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
Stargazer:
Good to hear from you. Glad things are on the up and up in your life. Look forward to hearing about how it goes with the Congressman’s office. If you need any more legal advice, happy to try to help.
Joy:
I read your dream, and I thought “wow, a closure dream.” I mean think about it. He invades your space, you go into power mode and physically attack him to drive him off. The fact he wouldn’t tell you anything, in my mind is your subconscious in your dream state telling you that you already know all you need to know and you’ve taken back your power by driving him out.
As for you mother, I can relate. Your mother is being extremely passive-aggressive, as a starting point. I am not big on wielding blunt clubs, but you may have to with your mother. Since money is your biggest club here, use it. Next time she starts it up, point out that you are paying the bills, it is your house, and you will have her packed and out in one hour. No debate.
I agree that your mother is probably a narcissist or a sociopath. I grew up with one of each. Doesn’t matter what they are, they’re destructive. I’ve had to adopt a variation on Stargazer’s approach — I make the occasional “guilt” visit, and talk about absolutely nothing. My parents long ago sacrificed the privilege of sharing in my life because of their behavior. I would probably go NC, except for the fact that my conman brother has two minor children who I am trying to exert some kind of stabalizing influence on.
But, in your case, you have to decide if having “grandma” around your kids is gaining them any benefit. Seems like your ex-S and Lacey” are getting a better break from “grandma” than you and your own kids.
Dear Joy,
My egg donor is not a P, but she is so ENABLING of the monsters in my family, and a toxic and very punishing enabler at that. Until I actually REALIZED I COULD even think about going NC with her, (much less do it!) I would never have healed. I fought going NC with her, I kept trying to fix her to make her see the llight and to quit for goodness sakes making my life worse….always the passive aggressive crap and no respect for boundaries or my needs…..soooooo, guess what. I took control of the situation.
Your mom does not require any more “slack” than YOU DO. I expect you to act like a “gorwn up” and NOT BE MEAN. Don’t you expect that for yourself? So then why in the name of Santa Claus does SHE “require slack” or “deserve slack and you don’t?
My egg donor LIED TO ME. I never even imagined she would do such a thing….forget what she said, forget what I said, etc but not BALD FACED LIE. Well, I finally caught her at it, RED HANDED as it were, and you know what, it changed the way I viewed her completely. I had spent a million hours making excuses why she needed “slack” and that “i missunder stood” or she “forgot” but you know what, she was GASLIGHTING THE HECK OUT OF ME!!!! And I was falling for it cause I couldn’t imagine such a good “christian woman” as she was would deliberately LIE since she HATED LIARS. Well, can we say “Pro-ject-ion, children?” Yep, my sainted egg donor! Front pew every service, writes a check for a “mint” every Sunday. So guess what, I TOOK BACK the power I had given her to lie to me and make me believe it, the power to manipulate me and hurt me….and NC. She still after nearly a year of NC can’t believe I mean it. About this time last year she drove over here to “check on a stray horse” she had seen in my corral (What the truth was,) she had found out I was back living here—actually I had been for 3 months and she didn’t know it. One of the neighbors had obviously seen the RV and told her I was here So she had tocome over and check, and even LIE about that. I sent her packing. Haven’t seen her except once since on purpose, but had to go give her some money, but that turned into a bust, so tried talking on the phone once, and that was a bust too, so now no contact of ANY kind and if I have to send her papers to sign or something along tht line, then I send son D to take care of it. He is the one best emotionallyequipped to deal with her, and it isn’t often, once or twice a year usually.
Son C will no longer speak to her either, so she is without anyone except the son in Prison and couple of her bro’s kids for family. I am her only child and my two bio sons are her only “claimed” grandsons, son D (adopted) is not “blood” so he doesn’t count with her.
I still have issues with the anger at her, but that is subsiding as long as I keep NC and it has dampened down. I’m doing OK emotionally with all of the other Ps that are out of my life and I am P-free at the moment and intend to stay that way.
It will be a while I think before I am done with the grief process over her, she was the last one NC’d and I have more history with her that I have to go over and process. I had repressed a lot of chit from my childhood and am going back and looking at it again.
The times are getting better and better, more energy, even reserve energy in that something that is bad doesn’t knock me to my knees and keep me there for days and weeks at a time, now only a matter of hours (like running into her in the store accidently) will avoid that trap again, just forgot she shopped there on mondays, so if I have to go on a monday will go to another store or another town.
I used to make a good living with my professional credentials, but turned them in when my mind went south. Could use the money but can get by without it (I’m a cheap date!)
BTW, the “therapy” I give out is aimed more at ME than at you guys! It has been very theraputic for me as well, Makes me THINK about things and reinforces the advice I give you guys for my own use. I am ACTUALLY starting to practice what I PREACH for the first time I guess in my life. That’s a GOOD thing. I’ve “always known” how to live a good life, but just found excuses not to put that knowledge into practice and set boundaries. I used my emotions to run my life instead of my brain. Not a good way to do things for sure. Now I am trying to use LOGIC AND GOOD SENSE instead of reactiing emotionally. I try to take CARE of me emotionally, but not let my emotions RULE ME—heck that is what the darned Ps do! They let their emotions and impulses guide their lives. NOT a healthy way to live!
