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
Ox your post is very inspiring. I can tell you are ahead on the road to recovery and it gives me hope an d we talked so much about boundaries int eh trauma program but it’s best hearing it from the horses mouth ( not to cal you a horse ) very encouraging for me. Thanks again
Oxy: I like to think I won’t let people treat me bad anymore, I can’t keep shoving this awareness away just to ‘be’ with somebody. Thank you for sharing your experiences, it really helps. I just have to stay wtih you guys and keep reading. I know one of my biggest fears is ‘being alone’. It seems like I grew up with the idea of girls that had boyfriends / husbands were pretty, desirable, and somebody loved them. So when I don’t have a boyfriend… I don’t feel good about myself, which goes back to your golden gates story and my Golden Retriever who I treated better than I treat myself. I am trying to change!!! Like you said one day… it’s like rebirthing ourselves… it’s painful and I’m squirming and kicking and screaming the whole way!
kindheart48:
I must be emitting negative electrical rays today. I just lost the post I was writing to you for the second time.
Here we go again.
If you haven’t already, read “Adult Children of Alcoholics” by Janet Geringer Woititz. She makes the point that those of us who grew up with alcoholic parents (or any other severely dysfunctional home) often find “normal” people boring because we are so accustomed to living life on the edge.
I always swore I would end up in a nice sane settled relationship with a normal person. Problem was, I was conditioned to go the other way. S was the pinnacle or nadir, depending on your perspective of a life-time of relationships with disordered people.
One of the hallmarks of relationships with disordered people is that we mistake intensity for intimacy. Normal is boring to us because we are so used to living at a fevered pitch.
I now see that normal relationships don’t proceed at lightening pace. That there is reciprocity and trust in a normal relationship. I’m trying to learn at this late date that getting to know a person is a lot better than a whole factory full of chemistry — and I’ve had an awful lot of chemical explosions in my life.
Normal people are law-abiding, bill-paying and on the whole drama-free individuals. Their lives are sane. I’m finally seeing the attractiveness of having people like that in my life and not worrying about their being evicted, having creditors breathing down their necks, being hooked on drugs, and, oh, yes, having served time.
Regarding your helping your daughter — one thing I’ve learned post-S is it’s okay to extend a helping hand to people. But, before I do that, I now run my own “cost-benefits analysis.” I ask myself why I am extending myself and what will be the benefit to me. I’m not saying monetary benefit. It’s okay to extend a helping hand for purely altruistic reasons.
However, I am done extending my helping hand only to have it bitten off by the recipient. You mentioned your S and his daugter. Prime examples of those who rip off your hand repeatedly. Other than getting taken advantage of and getting aggravated, what do you get out of helping his daughter? Nothing, from where I’m standing.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is that letting my answering machine or voicemail get the call is self-protective. If somebody wants to speak to me badly enough, they’ll leave a message. If it is S, or any other user in my life, they generally won’t leave a message because they know I won’t return the call. One of these days they’ll finally figure out that I”m done with them and stop calling.
thanks Matt and yes we like the jazz so a male friend in program has told me. On top of it im pretty high on the ADHD scale with the thrill seeking, risk taking, i remember when i first me the s and everything he said was so off the wall, i was instantaniously curious to say the least. Curiosity def played a big part and boredom as adhd people get bored easily but you are right there is absolutely nothing to gain by helping them they are nothing but soul suckers. The problem with the zany people we are attracted to i’ve noticed for years is that even when i didn’t have any real stress in m y life , just listening to these nuts made me spin. They def should come with warning labels on them.
Hey my internet family–
Sundays have always made me sad as it is. In recovering from the N– and being at ground zero– today I have been longing for my past. I have to move forward and it is so hard b/c I have lost so much. Even my job– but I was burnt out as it was…
This is the worst. When I was with him– he made me feel safe. And it was all lies. Will I ever survive this?
I need to make some baby steps in my employment and health this week. Doing anything seems so difficult for me. I did not even go to church today and that is exactly what I need to do. I feel immobilized.
akitameg:
Baby steps are key.
I’ve been slamming into the wall in my job search. I finally forced myself to make a list of things I need to do. Then I broke those things into smaller and smaller components. I find if I do that I can actually feel I accomplished something and I don’t feel so overwhelmed and immobilized.
