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
Well, I went to bed early, slept well, and came back to read this. Good stuff. We’re all trying, with what we’ve learned, and suffered, to find our place in the world. To feel good about it. A big step is knowing there are predators. Once you realize that, you can build the defenses. Understanding, learning about yourself, so you can protect yourself as much as possible. In the process, discovering what you want, and finding ways to work for it. And moving on again, still able to trust and love. To avoid harm. To do no harm that is unjustified. To do the right thing. To enjoy the small victories. And have faith in the future…
Not easy. Doesn’t happen fast. There will be setbacks. But it will come…with help from the good people here. Thanks.
SOS…I’ve played with ’em before in the “political arena”. Had wins and losses. I need a better plan before I’m ready to do it again…costs and benefits.
Elizabeth Conley-loved the rules. I took a defensive pistol course a few years ago. Learned the safety rules…
We have a county sheriff who believes citizens (“proper people” under Indiana law) should be armed…and carry concealed.
One of his lines: “If you think you might end up in a gunfight, don’t forget to bring a gun. Better yet, bring all your friends with guns. If you have friends with “belt-fed” guns, better yet.”
Good morning, and what a day for a gun fight. What is that great movie with Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman? Oh yeah, the quick and the dead. It’s got the same brain chemicals as this discussion.
Well, this is probably the thread where it belongs, until S.O.S. does an article. Though I find it a little annoying. I’m trying to figure out what I feel that way, and the best thing I can come up with is that I want to be the only person in the room who’s thinking like this.
Actually, it’s not that. I like the guidance S.O.S. is providing in terms of using our best tools — and the personality and temperament scales are a great idea — to identify a potential threat to us or the common good. There is something about the headset that puts me off, and I may be overreacting.
There are times in life when you need to turn off the feelings, evaluate the environment, identify problems and potential problems, and decide what you want to do about it in order to protect your own objectives. It doesn’t have to be a gunfight. It could be a business meeting. It could be a review of a first day, second date or three-year relationship. It could be figuring out what to do on the New Jersey Turnpike when the road is icy, the traffic is moving too fast and you’ve got drivers around you that you don’t trust.
This is the state of high alert that comes out of the brain stem, translated into active intellectual processing. And it has certain mood characteristics. If we feel disempowered it may feel like anxiety. But if we move into our power, we become highly analytical, pragmatic and often creative. For me, I call it my Ice Queen state. It’s also my “being a sociopath to deal with a sociopath” state.
It’s a good state to be capable of. It’s a bad state to live in all the time. I’ve know too many active and retired government intelligence people to want to have brains like theirs. They are cynical, hyper-vigilant, always interpreting and mostly out of touch with their feelings, except the narrow range associated with intent and survival.
This is not where I’m going. I want to be able to access this. It’s an important addition to who I was before. I particularly want to access this state when I’m in a protective mode, either self-protective or protective of some larger group or plan that’s important to me. But I want to be able to access it from the most peaceful and enlightened state possible.
Because it’s too damned easy to project personal, low-level issues onto these situations. S.O.S. talked about observing the dynamics of the local political scene, identifying someone as a negative catalyst, and basically destroying that person’s political career. I assume and hope that the effort was related to political objectives, and not just personal ones. That the survivors of this battle were the good guys in terms of what they were working for politically, and the one who was destroyed didn’t have a good agenda. That would make this story make more sense.
One of the things that separates us from sociopaths is perspective. Our feeling capability and our sense of community dynamics gives us the capacity to work on shared projects for future good. A sociopath in the group messes things up, because they don’t have these capacities. They divert energy to their private objectives. An analysis like S.O.S. describes can help us identify the problem, and if necessary neutralize it, so we can get back to accomplishing what we planned.
While we’re all feeling people here, we also appear to have high thinking capacity, based on the research in “Women Who Love Sociopaths.” Which suggests to me that most of us, if not all, have the capacity to move in and out of this state. But I suspect that, for many of us, as we heal, we may discover that we have a more powerful analytical tool in our own emotions. For me, the analytical work is just a check list I use to back up my gut reaction.
And for me, that gut reaction is an almost instantaneous guide to what to do next. If it’s a personal situation, I stop paying attention, shift my interest away from the problem. If that doesn’t work, I make myself too expensive to deal with, demanding attention, favors, commitments in dollars, time or personal sacrifices immediately. If that doesn’t work, I move to sabotage. If that doesn’t work, I get out my gun, not really, but I do what it takes to get this person out of my space.
