No one likes uncomfortable emotions, such as anger, sadness, fear, and shame. In the CPTSD community, we tend to experience one of “Trauma’s Big Four” more often than the others and use it to define us. Having a lot of anger gets translated into “I’m such an angry person!” Or conversely fear, “I’m scared of everything, I’m such a coward.” It didn’t help that our anti-role models demonstrated all the incorrect ways of using those emotions. But it isn’t our emotions that define us. It’s what we do with them, or how we choose to act on them. In each case, these emotions are telling us that a need is being unmet. Oftentimes, they can save us once we learn how to first, listen to them and then work with them instead of against them. That’s what we’ll be addressing in this fresh new series, starting with anger.
Anger: The Real Reason We See it as a Problem
Anger is the highest emotional energy we can have. When we get angry, and refuse to do anything about it, we are repressing energy itself. Without an outlet, that energy builds into a volcano as we go about our day becoming more vulnerable to slight irritations that add to this energy. The longer we fight it, the more it builds until we can’t repress it any longer. When the volcano erupts, it’s usually over a minor inconvenience. That’s when we get mortified with ourselves and re-confirm that anger is “bad”.
Now consider how one of the most common and troublesome symptoms in CPTSD is self-abandonment (Trauma Glossary 2). Anger is involved in that cycle. Our guilt and shame just prevents it from sticking around long enough to assert itself. Think about it. When we say yes to something we would rather not do, we are forgetting our needs (abandoning the self) in the moment. Once the moment is over and we’re remembering our needs, regret and irritation over what just happened sets in. Maybe we try to take back what we said or we remember it so that we can assert ourselves next time. But asserting ourselves in real time feels wrong, so the shame takes over and it moves us to abandon ourselves all over again. Thus continuing the cycle of self-abandonment until we learn how to work with anger.
I’ve got a companion article for you this week. It’s a new Heal-Along. This time, it’s my real life story of how my year-long struggle with rage flashbacks actually benefited me. It rewired my self-abandonment programming.
Anger and its Association with Our Fight Response
Did you know that all our history makers, throughout time had a strong fight in their makeup? They had to in order to make those historical changes happen. While true, there were many who were either corrupt to begin with or allowed power to corrupt them and they caused massive suffering. There were also great people who were the cause of making great changes. George Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and W.E.B. DuBois, just to name a few. Consider them or anyone else in history who was responsible for making changes that improved the lives of others.
Do you see the difference between poorly evolved fight vs. highly evolved? The corrupted were swept up in their agenda and lost focus (if they had it at all) of how it was affecting others. The highly evolved fights, however, remembered their agenda and never lost focus on how it affected their people. More than that, I guarantee you will find that the highly evolved fight types check every box of anger’s benefits.
The Benefits of Anger
Anger is key to validation so that we can assert and set boundaries.
This nugget of wisdom comes from the Fight Types in my support group. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again. Fight Types are valuable members in any support group. While the rest of us struggle with boundaries, they are the only ones who have it figured out. In order to assert ourselves and set boundaries, we first must learn how to validate ourselves. Once we do that, the rest will become easy. Another helpful piece of wisdom from another Fight Type is, “No one likes boundaries. In my opinion, if you don’t offend at least one person when you set one, you’re not doing it right.”
Anger gets us fed up with a situation we’ve been stuck in.
What happens when we get fed up? It gives us the fuel to say No More and mean it. This is vital to sticking to what we want and our refusal to back down.
Anger works with sadness by readying us for action.
Have you heard that anger is an aggressive form of grief? Next time you’re angry, think of it that way. You’re grieving over something, it’s just coming out as energy. In other words, your “energetic grief” is asking you to do something about it. It also goes without saying that we need to experience both anger and grief in our healing process. But more on that when we address the benefits of sadness.
Anger is key to championing for us and others.
