In a random case of excellent timing, I read a great essay in the New York Times the other day in which the author, Victor Lodato, described wrestling with anger and shame he experienced related to lockdown fallout. As it happened, I’d spent the better part of last week absolutely tormented by my own rage and its attendendent shame, in particular some events that occurred during lockdown. I wasn’t exactly consoled by Lodato’s observations, but I did feel less alone and his truth allowed me better access to my own.
Well, I wouldn't say I was angry as much as I was panicked. My family is my everything. I was devastated when I wasn't "allowed" to be around them. I hadn't been retired for very long. This was not the way I had envisioned the next chapter of my life to begin. I had plans to spend more time with family and do some traveling. Everything was in limbo, as it was for the rest of the world. We actually lost a family member to Covid. He was only 36. Who would be next? I hope it's not me.
I guess what I learned was having a little more compassion for others. Some have taken the other road, which I don't understand. I also learned through attending one of your workshops that everyone has a story. I am now more open to hearing people tell it and trying to be less judgmental.
Sorry your next workshop is already full. See ya next time.
This absolutely hit home for me: "Instead, I wound up smashed against a wall of my own limitations, the place where I get so freaked out when someone gets up in my grille that I forget to walk away." This has happened to me so many times, in close relationships, in my work, in my community. I become like a deer in the headlights but then forget how to unfreeze. Because of that inclination, for me, and I believe for a lot of other people my (boomer and younger) age, the pandemic has had a continuing impact - less spontaneity, more hesitant about driving, less inclination to get together. You hear about people getting COVID two or even three times when they return to going to concerts and other group events, and you think, "Why risk it?" - even though you desperately miss that. During the pandemic, too many people dear to me died, and work that I loved for the most part disappeared. Something still has not unfrozen about that frozen time. With this early spring (thank God we didn't have too much frozen weather this year), I'm ready to start the healing process. I sense it begins with moving my physical body and getting outside more., speaking my truth, and listening to my heart about what's most important and doing that.
I rarely say anything directly about it, but I was sexually abused by my father as a small child and then raised by alcoholics in a family steered by my narcissistic and sociopath father (who, by the way, apparently a significant number of people thought was a great guy). There is hardly anything you write like this that I don't understand 100 percent. I feel bad about a lot of things I did in the past and looking back over my life (I'm 66), I see this consistent pattern of moving forward because I am smart and imaginative, then getting triggered (because something made me feel unsafe even if I couldn't identify it intellectually as such) and then everything seeming to blow up in some magnificent explosion. That includes verbally flagellating a couple of people in a way that I don't think that anyone could begin to comprehend unless they had that level of rage inside of them. And I didn't realize the extent of this until I went into therapy for the first time a couple of years ago. I think about the kinds of things you are writing about here all the time. My conclusion? It's not my fault that I was abused. I was a child. It's not my fault my parents gave me amphetamines (diet pills) when I was six (who knows what that did to my brain). It's not my fault I had no moral compass because I had no moral parent in my life. At no point in my life growing up did I think I want to be filled with as much rage as possible and make that my life goal. The other side of that is that I have often had a complete misconception of myself and usually of other people around me and their motives, which didn't help with the triggering. Lately I have thinking about how people have never really liked me as in people say, "Oh, I like her so much." Never. Sigh. I don't have any tips or suggestions here. I just wanted to say that I understand what you are saying, Spike.
I have been thinking a lot about this concept of home-- I realized that although there were places I lived that I loved, there wasn't a place in my life like my condo where I felt safe in it 24/7. I'm actually writing a story for an anthology about a ghost I met during lockdown! The first line, "When you are born a Try Hard, it's very important not to let your standards slip."
Also, the driving thing is to me the ultimate invisible memorial to the pandemic. People are truly driving like it's Death Race 2000. When we were in Fernandina Beach last fall, people weren't doing those weird death-defying turns (I saw three separate cars do a left on red in Knoxville last week, and I don't mean when the light changed -- I mean stop, look, and pull out in front of someone!). I hadn't realized how much I was braced for the awful, and how much anxiety it's exacerbating.
"Thich Nhat Hanh had to say about dealing with anger—don’t push it away, but hold it in your arms like you would a distressed child. Ask the anger why it’s there, what it wants"
That's one of the wisest things I've ever read. Often I'm like a Snickers commercial...what deep truth is my Angry Baby telling me? Pretty often Anger Baby is screaming "HEY, you forgot to eat lunch because you're SO important and SO very very busy busy. How 'bout you FEED me something, you big a$$hole?! Only an a$$hole refuses to feed a hungry baby!"
There are less prosaic things that can make me flip my lid. But it's good to know one's triggers, that's for sure.
Your reflective self-diagnosis seems on-point to me. Anger protects you when your home is attacked, totally understandable. I guess the question is, when is that the most effective tool in the brain box. As you know only too well, there are people in this world who simply won't negotiate in good faith until they're sure the other party is emotionally over-invested (e.g. really angry), because that's when we tend to make mistakes we regret. Those people are generally a$$holes, and I like to save up some fake Male Gorilla energy just for them. Intentional anger is a very different thing from the anger an a$$hole is trying to provoke. And being angry (even fake angry) afterwards makes me feel awful, physically and mentally, like I'm recovering from some illness. It's not just the adrenaline bounce-back, though that's probably part of it. For me, the hangover (hanger-over?) is the thing that makes me avoid it.
It should go without saying, but since we have entire bureaucracies devoted to males who won't/can't figure it out, let's keep saying it: Male Gorilla Anger (fake or real) is horrid thing to unleash on those you love, most particularly females. My little girls would sometimes over-react to my raised eyebrow. Raising my voice made them straight-up afraid (so I tried really hard not to do that.)
