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
Dear Joy,
I am glad you are here, this, as you know, IS a healing place. I am also glad that you felt comfortable sharing your thoughts and some of your story with us.
Your anger is justifiable and very understandable.
Keep on reading, learning, and processing, the “road to Healing” will get smoother but sometimes it is difficult to stay on it through the dark twists, turns, and pot holes, or the terrible up hill climbs. I think I never stayed on the road before but would “think” I was doing okay and jump off the road, thinking I had “arrived” at healing, when I had only reached a better calmer stretch of road, but I jumped off into the ditches and got back on the road to hell pretty quickly. Thus, the repeated devestations by a series of psychopaths, until I HOPE AND PRAY that I will never NEVER again leave the road to HEALING and think I have “arrived”—-the road is much more smooth now, and my strength is much better, but sometimes even now I will hear a “Siren Song” in the distance telling me that I am “safe” and I don’t need to continue the journey, that I am “here” but I know their song is FALSE, that there is no END TO GROWTH AND HEALING and if we ever think there is an “end to it” we immediately get back on the road to HELL. I’ve been on that road and I don’t want to go there again, because even if it appears to be “smoother” and a “nicer place” for a LITTLE WHILE, it quickly deteriorates into HELL.
Hey, Joy.
I know how you feel. Even though I don’t want my S in my life, I’m still forced to look at him and his other girlfriend. It’s painful and they both seem to enjoy watching my discomfort. I try to pretend as though it’s all fine, but it’s like a knife in chest. That sounds trite, but it’s the best way to describe it.
This board helps a ton. It gets me through the rough patches of which there are plenty.
Hi Joy. I’m not really here today, because I’m dealing with a small mountain of work. But I saw your question.
First, thanks for posting. I’m so glad you decided to become “visible” with the group. And so sorry you’re going through all this.
Namaste is a Sanskrit greeting that literally means “I bow to you.” It is used by Hindus, Buddhists and people of other faiths in India, and it’s usually delivered with hands pressed together in front of the chest and a slight bow. (You can just do the gesture, and it’s understood what you mean.)
Its larger meaning is a little more interesting. These Eastern religions believe that we have a spiritual center in us that is a spark of God, something like the concept of a soul in Western religions. And Namaste really means that the spark of God in me salutes the spark of God in you.
This is a flexible concept. I’ve heard women says the Goddess in me salutes the Goddess in you. You can see me using it to refer to our deep healing wisdom. And especially on this site, I use it to help us remember that we are meant to heal, that all the energy, wisdom, guidance, love and faith is all right there inside us. All we have to do is clear out the rubbish that blocks the straight path of the light from our God sparks through our heart/emotional systems through our intellect/thinking systems through our eyes as we view the world and our bodies at we act on our lives.
That what this healing is really about, in my mind. Releasing the light in ourselves.
You are in the hardest part of the path right now. I can hear it in your post. You feel overwhelmed. You have material challenges to deal with. And it’s particularly difficult when you have to worry about dealing with the person, even casually, when you’re trying to recover your own power and joy in your life.
One of the things you can do for yourself, if you’re up to it, is start making decisions about what you give your attention to. And what you don’t.
Your body is sending you a strong message that you need to focus on healing. You emotional state likewise. There is nothing more important, if that’s what you need to do.
I would also suggest that any energy you give him is energy that could be better used for your own healing work. Eventually, if you travel this whole path, you won’t give him any energy at all because he isn’t interesting anymore, except maybe considering how you can use your experience with him to develop more skills at managing your life. (In the end, we get a lot more out of these relationships than they do.)
But right now, you might think about just ignoring him, and not worrying about how it looks to anyone else. They’ll figure out that you don’t want anything to do with him. Believe me, that will say more about him than it does about you.
You are angry now, but you’ve still got a way to go before have a healthy anger directed at the source of your pain. So I’m going to give you some words to think about. This man is scum. He is a kind of parasite who lives off other people — their emotions, their kindheartedness, their willingness to help or share what they have. He does not deserve friendship or love. And though it’s hard to think this, he does not even deserve the respect that most people deserve just by being human beings. He is despicable, untrustworthy, and what he did to your is unforgivable.
