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
Matt, we wer eposting at the same time, so didn’t see yours til I posted mine. RIGHT ON BROTHER!!!! good for you!!!
Joy:
I was also thinking about your relationship with your mother. I’ve just gotten to the part of “The Betrayal Bond”. The part about parents who were victimized who now make their children assume responsibility for their continued refusal to act responsibly.
This book is amazing. I think you will get a lot out of it.
OxDrover:
I was just thinking about your situation with your the former friends who have their junk in your barn and are jacking you around about removing it. I started to get this hinky feeling that they’re trying to set you up — you know the you didn’t give me notice and destroyed my goods and now I’m suing you song-and-dance.
You might want to take a gander at the bailor-bailee laws of your state. My gut is telling me that the email notice is sufficient, especially since they weren’t paying you for storage. But, with wingnuts, you never know. You can probably get the information by googling your state (Arkansas as I recall) and bailor-bailee. Also, just to CYA, put in a quick call to your state AG’s office. This is one of those that I know is not a first time inquiry for them, and the law is well established. They can probably give you a case cite or an opinion they’ve rendered previously.
Then I would send a certified letter to them like “In accordance with Section __ of the Arkansas Bailor-Baille Law, I hereby am giving you the statutory __ days notice for you to remove you property from my premises located at __.” You may have to do what I call “countdown letters” — 90 days, 60 days, 30 days. A pain in the ass, I know, but, you don’t need the headaches from the alternative. No good deed goes unpunished and all that.
hey Guys, i hate sunday nights. For years like clockwork i would end up at the s house as i was so lonely and it always seemed to hit on a Sunday night. Don’t want to fall back into that trap. as my one gf said i’d be better off alone crying on the floor in my garage than with him. Anyone else in the same boat.
KH48,
I still have times that I feel that way, too. I have no desire to ever break my NC, & the only way I seem to be able to get past the “OMG, I’m alone” thing is to throw myself into any activity with all I’ve got. Most of the time that is cleaning the house or garage. Some times music helps, but not always.
SC2 brought up an interesting point that I’m going to have to think on a little bit. She had said that the way some women gage their own self worth, was if they had a husband or BF. To not have either makes you doubt your own desirabilty, or wonder if anyone will ever love you. Right after my s left me, I found myself thinking that I would rather be w/him & be mistreated, than be alone. I know now that all my self worth had been sucked right out of me. I am trying to be better to myself, which is hard. It feels foreign to me.
KH48: Yes, I am right there in the boat with you. I normally would do anything to avoid lonliness and tears, have wasted years of my life with the wrong persons because of it. Really, I’d have to say it is one of my greatest fears, but here I am alone and I’m getting through it somehow, I guess your girlfriend is right. I figure it might relieve my symptoms for a little while, but in the end he won’t be here for me.
Dear Matt,
You know, I appreciate that good advice and I will do so.
I’ve had rental property and did that all with renters etc. I also have had to put mechanic’s liens on airplanes etc when the owner was slow or no pay. I had a guy come here to buy and pick up a plane that I had a lien on, and the guy decided (he was a Yankee Used airplane salesman in the worst sense) that he would bowl over the old red neck widder woman—that was his first mistake! LOL
Anyway, he gave me a POST DATED CHECK from the owner of the plane for the money and I refused it and refused to let him have the plane. Then he said he would take it anyway, so I said, “Well this is private property, get off my property NOW” Then he said “OK just call the law!” I replied “I don’t call 911, I call Smith and Wesson, now get off my property NOW” The mechanic he had hired (a local guy who knew me) was busting out laughing behind his hands hearing all this. So any way the guy finally got his bank to wire the money to my bank and I gave him the paper work and let him take the plane off.
My husband let a “friend” (former friend now) take a plane off before it was paid for and the guy wouldn’t pay the rest. Of course if you give them the plane (or car) and let them leave with it, before you get your money, you lose your lien.
I never made that mistake again. My husband was a pushover, but I was not.
Had another guy I had to file a lien on his plane and sent him a copy of it registered and he got here in 3 days. I had been trying to get him to come move it for 3 months, so I charged him $10K for “storage” and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do but pay. $100 a day for keeping it in my hangar where my husband couldn’t work was very reasonable I thought. They charge you $150 a day if they impound your car. When he protested as he wrote the check, he said how unreasonable it was, and I said, I been warning you….and then said what it would have cost him to pay impound fees for a car.
