The Web address of this
three-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/basics/anger1.htm
Anger 101, continued...
Subselves and
Repressed
Anger
How and why do people like
my abuse-survivor mom client (and you?) protectively repress their na-tural
anger reflex? I propose that different combinations of subselves cause this. For
example: you feel hurt, frustrated, and/or scared, and angry subselves naturally
start to activate.
Your
subself says "Every time we
showed anger (in childhood), we got ridiculed, punished, and rejected (hurt)."
Historian may also warn "Every time we’ve been around angry men / women
/ people we’ve gotten major pain!"
At the same time, your
and
can sternly
decree "It’s shameful, to (a) feel anger and/or to (b) express it
publicly (or to certain people).” Your
may shrilly add “Don’t you dare feel or show anger! You know (something
devastating) will happen!”
Your
and/or
young
subselves contribute
fearful thoughts and feelings (“If we show anger,
(someone) will hurt me, and we
there’s no one to protect me!”). Your
can add
inhibiting emotions and thoughts like “I don’t deserve to get my needs met.
I’m selfish and dis-gusting.”
Your
may flood you with emotion and thoughts like “Oh NO! I’ve broken a rule again!”
Your protective
may plead “PLEASE don’t
feel (or show) anger, or Abandoned Child will be even more terrified!”
Your energetic
may activate to distract you by
urging “Come on, get busy right NOW!” Still other
subselves may
flood you with weariness, and/or images and hungers for comforting su-gars and
fats.
The emotional intensity and
clamor of these all these subselves overwhelms your wise
true
Self (capital "S"),
and
subselves. To quell the
stressful uproar, your Guardian Anesthetist
or
rides to the rescue by controlling your glands so you don’t
feel hurt, scared, and angry.
Your
and/or
may
pitch in by distracting your Self with intellectual assessments of “What’s going
on here, and why?”
If your glands work and you do feel angry, your
clever
may convince you it’s some other emotion ("Naw -
you're just edgy and irritable.") .
If someone challenges this, this talented subself offers persuasive reasons why the
challenge is wrong. That gives ammunition to your
who distracts and defends by counterattacking (“There you go again, reading
my mind, telling me what I feel, and blaming me.”)
All this happens in a few
seconds below your conscious awareness.
Key results:
Little or no felt
hurt and anger, despite real
cause for it;
A chronic neuro-chemical
stress
reaction which may weaken organs and/or your immune system. I suspect this
was contributing to my obese client’s weight, diabetes, and blood-pressure
problems and related anxieties - at age 40;
The needs that
cause the
anger go unrecognized and unfilled, perhaps including the need to mourn;
Possible unconscious
passive-aggressive behavior and/or
("I am not angry!") that cause new
problems; and...
Part of your
(“I can’t or
don’t get angry.’) is strengthened.
Anger repression brings a
web of social (relationship) results too, like distrust,
confusion, and anxiety.
Can you think of
any
kids or adults who cope with stress by reflexively repressing their hurt and anger and
perhaps denying or trivializing that? Each of them has a different set of inner-family
subselves and dynamics, but their outcomes are probably the same. Until they
learn about and want to change this protective reflex, their repression is
likely to...
-
cause a cascade of other
relationship problems, and to...
-
degrade their long-range personal serenity and health.
Have you ever considered the
causes and effects of repressing (numbing and denying) normal hurt, anger, and
frustration responses like this? Does the
above make sense to you? Does it apply to you and key adults and kids
in your life? If so, how is this repression affecting your
relationships and health?
Now let’s look at the reverse of anger-repression.
Unawareness, false-self dominance, and anger (and/or
frustration)
outbursts were contributing to the collapse of my large male
client’s marriage and fa-mily, and adding new losses (broken bonds) and stress to both
mates and his
early-teen stepson.
Subselves and
Expressing
Anger
Three concurrent
dynamics cause most problems expressing anger and frus-tration: the
subself-interactions inside you, inside your partner/s, and the act > react > react…
interaction between your groups of dominant subselves.