Yea, Star and Joy, we sure didn’t have June Cleaver for our mothers, it would have been nice I guess, but have to re-parent ourselves and teach ourselves what they didn’t. How to live a good life and nurture ourselves.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want ANY one in my life that causes me pain and heart ache from disrespect or enjoys my pain–it doesn’t matter if they gave birth to me or I gave birth to them. Love me and treat me well, or get the HECK OUT OF MY LIFE, I don’t need it. Makes life so simple to cut those folks off at the knees and get them gone. I paid all the RENT I expect to pay for the 9 months room and board my egg donor gave me. I RESPECT and HONOR my “mother” by becoming the kind of person that would bring honor to any parent, but it doesn’t mean I will sit still for more crap or that I am obligated to allow her to continue to disrespect me.
Star,
Oh, as Indi would say, my address is 123 Happy way Farm, Anytown, USA, send a check to that address for any amount you think you owe me! LOL I’ll lhold my breath til it gets here! LOL
Matt: yep, you are right on, look at the “cost vs benefit” ratio and see if it is enough benefit to put up with the chit. I doubt that Joy’s mom will respect boundaries and I hadn’t thought about kids being involved, but they don’t need to witness that or learn any of grandma’s dysfunctional behavior. Mine learned about as much dysfunction from my egg donor as I did, but son C at least is unlearning it pretty fast!
Joy i remember one dream i had that was vivid. I was with the s in some big complex and i lost him and i waas searching panic stricken trying to find him and i kept finding saloon like rooms where i would look for him(his fav haunts are bars) and then i fianlly find my way out of the complex to freedom and he’s sitting in his white truck with the passenger door open as if to say where have you been i’ve been here all along. I get in the truck heading for the physhe ward but i’m adamant that i want my Dad to take me and not him. This is how much they haunt us and i’m not even esp close with my Dad but i def did not want to give him the satisfaction in my dream. I ‘ve had many dreams about him all along the same premise, other women involved, him treatin g me like crap. It’s very common in early sobriety too , ,people myself included having dreams about getting high or drunk. I no longer have those but i think they instill a healthy fear in us. Ox, im so very grateful for you too and your straighforward comments as i know i need to look at reality but sometimes it just hurts so much. Joy, i feel for you too, they say there is no worse hell on earth than having a p or an s for a parent. My father is very narcissistic but is not a s but i def think the similarities made me vulnerable to the s. Both make me feel annulled as if i don’t exist and i’m always trying to get their approval. They say you repeat patterns from childhood and i noticed they even have similar tastes etc. but the bottom line is selfishness. That is the real common thread between them. My dad does have a heart though , thank goodness. I went for a long walk with a first cousin who i lost communication with years ago and we grew up together and it’s kind of nice to come full circle. Our moms are both sisters who have passed and she talked about all her woes with men etc. and my loser actually picked her up one night at a bar when she was in a man hating phase, tried to have sex with her but couldn’t perform. Makes me sick when i think of it as i was in the picture all along and he had no idea she was my cousin. He of course lied and said she just gave him a ride home and barely knows her. Did he honestly think i’d beleive him over my own cousin. Bastard. Heart aches but i will survive, when i think of what kind of person i am and what he is , he had no business whatsoever coming near me. Shouldn’t even breathe the same air that i breathe. I know deep down what kind of person i am , he will never ever be able to see or understand , as one male friend said women are all cardboard boxes to him with holes. Full of hatred and don ‘t like it but i know it’s expected and will pass. Thanks to Ox, Joy, Star , all of you, my friends are so glad i’ve found this site. love to you all.
Kindheart, I’m also wondering about your cousin, willing to sleep with your man? Were you upset at her as well?
I’m glad to hear you coming out of denial about that creep and realizing that you are so much better than his treatment. Though it has been said over and over, those of us who grow up with narcissistic parents are at risk for finding partners who don’t care about us and then trying to convince them to care about us–to no avail. We have recreated our childhood to try and heal the original trauma–that of neglect. I have dated a few men who were very loving. I was actually able to work out some of these issues with them. But the disordered ones just perpetuate the trauma.
I do believe, as Oxy says, it is possible to reparent ourselves. The stronger we become, the more we will recognize and repel bad people. I have actually had conversations with my inner child where she wouldn’t talk to me and didn’t trust me. I really started from scratch having no idea how to care for the young, neglected part of myself. I still don’t always recognize what she needs. Bingo, along comes a sociopath and promises to be everything I (and my inner child) need. Sure looks tempting, huh? I also have never much related to babies (presumably because this is the age where my neglect started). I have gotten to a point where I think babies are very cute and I like to cuddle them. This is a big improvement for me.
Thanks again, Matt. You are such a great addition to this site in so many ways. I wish I had a career like yours where I could advocate for people.