If it’s in a group situation, I follow basically the same path, but figure on using the group energy for sabotage, just like S.O.S. did to neutralize the problem and leave the group feeling bonded. But my total objective is to get us to the point where we can stop dealing with this BS, and get back to what we’re there for.
This state is a tool, not a way of life.
And thanks, Elizabeth, for the “rules.” I think I’ll print it out and hang in on the wall next to the MaryAnn Williamson quote, just to remind myself that I’ll have to deal with publishers if I’m going to get this book in print.
The Sheriff and I are on the same sheet of music. It’s remarkable how gracious a town can get when everyone is armed!
“Guns don’t kill people. Husbands who come home early kill people.” Yuk-yuk-yuk!
Oh lord, where is Oxy when I need her? I know I’m being too abstract here, as usual, and she can bring this back down to ground.
Elizabeth, what an interesting place you must live in.
My ex, the sociopath, had his moments of insight. We had a client at the agency who was a very tall, very big Nigerian CEO who was one of the sweetest men I’ve every dealt with. My ex, who may or may have been as tall as 5’5″, sourly noted that people that big can afford to be nice.
So maybe having a gun makes us all “big” people who can afford to be nice.
Why don’t I trust this?
Probably because there are always “small” people — like the N/S/P contingent or maybe just teenaged boys with hormone poisoning –who need to prove something.
However (she said, magically turning this discussion to one of her favorite topics), there is some logical linkage here to taking care of ourselves. And developing all the mental and external resources necessary to be successful at that.
Or to put this another way, if we’re interested in being active creators of our own lives, rather than being victims or giving our power away to “authorities” who don’t necessary deserve our submission to their objectives, it means that we have to take responsibility for that.
What are feeling people like when they also are independent? This is one of those big questions, akin to how do we love when our love isn’t based on need? Or how do we contribute to society when we no longer have knee-jerk responses to help, because that’s what it means to be a good person. Or even how do we maintain relationships and also maintain our own identity and our own space?
These are huge questions that we face in getting better. They are the questions that rise when we realize our old life strategies don’t work anymore. Who are we now, and how do we live it?
There are no easy answers here. In fact, we evolve through this process of redeveloping our strategies and emotional systems. Things look different, depending on where we are in the healing process.
A lot of the people reading this may be a lot more interested in just basic safety than independence. “Never again” is something that drives us through our healing process. And it’s a good thing.
I’m so conflicted about this. This thread is about anger. Anger is about responding appropriately to threat. And so is S.O.S.’s post. I’m not sure why I feel it’s so important to wrap some larger perspective around this.
Maybe because it’s my hope that we understand that anger is a phase. A lot of people get stuck in it, like people get stuck in denial or bargaining. It’s seductive. It creates the illusion of power and safety. And it frankly is a lot more powerful and safe that the stages before it. But it’s ultimately an illusion. Real power and safety comes from somewhere else. And if you doubt that, look at sociopaths, because they are the classic example of people stuck in anger, trying to control everything, trying to get power and safety from something outside themselves. For all the damage they do, the truth is that nothing really works for them. They’re always searching for more, because they never win enough to assuage that hunger.
Like every stage in this process, anger is a part of the path that leads us somewhere else. Ultimately we find real power, real independence, and a return to all our former feelings with a whole new set of feelings that rounds them out, and adds up to much more than the sum of its parts.
My hope is that we don’t get stuck here. Don’t invest too much of ourselves in becoming experts in Machiavellian behavior. Learn something. Learn enough to make you feel empowered enough to go on. Play with it a little, as I did, to ensure that you can find it in yourself if you need it. But plan on moving on. Because better things are waiting for you.
Kathleen…you’re right. We need more than physical weapons. Without our minds and emotions in the right state, we’re never “fully armed and ready”.
And those people you mentioned, always hypervigilant…that was why I enjoyed Gavin De Becker’s book “Gift of Fear”. Reliance on intuition, the “gut feeling”, maybe the defenses of the reptilian brain?
That way you can absorb the beauty you’ll miss looking for the psychos behind every bush and around every corner…that sucks the energy out fast.