Anger helps us validate ourselves and name what is wrong. When we see how it’s affecting those we care about, it gives us the fuel to do something about it. It’s the active experience of learning the difference between helping others and people pleasing. People pleasing drains us, while helping others is the reverse. Making a positive impact on someone should feel empowering and rewarding. Anger is the necessary element for understanding who in our lives are worth fighting for.
Anger strengthens our core values.
In Master Toolbox 1, under Identity/Self-Discovery, I listed discovering our core values as one of the means we can develop our sense of self. Consider how abusers operate. How do they get their partners hooked into an abusive relationship? They erode their victim’s identity by invalidating their emotional needs. So, when we have a weak sense of identity, we’re even more vulnerable to falling under the abuser’s spell. However, the stronger our identity, the greater we can deflect the abuser and leave the relationship. Discovering our core values can help us do just that.
How does anger fit in with that? The heart of our core values is understanding what we love and what we hate. Let me demonstrate what I mean:
My husband is the laid-back and jovial type who’s rarely angered. However, I have seen his fury when watching The Innocence Project. He has bawled out incompetent law enforcement, prejudiced judges and prosecutors who aided and abetted the miscarriage of justice. He has ranted and roared at the TV screen on behalf of the wrongly accused until, unable to take it any longer, he turns it off. My husband no longer watches The Innocence Project because he hates being angry. But what else does he hate? Injustice and unfairness, meaning that one of his core values includes either Justice, Fairness, or both.
Anger helps us solidify our core values by addressing three main features:
- What is it you stand for?
- What is it you’re unwilling to back down from?
- Finally, what is it you have no stomach for? This is how anger works alongside disgust, another uncomfortable emotion. That twist or knot in your core, for example, is cueing you in on what’s intolerable.
Managing Anger’s Overflow
Anger is energy, so it demands action. Anger isn’t asking us to abuse others. It’s asking us to confront an issue, express what’s wrong and dare to name it.
Movement: Our bodies start doing this on autopilot the moment our anger has no place left to go but out. So, exercise it, whether it’s going on a walk to clear your head or kicking it up a notch with something more high intensity. Using our bodies to spend that energy will return us to baseline.
Verbal Venting: Best results are venting about it with someone you trust. Someone who understands why you are angry and is willing to hold space for you while you’re getting it off your chest. While you’re spending that energy with your person, that person’s validation is sending you calming energy.
Creativity: I wrote and performed my confrontation rap, which finally brought closure to the rage flashbacks. But writing that rap was only possible after my intrusive thoughts and rage flashbacks worked their (painful) magic on my programming, believe it or not. One more time, the link, if you would like to read my companion story to this article.
Using my husband’s example, he started managing his overflow the moment he turned off the TV. He recognized that his anger was outside his comfort zone (Window of Tolerance). He shook his head, shivered his body a bit and then left the den. I followed him to the kitchen, where he moved around and verbally rehashed the story he had watched. I held space for him and validated his feelings. However, I did not validate his need to apologize for being angry. (Like I said, he hates being angry, even when those feelings are justified.)
Displaced Anger: Recovering From Mistakes
I know how we get when we’re guilty of doing this. It’s typically shame spiral (Trauma Glossary 2) followed by a groveling apology. How about next time, you start practicing this instead:
Express Your Remorse: You’re limited to ONE apology. Groveling or repeating your apology is a form of looping (Trauma Glossary 2). Remember that your body language and facial expression are also communicating remorse.
Communicate: Explain what you’re really angry about, not as an excuse but as a means of getting the core issue off your chest. Listen to yourself. This is helping you process both the recent past and the present.
Forgive Yourself: In the CPTSD community, we tend to have more trouble forgiving ourselves than forgiving others. If you expressed remorse and followed it up with communication, you have done all in your power to recover from the mistake. Now focus on you and, if you’re having trouble forgiving yourself, explore why.
Reflect and Plan: This is the part that separates us from our abusers. Those few and far between times they apologized, what happened? There was no change in the behavior. In fact, their apology felt hollow to begin with. Reflect on how you can assert yourself on the original problem, before anger’s energy has a chance to control you.