Terror isn't a tool, it's just a ruinous trauma-tragedy.
Well, I wouldn't say I was angry as much as I was panicked. My family is my everything. I was devastated when I wasn't "allowed" to be around them. I hadn't been retired for very long. This was not the way I had envisioned the next chapter of my life to begin. I had plans to spend more time with family and do some traveling. Everything was in limbo, as it was for the rest of the world. We actually lost a family member to Covid. He was only 36. Who would be next? I hope it's not me.
I guess what I learned was having a little more compassion for others. Some have taken the other road, which I don't understand. I also learned through attending one of your workshops that everyone has a story. I am now more open to hearing people tell it and trying to be less judgmental.
Sorry your next workshop is already full. See ya next time.
This absolutely hit home for me: "Instead, I wound up smashed against a wall of my own limitations, the place where I get so freaked out when someone gets up in my grille that I forget to walk away." This has happened to me so many times, in close relationships, in my work, in my community. I become like a deer in the headlights but then forget how to unfreeze. Because of that inclination, for me, and I believe for a lot of other people my (boomer and younger) age, the pandemic has had a continuing impact - less spontaneity, more hesitant about driving, less inclination to get together. You hear about people getting COVID two or even three times when they return to going to concerts and other group events, and you think, "Why risk it?" - even though you desperately miss that. During the pandemic, too many people dear to me died, and work that I loved for the most part disappeared. Something still has not unfrozen about that frozen time. With this early spring (thank God we didn't have too much frozen weather this year), I'm ready to start the healing process. I sense it begins with moving my physical body and getting outside more., speaking my truth, and listening to my heart about what's most important and doing that.
I rarely say anything directly about it, but I was sexually abused by my father as a small child and then raised by alcoholics in a family steered by my narcissistic and sociopath father (who, by the way, apparently a significant number of people thought was a great guy). There is hardly anything you write like this that I don't understand 100 percent. I feel bad about a lot of things I did in the past and looking back over my life (I'm 66), I see this consistent pattern of moving forward because I am smart and imaginative, then getting triggered (because something made me feel unsafe even if I couldn't identify it intellectually as such) and then everything seeming to blow up in some magnificent explosion. That includes verbally flagellating a couple of people in a way that I don't think that anyone could begin to comprehend unless they had that level of rage inside of them. And I didn't realize the extent of this until I went into therapy for the first time a couple of years ago. I think about the kinds of things you are writing about here all the time. My conclusion? It's not my fault that I was abused. I was a child. It's not my fault my parents gave me amphetamines (diet pills) when I was six (who knows what that did to my brain). It's not my fault I had no moral compass because I had no moral parent in my life. At no point in my life growing up did I think I want to be filled with as much rage as possible and make that my life goal. The other side of that is that I have often had a complete misconception of myself and usually of other people around me and their motives, which didn't help with the triggering. Lately I have thinking about how people have never really liked me as in people say, "Oh, I like her so much." Never. Sigh. I don't have any tips or suggestions here. I just wanted to say that I understand what you are saying, Spike.
I have been thinking a lot about this concept of home-- I realized that although there were places I lived that I loved, there wasn't a place in my life like my condo where I felt safe in it 24/7. I'm actually writing a story for an anthology about a ghost I met during lockdown! The first line, "When you are born a Try Hard, it's very important not to let your standards slip."
Also, the driving thing is to me the ultimate invisible memorial to the pandemic. People are truly driving like it's Death Race 2000. When we were in Fernandina Beach last fall, people weren't doing those weird death-defying turns (I saw three separate cars do a left on red in Knoxville last week, and I don't mean when the light changed -- I mean stop, look, and pull out in front of someone!). I hadn't realized how much I was braced for the awful, and how much anxiety it's exacerbating.
"Thich Nhat Hanh had to say about dealing with anger—don’t push it away, but hold it in your arms like you would a distressed child. Ask the anger why it’s there, what it wants"
That's one of the wisest things I've ever read. Often I'm like a Snickers commercial...what deep truth is my Angry Baby telling me? Pretty often Anger Baby is screaming "HEY, you forgot to eat lunch because you're SO important and SO very very busy busy. How 'bout you FEED me something, you big a$$hole?! Only an a$$hole refuses to feed a hungry baby!"
There are less prosaic things that can make me flip my lid. But it's good to know one's triggers, that's for sure.
Your reflective self-diagnosis seems on-point to me. Anger protects you when your home is attacked, totally understandable. I guess the question is, when is that the most effective tool in the brain box. As you know only too well, there are people in this world who simply won't negotiate in good faith until they're sure the other party is emotionally over-invested (e.g. really angry), because that's when we tend to make mistakes we regret. Those people are generally a$$holes, and I like to save up some fake Male Gorilla energy just for them. Intentional anger is a very different thing from the anger an a$$hole is trying to provoke. And being angry (even fake angry) afterwards makes me feel awful, physically and mentally, like I'm recovering from some illness. It's not just the adrenaline bounce-back, though that's probably part of it. For me, the hangover (hanger-over?) is the thing that makes me avoid it.
It should go without saying, but since we have entire bureaucracies devoted to males who won't/can't figure it out, let's keep saying it: Male Gorilla Anger (fake or real) is horrid thing to unleash on those you love, most particularly females. My little girls would sometimes over-react to my raised eyebrow. Raising my voice made them straight-up afraid (so I tried really hard not to do that.)
Terror isn't a tool, it's just a ruinous trauma-tragedy.