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.
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.
I sometimes intentionally make time to reflect on that initial panic. Not because I want to dwell on it but I also don’t want to forget it. Early on my son had a medical emergency—not covid— totally terrifying. Urgent care wanted him to go to a hospital. He was scared going to a hospital might kill him via possibly catching covid. He lives far away. It was such a terrible, terrible time. I remember getting my first vaccine on St. Patty’s Day 2021. I cried and cried. I work every day on the “more compassion less judgment” intention, always with uneven results. But I will keep trying. Also thank you for your generous tip. ❤️
I also joined your online workshop today. I'm really enjoying exercising my mind.
I don't know if you remember me from Becky Fore-Alesch's Celebration that you participated in. She was my Significant Other's sister. Also, my son, Matt, photographed your son a while back, as well. Small world.
I just saw that you joined over there. Yay! Thank you and welcome. Folks have been posting amazing stories. And yes, now I remember. The beautiful service at ZBG. And I think you know this and I think Matt does, too, but it bears repeating: I have thousands of photos of my son. That photo is and always will be my most cherished favorite. The original hangs in a place of honor, near the front door, so I look at it many times each day. I also have the postcard version, which is in my room in a spot where I also see it often. What an incredible gift that was (is).
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’m so sorry it happens to you, too. I think you capture it perfectly—something still has not unfrozen. It’s all still very weird. Funny you mention getting outside more—my dogs and I spent a good portion of lockdown in bed all day. I just now finally got them new harnesses. Time for the whole pack to start getting more movement.
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.
Ugh! Sorry about the sinkhole. I hope it’s not a major deal. I absolutely love that first line. The thing about feeling safe—long, long before lockdown, I had battled with some agoraphobic tendencies. Those tendencies re-rooted during lockdown and I have yet to fully undo that. No matter where I am, even when I am someplace I love (like the museum), there is always a small but persistent voice in the back of my head asking me why I’m not at home in bed with the dogs and when am I going to get there already?! Because being at home—more specifically in my room, in my bed, with my dogs—is the one place I feel truly safe. These days, I’m consciously practicing noticing how I feel when I do go out—mostly I want to know if I feel safe and relaxed or I don’t. Last night I had a dinner party to go to after work. I observed that, thinking about it as I sat at work, I did NOT get that twist in my stomach. So I tell myself: See! While it’s true your home is safe, it’s ALSO TRUE there are OTHER SAFE PLACES. All this helps me to continue to try to get out a bit more despite my urge not to. I do think it’s crucial for good mental health to be among others in real life.
+100 for "OTHER SAFE PLACES." One of the hardest things about relocating for me has been losing access to those, until some new ones can be found.
You are very good at making TTR a safe happy place like that for other beings (human and non-human), bridezillas and other human a$$es notwithstanding. We say thank you for your "hospitality dharma."
I will never forget listening to a young woman doing a seven-year stint at Gatesville relating her life story. She was thankful for being in PRISON mostly because (her words) "it is the first time ever in my life that I've felt safe on a daily basis."
I mean, f*** me and my habitual lack of gratitude for my relatively easy life ride.
OMG, I posted that and my husband forwarded an email from the condo board saying a sinkhole has developed outside our window and they'll let us know if the foundation is threatened.
"I'm actually writing a story for an anthology about a ghost I met during lockdown! The first line, "When you are born a Try Hard, it's very important not to let your standards slip."
I need to read that one, Tracy. Need to!
When Austin traffic finally returned to "normal" (which is to say obnoxiously, chronically congested) I felt like 50% of the drivers were operating exactly the same way that they had when the roads were relatively empty due to the pandemic. I want to believe all humans can learn and adjust to obvious changes, but some of us are clearly not very good at that.
"Thich Nhat Hanh had to say about dealing with anger—don’t push it away, but hold it in your arms like you would a distressed child. Ask the anger why it’s there, what it wants"
That's one of the wisest things I've ever read. Often I'm like a Snickers commercial...what deep truth is my Angry Baby telling me? Pretty often Anger Baby is screaming "HEY, you forgot to eat lunch because you're SO important and SO very very busy busy. How 'bout you FEED me something, you big a$$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.
Agree agree agree. Concur concur concur. Though you wouldn’t have known it to see me react (yet again) to being cut off in traffic twice inside of 60 seconds by two different assholes the other day. A tool I am trying now to cultivate is to imagine that my son is in the truck with me whenever I am driving. It’s embarrassing but true to say that when he was a child he indeed watched/heard me freak out on other drivers. These days? Would not DREAM of behaving like that with him by my side. And so I imagine him there. Haha—as I’m writing this I worry that it sounds like I’m substituting Henry for Jesus as in Henry is Always by My Side. Not putting my Only Son on a pedestal, I swear. Just tapping into the imagined response he’d make to me if he caught me whipping out my Male Gorilla Anger.