Oxy, Hope you enjoyed your movie break yesterday and glad that I helped you find an Aha moment. I do think that coming here sharing and reading what others share is of great benefit. It helps me see things sooner and clearer. It makes me look deeper at myself and what I brought into the relationship with the Sp. Today, I watched my Mom’s behavior through new eyes. She had been gone most of the day. I went out and thought my daughter was still asleep on the couch when I got back. But it was Mom. I wasn’t happy to see her in my space again. I told her that she wasn’t welcome in my space that she needed to go to her space. She was all “you can’t make me go. I’m not bothering you. What is your problem.” I told her that she was my problem and that I might have to live with her but I don’t have to associate with her any longer. My kids were in the kitchen bringing in groceries and the living room is attached open concept style. My Mom continued to refuse to leave. Temper flared and we were screaming at each other. She kept saying how sick I am that I need help. I told her she was sick for continuing to be where she was not wanted and continuing to behave in a way that she knew was bad for my emotional and physical health. I told her to go see the ex and see if he wanted her company since they love each other so much. I finally told the kids that she was being a passive aggressive child and that we needed to remove the pay off. I turned off my TV and took my remote. I sent the kids to their rooms. Sure enough it wasn’t long and she slithered on out the door. No doubt to run tell who ever will listen how evil we are. Don’t care. The house is quiet now. The spaghetti sauce is simmering and the kids and I are about to put a movie in. Hurray, I win one.
Matt, I just read your post and “normal relationships don’t proceed at lightening pace” struck me. Pun intended as an after thought. LOL! That may also be part of the appeal for me. I have never really met a person, had them ask me out, dated. I got in instant relationships and married young. Left the first husband who was cheating on me for the Sp who was my first childhood love. Instant engagement and the start of my fairy tale. Only didn’t get Disney happily ever after. I got a Tales from the Dark Side. I honestly have no idea how to meet guys and go on dates. Forty years old and totally clueless about that whole process. The whole concept of dating different people and figuring out what you like and don’t like never happened. I met hot guys and parties who seemed a little dark, moody. I planned to fix them. We hooked up and broke up. Meet next guy at friend’s party. Repeat. Now that the high school party scene is a distant memory, I find myself lost. That is partly why I held on so long. My total lack of confidence in meeting anyone ever again. There are no straight guys where I work who aren’t married or way too old for me. I seldom go out to clubs or bars and when I do I am not the type of girl who gets noticed in that scene. I am a quiet homebody. I like simple stuff nature, reading, watching movies, doing crafts, playing cards. Nothing that screams potential for meeting people. So not wanting be alone, I settled for what I had the appearance of a normal happy family.
Joy:
I know so well of what you speak.
My parents did such a good job of conditioning me that nobody would want me, that I would just dive head first into any relationship with anybody who would throw me the tiniest bit of attention. Every relationship I viewed as the last ship sailing and Id had better get on board — even if I KNEW that I was boarding the Titanic. Or the Lusitania. Or the Poseidon (Paging Shelly Winters. Paging Shelly Winters).
I didn’t understand the rules. But, the bigger part was that I had no value for myself as a person. I don’t want to grow old alone. But, I can’t ever again go through what I went through with S.
Funny this is I’ve noticed a change in myself recently. A friend fixed me up recently with a very successful guy. My friend point blank told me “I know you always short sell yourself. Yout both bring a lot to this party.”
Anyhow, we had a very nice first date. I called and left him a message thanking him for inviting me out (he paid). He called me to invite me out, and then realized he didn’t have his date book with him and said he’d call me back.
I haven’t heard back from him in a week. The friend who fixed us up said he knows this guy is interested and not to give up hope. I told him that I know he’s interested, and I know he’s got business problems at the moment so that’s probably got his attention. Then I heard words come out of my mouth that I never thought I would live to hear.
I told my friend that the ball is in my date’s court and he has my number.
And I realized that I was telling the truth. That I wasn’t scamming myself. I signaled my interest. I made the first move. It’s up to him to follow through. I’d like it if he does. But, I”m not going to sit around the phone waiting. I am not going to chase him. Call, don’t call. Punto.
I sure don’t have the dating game figured out. But, I’m starting to get better at the rules for what will make me happy.
Dear Joy,
I’m glad you set some boundaries for your mother. I know it must have been difficult. I can’t even imagine living in the same house with my egg donor. I can imagine she would have responded like yours did though.