If you’re wondering if you have the right to be angry about this, you do have the right. If you’re wondering if it will hurt to become fully angry with him, it will hurt you a lot less than blaming yourself. You didn’t do this to yourself.
We get confused about our collaboration in these relationships. The fact that we agreed. The fact that we went back over and over to try again. That’s something you can look at later, when you’re better able to view it dispassionately. Right now, it’s a lot more important that you recognize that the big problem was him, not you.
And the fact that you feel so broken down right now is just evidence of the damage these jerks can do. This is not about you. It’s about him, and the toxic influence they are on us and our lives.
Finally, with regard to your illness that is not about him, I went into the hospital last October in septic shock. I don’t hospitals, haven’t been in one since my 27-year-old son was born. I don’t do doctors either, and haven’t seen on in years, except when I needed an antibiotic for Lyme disease a couple of years ago. But there I was, with a kidney stone the size of a nickel completely blocking a kidney that was so infected that my life was at risk.
This is three years after I threw my sociopath out of my life. You know what I named it? His name. I knew what it was about. And I made up my mind that when my doctor went in there and blasted it out with a laser, whatever lingering junk in my system that was there because I hadn’t healed myself yet was going with it.
I want to be well. I want to be clear-headed, in control of my life, able to appreciate the beauty of the world, ready to create what I want and change the things I don’t like, and fully open to love, beginning with me loving me.
I want to be well. That’s the mantra of the day, every day for however long it takes. If you want to be well, you’ll get there.
A big, comforting, sympathetic hug to you. You’ve been through a lot, but it’s going to get better.
Namaste.
Kathy
sstiles…I’m chiming in late…Yippee! You be educatin’ a judge! Another small step for mankind!
Joy…keep with us. I live in a small town, too. The run-ins and sightings happen…hang in there…the fun part for me, finally after a few years…I see the ex-Tox and boyfriend…and what is the first thought?
Better him than me!
Oxy…you up the road? You know, you could leave some signs, put up guardrails, install mile-markers, draw a map…
sorry, I guess that would be “enabling” Are we there yet? How long? Mom?
Kathy Hawk…you named a kidney stone after him? Then blasted it to pieces? That’s pretty harsh. But, maybe fitting…LOL
I’m wondering something: My husband also cheated with a woman he had just met and then two months later he’s moved in with her and they are getting a house! How long do you think it takes an S/P to show their colors to the new woman in their life? In one sense I am greatful someone else has to deal with his shit; in another I’m just down right pissed off that I am still dealing with 10 years of our bills and left over abuse!
swehrli:
My thought is that sociopaths are creatures of habit. I think they are living examples of the movie “Ground Hog Day”. Same drill, different victim.
So many people on this site have commented on how their S used the same lines, went to the same places with their predecessors and their successors.
So, I would guess that your husband will probably follow the same timetable with his new victim that he followed with you.
Regarding your having to deal with the bills and leftover abuse — I always used to think how it would be nice to be more like S. Run up bills. Don’t pay them. Hell, don’t even show up when your creditors sue you in court. After all, you’re judgment proof, so the joke’s on them. Right?
Now that I”ve been almost 4 months NC, I”ve gotten some perspective. I remember when S couldn’t find anybody to rent him an apartment after he was released from prison. He asked me if I thought it was because he was an ex-con.
It wasnt until I discovered how truly horrendous his credit history was that I knew why he couldn’t rent.
As beaten down financially as I feel at this moment, I look around me and realize that, unlike S, I’ve still got some resources that I can fall back on. I can still contemplate a future and a retirement at some point in time (age 90 based on yesterday’s stock market finish, but who is counting?).
But, I’m not just talking about financial resources. I’m talking about resources like intelligence, integrity, insight (I’ll take good qualities beginning with the letter “I” for 500, Alex). Credit histories can be repaired. Careers can be revived. We can get our lives up and running again. And, more importantly, have a long-term focus and think and plan for a better future.
