got home) that he had realized that the Ps will NEVER know what it is to BE a friend, or to appreicate what a real friend is, and that ultimately, it ALMOST makes him feel sorry for the Ps.
The revenge fantasies are kinda fun though, at least when you are in a certain stage of the healing process—I came up with some unique and interesting doozies to imagine! some of them quite comical—it’s almost a shame I couldn’t bring myself to DO them! My criminal revenge career floundered before it ever got started!
ps. I like your “bowling game”—cute!
OxDrover: Then I won’t discuss my favorite one, which I accomplished without much trouble. That one will simply be known as “The gift that kept on giving!”
My great aunt married a guy who became an abusive alcoholic, and then stalked her, then tried to kill her after she left him. She escaped overseas with the US civil service and worked in many different countries around the world until he finally died. The ’adventurous, cultured, world-wise bon-vivant’ persona she acquired, was the only one we kids ever knew. It wasn’t until after she passed away (at 95 YO), when we learned the rest of the story.
SOS—ah gosh! AS PAUL HARVEY WOULD SAY, TELL ME “THE REST OF TE STORY!” That is plain down right MEAN to tease me like that—you know I can resist ANYTING except temptation! And I am soooo tempted to be CURIOUS!!! LOL
Hi all, Thanks for answering my question Kathleen. Also much love to all who have shown me support. So much posted since last I wrote. Great stuff. To Shabbychic Sorry you are dealing with a sick SP. Don’t let it change what you need to do for you. Trust me, shoe on other foot he would not shed a tear or change his behavior to show you kindness in your hour of need. My kids asked my ex if they could bring my step daughter to see me when I was on isolation and coughing up blood clots last month. You already know his answer. Of course not because he never cared and doesn’t now. Also Hep C is a lethal sexually transmitted disease. Thank God he doesn’t want to get busy with you. As an RN, I would never trust my health to a condom with an infected partner. None of us should. As to revenge, after I told a friend who is a coworker of my ex that I was glad he was gone because he was abusive and controlling, another coworker told his girlfriend who told my ex. I got a call from another supervisor telling me that I was banned from all property by the owner for telling this abuse lie about my ex. Small town this man owns everything from gas stations to fast food joints. I waited until I knew that the owner would be at work and called his home phone and left him a message. I stated that I had been informed that I was banned. Questioned Why and reminded him of my ex-s criminal past. Told him he was a fool for trusting a convicted armed robber with the keys to the ATM. That his golden boy had held not strangers but his own co-workers at the end of a gun and that he never felt an ounce of remorse because his old boss had it coming to him when he stopped kissing his ass. I also informed him that the same fate would be his if ever my ex felt that he wasn’t getting what he had become used to getting. The ex lives rent free in a home owned by his boss. With the economy and the loss of business that the stores are seeing this is a ridiculous perk which other employees resent. Anyway, I got a call from the owner. He had no idea that this had happened and informed me that my ex and his buddy had got their asses chewed for their stunt. The buddy who got himself in trouble for my ex has no idea how dirty my ex talks about him. He talks crap about everyone who thinks they are his friend. The new girlfriend he states it is just time for there to be a her in his life. He states that she is nothing to him. None ever are. Empty space insert stupid victim. One size fits all. And she is ugly, poor, and pathetic. She doesn’t take care of her kids or herself. The workers talk about how they all smell and look like they never met a hair brush. It is just really sad. The image I want to leave you with is me dancing. Hips sway side to side Arm out swinging at crotch singing, “I got the biggest Dick… I got the biggest Dick..My Dick is bigger than both of theirs put together.” It never fails to make me laugh though I know it is vulgar and not ladylike. I think that is the biggest thrill for me. So outside my cool controlled self. And I won that battle hands down. I got the power that day. Here’s to victory for all of us. TOWANDA. I love that .
Kathy, thanks, I will let you know when I read the book. I would be interested in the new thread when you start it. It would be nice to continue blogging about non-S related things that are important in our lives. I hate to just leave LF just because I’m over the sociopath (I think I’m definitely getting there).
SOS, LOL at your revenge schemes. Did the S ever know it was you doing it? When I broke up with the emotionally unavailable man I was living with (we were together for 3 years), I had the fantasy of spilling some of my red paint under a few of his beds where he wouldn’t find it until he sold the house or moved the beds, and also putting deep gashes in his beautiful new hardwood floors under the sofa where he wouldn’t find them right away. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to follow through with my plans. I honestly wish I could have executed them. I think in that case, revenge would have felt pretty good.