Holy Mother of Christ. I am so sorry about your traumatic childhood. But I’m grateful you’re willing to share. I just read your reply multiple times and your words call to mind Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue lyrics: *And every one of them words rang true, And glowed like burning coal, Pouring off of every page, Like it was written in my soul, from me to you.* I got epiphanic clarity from your observation that at no point in your life did you *want* to be filled with such rage. I’d never heard it framed like that. It helps so much. I think it also relates to something I tried to deploy during last week’s shame spiral. I allowed myself to feel sorrow and grief for the little version of me who grew up in anger so ever present it was like fish in water. I had no idea there *were* other ways to be and even when that did start to dawn on me, looking back now I see a young adult looking through the bakery window, hungry for what remains out of reach. I have done so much therapy, read so many self-help books, gone to retreats, meditate and do yoga daily. All of this has helped tremendously but, of course, never enough to full eradicate the rage which I can only hope, at best, to keep at bay. I wish us both continued healing—your story helps me heal. I have found a lot of value in IFS—internal family system. There’s a good book about it. Maybe it will be of use to you. Thank you so much for sharing.
You know Little Sandy far better than anyone, but from what you've written above, if Little Sandy had to be a little monster to survive, then let's give three cheers (and yeah, lots of love) to little monsters!
I am glad you we're able to get therapy that's helped you as an adult. That's a lot to carry for a whole life.
I am really sorry that happened to you. When you talk about no one being able to understand that kind of rage unless it's inside of them, I get it. In my experience, I had a couple of bosses who went off on me in psycho ways and then people would be like, "That wasn't normal," and I'm thinking, "We're throwing things over at my house! Grew up with people putting their fists through walls!"
Yes. This, too. I hate what a triggered parent I was. And only in the past few years have I begun to see that truth and wrestle with it. My trauma memory operates like the movies. I literally see and feel—over and over and over—the scenes in which I was, not intentionally but still, my absolute worst at mothering. It is so painful. I try to strike a balance when broaching this topic with my son. I have apologized so many times for how my cptsd affected him. But I worry about crossing some line—again, unintentionally—where I tip over into coming across as being needy. I do tell him if he ever wants to process his own trauma that if I can help in any way I’m open to that. Beyond that I feel like the best gift I can give him comes when I am able to tell him *honestly* on our weekly check ins that everything in my life is calm. I can’t always do that but more and more lately I can. I want him not to worry about me—I know now he worried far too much as a child. And yes, I guess we are here to figure things out.
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.
I sometimes intentionally make time to reflect on that initial panic. Not because I want to dwell on it but I also don’t want to forget it. Early on my son had a medical emergency—not covid— totally terrifying. Urgent care wanted him to go to a hospital. He was scared going to a hospital might kill him via possibly catching covid. He lives far away. It was such a terrible, terrible time. I remember getting my first vaccine on St. Patty’s Day 2021. I cried and cried. I work every day on the “more compassion less judgment” intention, always with uneven results. But I will keep trying. Also thank you for your generous tip. ❤️
I also joined your online workshop today. I'm really enjoying exercising my mind.
I don't know if you remember me from Becky Fore-Alesch's Celebration that you participated in. She was my Significant Other's sister. Also, my son, Matt, photographed your son a while back, as well. Small world.
I just saw that you joined over there. Yay! Thank you and welcome. Folks have been posting amazing stories. And yes, now I remember. The beautiful service at ZBG. And I think you know this and I think Matt does, too, but it bears repeating: I have thousands of photos of my son. That photo is and always will be my most cherished favorite. The original hangs in a place of honor, near the front door, so I look at it many times each day. I also have the postcard version, which is in my room in a spot where I also see it often. What an incredible gift that was (is).
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’m so sorry it happens to you, too. I think you capture it perfectly—something still has not unfrozen. It’s all still very weird. Funny you mention getting outside more—my dogs and I spent a good portion of lockdown in bed all day. I just now finally got them new harnesses. Time for the whole pack to start getting more movement.
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.
Ugh! Sorry about the sinkhole. I hope it’s not a major deal. I absolutely love that first line. The thing about feeling safe—long, long before lockdown, I had battled with some agoraphobic tendencies. Those tendencies re-rooted during lockdown and I have yet to fully undo that. No matter where I am, even when I am someplace I love (like the museum), there is always a small but persistent voice in the back of my head asking me why I’m not at home in bed with the dogs and when am I going to get there already?! Because being at home—more specifically in my room, in my bed, with my dogs—is the one place I feel truly safe. These days, I’m consciously practicing noticing how I feel when I do go out—mostly I want to know if I feel safe and relaxed or I don’t. Last night I had a dinner party to go to after work. I observed that, thinking about it as I sat at work, I did NOT get that twist in my stomach. So I tell myself: See! While it’s true your home is safe, it’s ALSO TRUE there are OTHER SAFE PLACES. All this helps me to continue to try to get out a bit more despite my urge not to. I do think it’s crucial for good mental health to be among others in real life.