GOOD FOR YOU for setting the boundaries. I imagine the shouting match was not fun though, so maybe next time you can do it without the shouting match (at least from your side). As I am learning to set the boundaries with people close to me (I never had any problems setting them with people NOT close to me) I realized that Ii could do it with a “cool” head a lot more easy on myself. I didn’t let myself get pulled into the anger thing any more in setting them.
Now, if I have a problem I try to confront it in a calm way so that I don’t have to workk myself up with the anger to do the boundary setting. It may be a bit more difficult for you with her there in the house.
You also may have to consider laying some ground rules, sort of like the “War of the Roses”—-this is YOUR part of the house, Mom, and that is my part of the house.
When my kids were in a fighting with each other stage and had to share a room, one was a slob and the other very neat, and so what I did was to put their bunk beds in the center of the wall, put a piece of TAPE on the floor marking exactly half the room so that each one had the same amount of space and was responsible for keeping HIS things on his side of the tape and keeping HIS side of the room clean etc.
You may have to do some of that with your mom, even designate times she is allowed in the kitchen (when you are not there) and if she does not like that, then the ALTERNATIVE is that you will move her out.
I had some “friends” who were sort of down and out (from poor plananing on their parts) and I let them move out here to my farm in their RV motor home which is where they live. I put some ground rules down and they did not respect any of them, and acted like they were doing me some kind of FAVOR by being here, so I set some more boundaries which they over stepped (I cried even thinking about seting these boundaris cause I walked on egg shells to keep from pithing them off) but I finally grew enough back bone that I said to myself “WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?” This is MY space and I am willing to SHARE it with them, but they are NOT willing to share it with me, but they are demanding that I DANCE TO THEIR TUNE, so I finally decided that I would have to ask them to leave. I waited until I calmed down, and one morning I went to see them and said “Guys, this is NOT working out. I think you are going to have to go somewhere else.” I didn’t elaborate and strange enough, they didn’t even ASK WHY? I think they KNEW why!
I am no longer having any difficulty in maintaining boundaries with these people now, and no more crying jags worrying about hurting their feelings, or how pitiful they are or how they have had to mortage their RV now to keep afloat financially due to the spending sprees they have been on for “toys” rather than paying their bills.
Part of the roof recently blew off an old storage building I have that they had some stuff (junk) stored in, and I have gotten MY things out of the building,, because it is not worth fixing so will salvage a few things and then burn it, and doze the rest of it….so I gave them a date in which they had to get their stuff out (June 1) and of course I am now receving e mails telling me how poor they are, and so on, and I e mailed back, “well, I have to get the dozer in there in July because that is the only month it is dry enough there to get a dozer in to bury the rubble, so I will start tearing the building apart, taking out windows and doors and the rest of the roof to salvage the matierals on June 2, and I figure it will take me a month to get the stuff out before I burn it, but when I start taking the walls and windows off, your stuff will be open to anyone who wants to come get it.”
Of couse then I get an e mail back pitiful and throwing out that he has “had the same phone number for 4 years” and neither my sons nor I have called or come to visit them. and I love this line “Out of sight you are forgotten.” (of course they have not called or come to visit us either LOL)
So I just e mailed back that we had been working very hard to get our stuff out of the storage building and other things here and were just doing what you do in life, working hard and busy.” My sons are about fed up with them as well.
Because this man (of the couple) was a close friend and student of my husband’s it was difficult for me to set boundaries, and over time the couple became more and more dependent on me to “help them out.” The man also was a boy scout mentor to my son D when he was much younger. But over time, the man has become very dependent and needy and expecting others to do for him what he should be doing for himself. He is starting to play the “poor me” role in life now. I am no longer willing to enable him, or frankly, even try to help him or his wife, because they are not willing to do for themselves what they can do. They are both developing a sense of entitlement and a dependent personality(ies) though it is not to the level of a dependent personality DISORDER.
A friiend of mine, who is a chronic enabler, recently ran into what I think is a full fledged dependent personality disorder and I think the woman has 8/8 traits to back this up. LOL
You might google “dependent personality disorder” and wikipedia has a good article on it, see how much of it applies to your mother, siince she seems to think that you are responsible for taking care of her and putting up with the verbal games and abuse. I know for sure I was a well trained “enabler” for most of my life (my egg donor was good at this) but I am rebelling now against this and making myself set reasonable boundaries WITHOUT GUILT. I’ve only been at the boundary thing not quite a year yet, so it is still a learning process, but I am getting there now, at least I don’t have to have someone else validate my boundaries are “reasonable.” LOL Hugs and good luck!