I will call the AG office tomorrow, thanks for reminding me about this. I actually don’t think they would sue, they aren’t the suing kind of folks, but YOU NEVER KNOW….so better SAFE THAN SORRY. I am sure they will take the letter as an “insult” but that’s tough patootie as far as I am concerned at this point. The entire value of the crap they have stored there is zip really, mostly just crap that they hang on to. They are both “hoarders” to the max. When you are forced to or decide to live in an RV you have to get over your tendencies to hoard crap because you have no room for it. I lived in my RV for nearly a year and believe me you do not keep anything but the MINIMUM of stuff if you are smart. I actually liked that kind of living because it was really simple.
They however, have hung on to about two trailer truck loads of junk they can’t bear to part with and every flat surface in their RV is covered, no place to sit even for two people, so if you go visit them you have to stand. They are now parked in the yard of the home of the man’s retarded brother who actually owns a home, but 110% of the yard space is taken up by junk they have “salvaged” and dragged home. Might have a use for that someday you know, like the pick up truck load of empty soda plastic bottles they have. LOL
They were starting to accumulalte a pretty good pile of crap out here too. They seemed to think 120 acres was a great place to pile their “salvaged” crap, but it is all going. And, there is another little note under there, I AM NOT HAULING IT FOR THEM OR LOADING IT FOR THEM, AND NEITHER ARE MY SONS! I have arranged for them to hire some people with a big truck and trailer and people who will load the stuff for them for money, and a reasonable amount of money too. $10 an hour for loaders, and $100 a day and fuel for the truck and trailer.
“No good deed goes unpunished” is my mantra, and it is soooooooooooooooo true!
But I also remember the “golden rule”—-HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES. Since this is my space and territory,, I am the one who makes the rules about who shares my sanctuary and who goes on their way. This couple’s son is a flaming psychopath and bi-polar and a thief as well, he h as been banned from coming here from before my husband died. He stole something (not anything big) and my husband confronted him and then told him to get the hell and gone. He said “For just taking that?!” My husband said, “You’re a thief, it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t steal a million dollars if you had the chance, you are not welcome here.” He has tried to come back a few times and the rules haven’t changed….he did come back once though in the middle of the night and stole some gas that caused an aircraft emergency landing that could have killed someone. My son D filled up a plane and then because he had filled it up before dark, and got into it at daylight the next day, he didn’t check the fuel and ran out of gas and had to make an emergency landing. All was well and he landed in a clear pasture didn’t hurt the plane or himself and put in fuel and then took off again, but he LEARNED A VALUABLE LESSON, always check the gas. LOL Could easily have killed him though.
akitameg: I just read your post and yes you are going to survive! If I can do it, and everybody else here can, you can do it too! I have hope when I read posts where people say they are feeling better (because I am feeling down) so I am just thinking when these bad feelings come over me I am just going to go with the flow and feel them, they will go away. I’ve been trying to gain some control over my thoughts the past couple of days, I can’t just let my mind take over, I’m having a little bit of success.
Hey, Gals,
I felt the same exact way after my husband died. I was 57, and felt old, fat, undesirable, wrinkled, and ALONE and no one would ever love me again! So guess what, I fell for the first P to come along! Hook line and sinker! He was looking for another “respectable” wife to cheat on and keep his harem at bay.
OMG how alone, lonely and pitiful I felt after I kicked his sorry arse to the curb. I cried for months, poooooor me, but you know what, ANYONE can h ave a husband and a BF in 24 hours if you SET YOUR SIGHTS LOW ENOUGH.
Right now, I can go to Little Rock to the Union REscue mission for homeless drunks and psychos and pick me out a man and marry him by morning, bring him home and call him my “very own.” BUT WHY? What would I have accomplished? I am no longer willing to take the dregs of society, the Ps and the drunks, the drug addicts and the psychopaths in order to not be “alone.” Actually, I am starting to LIKE ALONE. I don’t have to “account to anyone” any more. My sons don’t boss me around (though they try sometimes, for my own good of course ha ha) but I can go and come and do as I please and don’t have to coordinate anything with my husband or man.
My husband was a great guy and dog gone it I miss him, but you know what, he would kick my butt if he knew I was sitting around here mopeing for him. I have good memories, but still lots of times there were things I would have done differently if I had not been married and didn’t have to consider his feelings and his plans. I didn’t mind, but I am getting pretty “indepndent” now, as my grandfather would have said, “as independent as a hog on ice.” Going whichever way I WANT TO GO. It definitely has its advantages.
I also have male friends and my sons to go places with me if I think I need an “escort” and that’s okay too, or I just haul off and go by myself and stay as long as I please.
Oxy:”Anyone can have a husband and a BF in 24 hours if you set your sights low enough”… what a scream! That’s what I did, I fell for the first guy that came along after my 14 year relationship ended. So why am I crying and crying over it? I have wondered … if I am crying over a jerk… how horrible to go through what you went through when you’re husband died. I just can’t even imagine it.