+100 for "OTHER SAFE PLACES." One of the hardest things about relocating for me has been losing access to those, until some new ones can be found.
You are very good at making TTR a safe happy place like that for other beings (human and non-human), bridezillas and other human a$$es notwithstanding. We say thank you for your "hospitality dharma."
I will never forget listening to a young woman doing a seven-year stint at Gatesville relating her life story. She was thankful for being in PRISON mostly because (her words) "it is the first time ever in my life that I've felt safe on a daily basis."
I mean, f*** me and my habitual lack of gratitude for my relatively easy life ride.
OMG, I posted that and my husband forwarded an email from the condo board saying a sinkhole has developed outside our window and they'll let us know if the foundation is threatened.
!!
Oh, hells bells. Foundation issues truly suck. Hope y'all can avoid that at least.
"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."
I need to read that one, Tracy. Need to!
When Austin traffic finally returned to "normal" (which is to say obnoxiously, chronically congested) I felt like 50% of the drivers were operating exactly the same way that they had when the roads were relatively empty due to the pandemic. I want to believe all humans can learn and adjust to obvious changes, but some of us are clearly not very good at that.
"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.
Agree agree agree. Concur concur concur. Though you wouldn’t have known it to see me react (yet again) to being cut off in traffic twice inside of 60 seconds by two different assholes the other day. A tool I am trying now to cultivate is to imagine that my son is in the truck with me whenever I am driving. It’s embarrassing but true to say that when he was a child he indeed watched/heard me freak out on other drivers. These days? Would not DREAM of behaving like that with him by my side. And so I imagine him there. Haha—as I’m writing this I worry that it sounds like I’m substituting Henry for Jesus as in Henry is Always by My Side. Not putting my Only Son on a pedestal, I swear. Just tapping into the imagined response he’d make to me if he caught me whipping out my Male Gorilla Anger.
Holy Mother of Christ. I am so sorry about your traumatic childhood. But I’m grateful you’re willing to share. I just read your reply multiple times and your words call to mind Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue lyrics: *And every one of them words rang true, And glowed like burning coal, Pouring off of every page, Like it was written in my soul, from me to you.* I got epiphanic clarity from your observation that at no point in your life did you *want* to be filled with such rage. I’d never heard it framed like that. It helps so much. I think it also relates to something I tried to deploy during last week’s shame spiral. I allowed myself to feel sorrow and grief for the little version of me who grew up in anger so ever present it was like fish in water. I had no idea there *were* other ways to be and even when that did start to dawn on me, looking back now I see a young adult looking through the bakery window, hungry for what remains out of reach. I have done so much therapy, read so many self-help books, gone to retreats, meditate and do yoga daily. All of this has helped tremendously but, of course, never enough to full eradicate the rage which I can only hope, at best, to keep at bay. I wish us both continued healing—your story helps me heal. I have found a lot of value in IFS—internal family system. There’s a good book about it. Maybe it will be of use to you. Thank you so much for sharing.
I love little Sandy, too. And I love this visual of circling the mountain. Thank you.
You know Little Sandy far better than anyone, but from what you've written above, if Little Sandy had to be a little monster to survive, then let's give three cheers (and yeah, lots of love) to little monsters!
I am glad you we're able to get therapy that's helped you as an adult. That's a lot to carry for a whole life.
I am really sorry that happened to you. When you talk about no one being able to understand that kind of rage unless it's inside of them, I get it. In my experience, I had a couple of bosses who went off on me in psycho ways and then people would be like, "That wasn't normal," and I'm thinking, "We're throwing things over at my house! Grew up with people putting their fists through walls!"
Yes. This, too. I hate what a triggered parent I was. And only in the past few years have I begun to see that truth and wrestle with it. My trauma memory operates like the movies. I literally see and feel—over and over and over—the scenes in which I was, not intentionally but still, my absolute worst at mothering. It is so painful. I try to strike a balance when broaching this topic with my son. I have apologized so many times for how my cptsd affected him. But I worry about crossing some line—again, unintentionally—where I tip over into coming across as being needy. I do tell him if he ever wants to process his own trauma that if I can help in any way I’m open to that. Beyond that I feel like the best gift I can give him comes when I am able to tell him *honestly* on our weekly check ins that everything in my life is calm. I can’t always do that but more and more lately I can. I want him not to worry about me—I know now he worried far too much as a child. And yes, I guess we are here to figure things out.