Maybe sociopaths don’t worry about the future because on some level they know that statistically they’re going to be dead a hell of a lot earlier than the rest of us because of their high-risk lifestyles. Or maybe they keep thinking that they’ll find a new mealticket until that day they wake up and realize there are no mealtickets because their looks are gone.
Whatever their fate, unlike the rest of us normal folks who deal with our problems like adults, they don’t have that option. So, they may have their momentary “victories” (ie the house your ex just bought), but I think they are doomed to fail, because they always screw up anything good in their lives.
Swehrli – Ive wondered that myself. I think the mask falls when the partner no longer placates, goes along with, agrees to do, accepts the messups, puts up with the oddities of mixed up stories, or financial flubups, or just general toxic leaks and spills that add up and he no longer has a cooperative codependent easy target being his puppet on a string. Sometimes it just takes months, sometimes it takes years. Depends on how skilled he is and how unaware or unprepared the other person is to deal with his manipulative ways. As well as in my case, how big my own personal flaw was and how little I trusted myself. Hope this makes sense. Off to do homework, dinner, etc. etc. Glad you got out!!!!
Jim, do you think naming my kidney stone after him makes it like a voodoo doll? Blast it; blast him? I didn’t think about it at the time, but I wish I had.
After he left, one of the most infuriating things I had to deal with was that virtually his whole external life came out of my bank account. His two cars, his clothes, his watch, his sports gear, his “merit badges” for travel and his year in Hollywood, executive positions on his resume, high-end entertainments, his electronics, and I don’t know what else. I felt like one of those Victorian-era mediums who manifested ghost our of the own protoplasm. Except they got to take it back. He was walking around in my hours of work and sacrifices for his benefit. It felt like part of me just got sucked out and trotted away with someone else.
Really, I wouldn’t want to blast him. But vaporizing all that stuff might be fun, even if it is all five years old or more. Especially if he called the police and they analyzed it and told him that it was pulverized kidney stone.
Hmm, sounds like a great short story.
Kathy:
“After he left, one of the most infuriating things I had to deal with was that virtually his whole external life came out of my bank account.”
So true. In the last few weeks at least 3 of my friends whom met S all made the same comment which boiled down to:
“I couldn’t believe after he ordered the most expensive things on the menu. He certainly knew what the best of the best was. And then he sat on his hands when the check showed. I thought what an mind-boggling sense of entitledment. I thought he was taking advantage of you. I just assumed that you were getting something good in return — like great sex.”
Well, I wasn’t getting anything good in return. All I was getting was abuse.
100 percent investment, 0 percent return.
A part of me got sucked out by him and he trotted off with it. The thing I realize is that all the “toy” and “trappings of success” I provided him with will ultimately get old and fall apart. And so will he. Looks go, no more suckers. No more toys. No more trappings of success. All that will be left is the pathetic piece of crap he really is.
Hmmm. Now that I think about it, the punishment really does fit the crime.
Dear Oxy, LTH, Matt, & Jim,
Thank you so much for responding to my post. I think I was still in shock when I got home from court this AM, & wrote the post. I am so used to having nothing come out of all the hearings, that I still can’t believe today. I wish you could have all been there to hear it all. The skank he left me for works at the only Wallyworld in town, so I have to pick the time I go shopping there very carefully. Our Kmart is closing, so W Mart is the cheapest place I have to shop, unless I drive 44 miles to another store. (I live in a pretty podunk town.) On the few times I have had the misfortune of seeing the GF in the store, she stares & usually gets a group of employees together to whisper & laugh at me, like a bunch of stupid kids. It still un-nerves me, tho. I don’t think she was laughing today, tho. The s hasn’t had a job since Oct. 2007, & I think the judge (with the 50 IQ), seemed a little incredulous at that. The s also said he isn’t eligible for Medicaid because he is a white male-hopefully at that point , the judge was thinkin’ to himself, “Do I look like I have Stupid tatooed on my forehead?” (he does, but that’s beside the point). I’m just relieved the hearing is over, & that justice can begin to be served, at long last.