To
validate this
proposal, read
Who’s Really Running Your Life? or these
Pro-ject-1 articles. The main difference
between this anger scenario and the repression one above is that some other
subselves react faster and more intensely. The resulting behaviors are
different, but the outcomes are similar.
Like the first scenario,
this one starts with one or more subselves feeling signifi-cantly hurt,
frustrated, resentful, and/or scared. These may be caused by other subselves and/or
per-ceptions of external events like someone's behaviors. Both of these were
acting in my male client.
My guesstimate is the “anger
problem” his wife accused him boiled down to this: she and/or his stepson did
things that made his subselves feel ashamed, frustrated, guilty, or scared.
(Specifically, he felt his wife
despite his repeated
protests and requests.)
He told me his attempts to assert and
harvested scorn, sarcasm, accusations, self-doubt, pain, and mounting
frustrations from his wife, not relief. Note: neither he, his wife, nor their
pastor or marital therapist knew about (a) false-self wounds and recovery, (b) effective communication
or (c) stepfamily
realities,
norms,
and
Finally his powerful
and
subselves
broke free of restraining subselves and took over to protect his inner
and
Kids. The former caused his voice to get loud
and deep, his body to tense, his face to scowl, his voice tone to become
domineering, and him to say forcefully “No more!”
He was referring to
the feelings he had bottled up from his stepson ignoring him, and his wife (a)
accusing him of being “selfish,” an “ineffective stepfather,” and “an abusive
husband,” and (b) vehemently denying taking her son’s side over his.
Underneath this outburst was
four decades of repressed anger, confusion, and sadness from
starting in his earliest years. These were magnified by
and
other emotions related to the chemical
he was courageously managing.
This man’s boiling over and asserting limits scared his wife’s subselves
badly, and threatened them with the imminent loss of being in control
of their
relationship. Her subselves couldn’t risk either of these, so they scornfully
pronounced that he had “an anger problem,” and demanded that he leave despite
his entreaties to work things out. When I asked her tormented husband if she'd
meet with him and me, she (her protective, distrustful false self) refused.
The
subself
is born during agonizing neglect in our earliest years. S/He is usually stuck
in the past, and tantrums (screams, yells, throws things) hysterically when
core needs go unmet. This subself is primitive and emotionally volatile. S/He
has little wisdom or cognitive awareness to work with, and needs consistent
tender sensory comforting.
The
subself is often a teen. Part of her or his passion is irrational, normal defiance to assert and “do it (be) myself!” When part of a
ruling false self, the Rebel characteristically promotes black/white dramatic
thinking, sarcasm and c/overt criticism, and relentlessly arguing or sullen
silences, rather than listening, reasoning, and asserting calmly. Sound
familiar?
The
is
an
older Guardian subself who promotes dedicated narrow-minded rage and
aggression to protect the tormented or terrified inner kids. The powerful
can contribute scathing anger too, often directed at the host
person (i.e. other subselves.) That activates the
and
Kids, which causes… (more inner-family uproar).
These are common
inner-family elements of someone who causes personal and relationship
“prob-lems” by the way they express their anger. Like the repression
scenario above, these forceful, passionate subselves don’t trust the resident
true
personality parts to keep the vulnerable
safe and comfortable enough.
Do you know any chronically
angry adults or kids ("rageaholics")?
They're unconsciously burdened with a
related
psychological
and inner-family
chaos like the above. Most of them will stay "stuck" in the anger
phase of
grieving their losses until they understand and accept their wounds and choose to
them.
Until you and
key others are
aware of (a) your inner-family dynamics and (b) how to have your sub-selves trust your
respective true Selves to lead them, you probably have little or no
perception of your well-meaning, narrow-focused
at work.
Yet their relationship and health effects are major. All this applies to your
other family adults and kids and other key people in your life.
