A Year of Rage Flashbacks: A Heal-Along with Jaena

I’ve mentioned the Father’s Day rap that I wrote and performed which helped me master my rage flashbacks. It still serves as a great example of what creativity can do for our healing. But something never occurred to me until writing Anger and the Fight Response. That painful flashback year was acting as shock therapy to my self-abandonment (Trauma Glossary 2) programming. Believe me, that programming was so intense, I isolated just so I could prevent it from being triggered.

That’s why I want to share my story with you. Consider it a companion article to the above link. Who knows, it might help you further appreciate what anger has to offer.

Pardon My Amygdala: This is Wrath and it’s Itching for a Fight

May 22, 2019, is the day I’ll never forget: The Day of the Rage Geyser. That’s how it felt when the last piece of the puzzle snapped in place. I saw my father for what he was and how deeply he impacted thirty-two years’ worth of my poor decisions. I was thirteen years old – not fifteen as I had always believed – when he started telling me I was just like my borderline mother. At age forty-five, it hit me with a sudden and shocking flash of clarity. So many precious things in life I had missed out on, all because I believed my father’s lies. The betrayal was like a punch to the solar plexus and that’s when my amygdala (Trauma Glossary 3) was hijacked into fight mode.

I roared an expletive and grabbed my phone with the intent of cussing my father out. Then I remembered I didn’t have his number, as I had blocked my parents years ago. That’s when reason set in and it occurred to me that had I called him, his only response would have been something like, “See? You’re acting just like your mother.” Knowing this, however, sent me right back into rage, but with improved self-awareness. My rage was bigger than me and it scared me. I thought of my husband who was due home in an hour. I needed to spend my energy so that I wouldn’t hurt him or anyone else. The only option I had at the time was to run, which I did. It helped me get a handle on my anger, though barely.

Thus began my year long struggle with rage flashbacks.

I wouldn’t master the flashbacks (Trauma Glossary 2) until June 19, 2020, when I wrote and performed my confrontation rap:

Papa, Papa…
She read my diary and got access to my brain,
Then used it to promote my shaming campaign.
She ripped it up and wrote, “I hate you too!”
But here’s the thing, I wrote that diary ’cause of you.

(Papa:) You’re getting more like her every day.
That makes her child abuse a-okay.

I was just thirteen when you started saying that to me,
Had to save my kids from my tyranny.
She destroyed it two months in its inception,
And with it, my children’s possible conception.

An excerpt from “Coward! Traitor! Spineless Enabler!”
(Full lyrics are at the end of my Prequel History Comic) *Language warning)

I had believed my father without question. So, my diary had been my last ditch effort at being a good mother. Each entry, I had my first born in mind. The diary was supposed to be my oldest child’s thirteenth birthday gift, so that they would be able to keep me in check. When it was found and destroyed so soon, I could think of no defenses to offer my children. As someone who loved children as much as I did and still do, the only option left for keeping my babies safe was by not having them. That’s how much I believed my father. So, suffice to say that between May 22 of 2019 and June 19 of the following year, I had a long road of hurt to work through.

How My Rage Flashbacks Helped Me Undo My Faulty Programming

I had a whopping total of thirty-two years of acting on false beliefs to work through. So many decisions I made based on the belief that I was a bad person who must always overcompensate through my actions.

Welcome! I am programmed for
-people pleasing-

That’s my amygdala Papa, it’s my curse;
Check out my super-conscience, it’s even worse:
I’m a selfish b**** with no empathy,
A rage-a-holic with no accountability.

An excerpt from “Coward! Traitor! Spineless Enabler!”

It was a ready excuse in my head for rejecting everyone else’s assurances that I was good and that I was in no danger of becoming my mother. They were seeing my outer-directed behavior and judging me on that. But if they saw how much I struggled on the inside with my “selfishness”, they wouldn’t see me as a good person. This is a form of Impostor Syndrome (Trauma Glossary 2). It’s how we reject compliments and positive feedback on autopilot and yet, just as quickly internalize anything negative we hear. The Day of the Rage Geyser forced me to see both myself and my father clearly. It was the beginning of learning how to validate myself and the process of getting fed up with my long history of self-abandonment.