Thanks for your post, Kathleen (backing up a few posts). I remember when I saw the movie “Erin Brokovich” (sp) I was moved by her dedication in chasing down evil in her high heeled shoes and sexy tops. I always identified with her character in some ways (I was working as a stripper at the time and used to dress like that). You may be right that the grief I’m going through now is contributing toward my pessimism about society. I do think it’s necessary to take a break from this thinking sometimes. I took a day off work today to apply for my license to practice massage, but will be fitting in a hike as well in this beautiful weather.
I’m not sure if it is my life calling to fight for injustices or not. I think I’d do better in a more peaceful role (mediator, counselor, artist, writer) because I just get too affected by stuff. I volunteered at a cat shelter for a while but was constantly getting depressed about all the abuse and abandonment stories. I would literally go home and cry my eyes out. This is why I don’t watch the news or even read the paper. It’s just too overwhelming. But it is very satisfying to fight for some small injustice and to win. I have done this on a number of occasions.
I do believe our society is becoming more antisocial. Kids today grow up with a sense of entitlement that is shocking. I think it’s partly due to the decline in family values and increasing addiction to technological devices (i.e., “crackberries” lol). With so many broken homes, single parents are spoiling their kids out of guilt. I think this does a disservice to them. Kids need limits and to be taught moral values (whether you are religious or not). Neighbors keep to themselves and do not even talk to one another. I see more and more of this. It’s very sad.
Lately, I’m consumed with this case with my HOA. Though I will lose money taking them to court, I feel compelled to fight, not just for myself but for the community. I think once this issue has been resolved one way of the other, this cloud of anger will lift. I’m just having such a hard time letting it go. I’m really really pissed off at them.
I hope it’s okay to talk about other things besides the sociopath here. He has not been in the forefront of my mind these days. He made his cameo appearance on the reptile site and disappeared again after being publicly confronted by my friends there.
Just a quickie, before I disappear for the day. I’ve got to go back to work.
Matt, thanks for the contribution. That’s what I was trying to get to. Getting our emotions in order is what makes everything else possible. Otherwise, we are vulnerable and our judgment is off.
Stargazer, two thoughts. I don’t think kids are entitled today; I think they are paid off to accept being abandoned. Yes, it skews their values. But the problem is not the kids. It’s the cultural issues that place more value on stuff than compassion.
Regarding your case with the HOA, are you sure you can’t recruit a group of people who have the same problem and put pressure on the HOA. I keep recommending “The Starfish and the Spider,” but this is exactly what it’s about. And there’s some good advice in it about how to build these groups.
Pretend you’re running for mayor. Go door to door to talk to people about their concerns and share yours. Start a petition. Put all that angry energy into getting other people involved and contributing to an issue that clearly means something to them as well. You don’t have to let it go, just transform it. There’s a leader in you just trying to break free.
Namaste.
Kathy
Stargazer-
“I hope it’s okay to talk about other things besides the sociopath here. He has not been in the forefront of my mind these days. He made his cameo appearance on the reptile site and disappeared again after being publicly confronted by my friends there.”
Yup-it’s okay not to talk about the sociopath…as a matter of fact, that’s better than OK…that’s great! Your friends ran him off! Fantastic! TOWANDA!
Interesting conversation guys!
Ellizabeth, I carry a gun because a COP is too HEAVY! LOL
Also, keep in mind that, when SECONDS COUNT, the cops are only MINUTES AWAY.
But owning a gun is not what keeps you “safe,” it is only a TOOL in your “tool belt” that is ONE of many tools. Your own emotional stability and ability to make critical decisions is more important than the gun.
I have no doubt that people who should NOT have guns will get them, and “zip” guns are EASY to make, it only takes a piece of pipe to make, they make them INSIDE PRISONS even. “Outlawing” guns only means that the outlaws will have guns and “honest” people won’t, which gives the bad guys the advantage.
My little county is one of those where a valid self defense plea is “He just needed killing” LOL (that’s a joke) BUT, at the same time, no one is going to be prosecuted for a valid self defense homicide here.
Our BEST protection, though, is to recognize psychopaths BEFORE we become embroiled in a “relationship” of ANY kind except the most superfiscial ones. Protecting ourselves from the “random” violence of the Ted Bundays of this world or the Charlie Mansons is just “chance” most of the time, but at the same time, those kinds of “random” acts of violence are more rare than the “ordinary” Ps we meet at work, in our neighborhood etc, and for sure in dating sites online.
I know for a fact that my little .38 pistol has “saved my bacon” three times from possible rape or murder or robbery. I “won’t leave home” without it!