The basic concepts
above can
help your family adults understand, identify, and resolve “anger problems" in and
between you and with others. Recall: a problem is an unmet
(vs. surface) personal need, and/or conflicting
primary needs between people. One result of false-self wounds is repression, conversion,
projection, and/or
conflictual expression of anger.
Another result is people stressed with anger
and frustration problems react only to the surface is-sues, not the primary problems
them:
Once
admitted, all three can be greatly
improved!
Common
Surface Anger
Problems
| As a therapist and
a family member, I've often witnessed and experienced common "anger" problems
between people. Though details and causes vary widely, the main themes are few.
A core theme is: The “anger problem” is usually not the problem.
Repressed or expressed anger is a symp-tom of unmet primary needs
in one or both partners. What follows is based on this premise. |
Think of an adult or child with whom you have a significant "anger problem." See if
your
problem is some version of one or more of these symptoms:
1)
We
try to resolve various problems and one or both of us starts or ends up angry
and/or frus-trated. This makes
the problem worse. At times the anger, or avoiding it, becomes our
focus, and our original needs get lost.
2)
One
or both of us
is significantly scared, guilty, and/or ashamed of (a) feeling and/or (b) expres-sing
our own anger. We get angry “timidly” (a
confusing
or avoid assertion
and conflict, so our problems go unresolved, and
inside and between us
grows.
3)
At times, one of us "loses
it," and "loses control" (of what?) in expressing anger
and/or frustra-tion, according
to someone. Restated: one of us may get inappropriately angry, or angry “too
often,” in someone’s opinion. The angry behavior may escalate into threats,
verbal or physical aggression, or
which paralyzes the other person, or
they leave or explode, rather than
One or both of us, and/or other family
members, are significantly intimidated by these anger erup-tions. The
“exploder” may have follow-up feelings of remorse and apologize, and repeat
the cycle again. Someone may call him or her a “rageaholic” or the like.
4)
One or both of
us doesn't feel normal anger, despite clear causes for it.
Variation: one of us judges the other as being “passive-aggressive” (expressing resentment, frustration, and anger covertly, and denying it). Typical symptoms:
-
being
over-intellectual, paralyzed, or numb in conflictual, confusing, and
frustrating situations;
-
having impassive or frozen faces and bodies, and
flat, unexpressive voice tones, in tense or conflictual social situations;
-
chronic teeth grinding, facial tics, muscle spasms and tightness (shoulders,
neck), back pain, ulcers, and/or hypertension (high blood pressure); and/or...
-
tendency to overwork
(this can have many causes).
5)
One
or both of us
denies that s/he’s angry, and the other insists otherwise.
Possible symptom: One or both of you are (a) chronically "irritable" or angry
(at "the world," each other, and/or others), and (b) you don't know why, and
(c)
the chronic anger is corroding your relationship.
6)
One
or both of us
get angry, and other family members get drawn in to cause household or
fami-ly uproar. We do little or no effective
7) Our best attempts
to improve any of these, perhaps including therapy, don’t bring permanent
resolution and improvements.
Common results from focusing on
surface anger / frustration
problems like these include...
-
conflict avoidance, or too little
effective
This
increases personal and household
tension (dissatisfaction), and distrust of your resolution abilities.
These cause more inner and mutual (secondary) conflicts.
-
inconclusive, adult arguments
or debates
over surface problems that weaken the relationship, and raise kids' and
adults' frustrations and insecurities.
-
a child is acting out an adult's unexpressed
anger or is in a family-scapegoat
which
is defocusing the family's
attention from facing the adult anger problems;
-
a wide range of physical health problems,
causing family members chronic financial and related
anxieties; and/or…
-
"floating anxieties" and/or
Some people feel that depression is “anger turned inward,”
which may come from healthy or incomplete grief.
Using
these foundations, let's review the primary problems causing these surface
problems, and ex-plore
your options...
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