OxD,
Thanks, the check’s in the mail. lol
I am posting this video again, because it is one of the most beautiful videos I have ever seen. Even if you’ve seen it a dozen times before, it will make you cry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5vRPKIS5UM
Star, actually when i first met up with my cousin back in the summer at a patio bar i hadn’t seen her in years and when i told her how i’d been in a bad emotional relationship(if you can call it that) and when i told her , the look on her face was all it took. She had no idea and could not fathom me being with him, my cousin is very opposite to me promiscuos , but a nice girl. She was in my wedding party years ago 25 and knew my exhusband (banker) and could not imagine me with this guy. He’s picked up every thing he can get attention from in this town, pathetic low self esteem underneath the God like protrayal of himself. As my one good male friend has told me (his dad was a P) and knows all of what i’ve gone through, said it must have been quite a trophy to bring someone like me down as i am the opposit e to him but was raised to think that all people are equal. He got me at the lowest point in my life . Hard to articulate , but i wouldn’t take an ounce from anyone else of what this lizard gave me. You know the song “Stupid Girl” well, i had more reasons for why he behaved the way he did and don’t give up easily , usually a great characteristic except in case s like these. What i really hope for is to be able to forget he exists and not give him the opportunity to even think he knows me. I pray every night for this. love kindheart
Oxy, Thanks again. I have always known that my Mom was not one that I felt nurtured me, but I never defined her as anything other than a piss poor Mom. Looking back she would start fights verbally and physically abuse me not horribly but slap smack stuff. Then once she had vented she would want me to go out to get a bite to eat as though nothing had happened. As an only child with an absent father she was all that I had. I had to forgive and forget to survive. Now I think all that accommodating set me up to fall in love at 14 with an Sp, and to seek him out again 20 years later so that I could waste 10 more years chasing elusive love and approval. You know having him and her buddy up feels like such betrayal. She actually said to me today that I was just upset that he doesn’t ask about me. Well yep and he didn’t ask about my kids either. He only inquires as to how she is doing. This man used to talk about killing my Mom in detail if only he could get away with it. So it sickens me that now he pretends to give a chit how she is.
Matt, Closure dream with no closure. Yep. But I did attack first and ask questions later. I made no BS up to attribute to his reasons. There are none. There is no answer or excuse. I must know that even as deep as my subconscious level. My kids really don’t like their Grandma much. Lacey does but she is not my child. My kids Joseph and Ana are older 19 and 15 so beyond the needing a granny stage of life. Financially, my Mom and I got screwed on the Mold Hole purchase. It was her money that was put down on the house, all her savings in fact’ so we are in essence stuck together but the case will be settled some day and we don’t have to continue to spend time together even if we live in the same house for now.
Star and Kindheart, Thanks for sharing and being good support for me.
DEar Joy,
Yep, I think you have made a break through in recognizing your mom and what she is. I think, though, that you ALREADY KNEW, you just wanted someone to validate what you knew. I can relate to that need for validation too.
I got to the point if I looked out the window and saw rain, I would need someone to validate it that it was “real” rain. LOL A little bit of hyperbole there, but you get the idea.
Well, think I will go put amovie in the DVD player and veg out for a while. I have been totally lazy this week while the guys have been gone (since Tuesday) weather nasty and so just kicking back and doing much of nothing. Ate up all the left overs and had P-B &J for supper! Didn’t feel like messing up the kitchen cooking and nothing much sounded good and I hate to cook just for me. so will just thaw some meat for tomorrow and kick back tonight! I may see you guys before bed time and maay not. If I don’t get back, you all have a good evening! Love oxy
hey guys i need t vent something. I was just watching the Larry King show and it was all about the Rhiana and Chris Brown assault and they had several other people on Mike Tysons”ex wife, nicole brown simpsons sister, and several others and the thing that really bothers me is that when you are dealing with physicological abuse there is no evidence. I don’t know if any of you feel like i do but i wonder sometimes if he would have hit me if i would have gotten out and then i feel because it was all emotional that nobody gets it and if they don’t see it , it didn’t really happen. I look at where i am and how i’ve been off of work, through a Trauma/addictions program, and all the aftermath of this whole ordeal and i have to wonder if anyone is ever going to understand other than you guys. I’ve had so many things come to the surface because of the emotional abuse that i took or allowed, i don’t know how to wrap my mind around it all. I sobered up 1 year after meeting him which was a miracle , just to have 5 years later PTSD, adult ADHD, kleptomania due to anxiety, so much shit that nobody could relate to him. it’s almost as if i wish he had hit me, if fact i have a gf who has said all along that it would have been kinder if he had. I guess im wanted to blame myself or an turning anger inward, it’s just like he walks away into the sunset and i’m left with wondering if i will be accepted for long term , worrying about my job and wondering if i will ever be over this. Sorry to sound so down but when i was watching them talk about the physical abuse i know i’ve been abused , i just have no proof if anyone gets what i mean.