Blocked Grief + Intrusive Thoughts =Amplified Anger

We need both anger and grief to work through the healing process. With that said, Blocked Emotions in Trauma Glossary 2 might be worth your time looking up. I describe what’s going on when our anger is blocked and also when our grief is blocked. Because one of my major problems was (and I struggle with it to this very day) having blocked grief. This means I only had anger to help me process those memories. Even the remorse over not having children came out as anger.

Intrusive Thoughts (Trauma Glossary 2) are, in my opinion, the great bugbear of CPTSD. The reason I say this is, we can be minding our own business, avoiding anything that triggers us, and then a random thought or memory comes up. We weren’t triggered before, but thanks to the unwelcome thought, we are now! You’d be surprised the number of memories that come at us randomly in a single day. As someone who had thirty-two years of memories, where I acted on false beliefs, let me tell you. I was bound to be triggered into a rage flashback every day. And yet, the daily dance between my intrusive thoughts and the flashback was helping me rewire my self-abandonment programming.

Never Mistake Your Pain for Weakness

March 26, 2022 is another date I should never forget. (Just two days before publishing the very article you’re reading now.) That’s how long it took me to realize that each painful memory that triggered my rage was simultaneously validating me over and over again. It absolutely led to what happened ten months after The Day of the Rage Geyser (and I only remember it was March of 2020 because it was during the government shutdown). That’s when I had a vision of myself while driving to work. My chains had just broken and I was looking around at the darkness and void. I had an understanding that the void was good, because it represented the old programming which had been destroyed. One month later, I caught myself in the act of internalizing a compliment someone gave me. That had never happened before!

Pain distracts us from what’s going on behind the emotions, but when we take the time to listen, we can learn to appreciate what it’s doing for us. We don’t have to try too hard. After all, I was describing my flashbacks at the time as “exactly the same kind of outrage and hurt you would expect out of someone who’s been married twenty-plus years, only to learn their spouse was living a double life the whole time.” I described feeling betrayed. What thoughts are happening when we feel betrayed? We are validating ourselves while we’re invalidating the other person. Think about it.

The Enabler Parent’s Lack of Core Values

One thing you taught me is never mistake the coward’s weakness for kindness.
The coward stands for nothing and will fall for anything.
The coward is always a traitor-in-waiting for the tyrant;
‘Cause the coward’s fear is greater than the coward’s love.

Excerpt from “Coward! Traitor! Spineless Enabler!”

I needed to make sense of the senseless. What kind of a father watches and does nothing while his child is being abused? Why did he victim shame me after every beating? What made him accuse me of such a horrible lie? Had he always been a covert abuser hiding in plain sight, or did the years of domestic violence turn him into one? I searched my memories and analyzed him with fresh eyes. The above lyrics were my results. I have noticed this pattern in my own and other support groups concerning the enabler parent (Trauma Glossary 1). Their core values tend to be weak or nonexistent. Somewhere along the line, self-preservation took over and they forsook all else, including their children. Anger clearly would have rescued them from such brainwashing (Trauma Glossary 1).

My yoga therapist guided me through discovering my core values: Meaning, Joy, and Personal Accountability. Then she helped me make peace with how I never had children. She pointed out that there are other ways of fulfilling the maternal longing. She added that I was already nurturing and helping the members of my group. So, who in my life is worth fighting for? You, my CPTSD community.

How I Managed My Rage Flashbacks

Well, I did plenty of movement and verbal venting. Sometimes I did both at the same time. I have to say I’m grateful to my husband for all the times he listened to me vent. I know I sounded like a broken record, rehashing the same grievances against my father. The same must be said for my coworkers because my husband couldn’t be with me every time I was in a flashback. There were four coworkers in particular who held space for me, no matter how many times I vented about my father. And it was often. I used to ask them, “Are you tired of hearing this yet? Because I’m tired of talking about the same thing.” (I was even more tired of the flashbacks, but I digress.) My husband, and my coworkers all assured me it was okay. They validated me.

I got into kickboxing and discovered I finally found the right tool, not just for my rage flashbacks, but the other flashback that overwhelmed me: Summer of ’86. So, I bought my own punching bag so that I could use it every day.

When I recall that year I struggled through the rage, there’s no guilt or shame attached. I can honestly say that I never took my rage flashbacks out on anyone other than the bag. My rage flashbacks kept me focused on who deserved the blame. I’m sure those who validated me were also helping my system develop trust. If five people were so willing to put up with my verbal vomit, maybe the world wasn’t such a bad place, after all.