Anger Issues: Last Week’s Therapy Discussion-Saturday, July 29, 2006-1:38 AM
The T got to talk to Freeman with the mild English accent of hers. He didn’t miss a beat though. He shows shock on his face from time to time. I appreciate not having a stone faced therapist. He didn’t show shock at her mild English accent. I’m not certain why Freeman was there but she was. They talked about EMDR or EDMR or whatever it is. They talked about it for a few minutes at the end of the session but for the most part we talked about how anger makes us uncomfortable. I try to avoid getting angry because I know that anger that gets out of control can be very damaging. Unchecked anger has always lead to violence for me. I told him that. The only anger work I’ve done in therapy is throwing clay balls at a wall when I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In all my years of therapy I’ve never done more anger work than that. It was frightening but I have to say I felt better.
I have a boxing bag and gloves here at home. They hardly ever get used because I hate the thought of hitting. He asked if I ever thought of the mother when I hit the bag, if I saw her face and saw myself hitting her. I said, No, that’s when I switched the week before last. He asked if I hit the mother and that was all she wrote. I was gone and gone for several days in fact. I didn’t realize that but I did stay gone for several days.
School shootings, abused kids, domestic violence, violent crimes…it all gives me one huge affirmation that anger is an emotion that you just don’t ever let get out of hand. But I don’t want to handle it at all.
I can say, yes, I’m angry at the mother but as I say it I feel nothing. Actually I do feel something. I feel alarm, like I want to shrink back because for me anger is at the end of a fist and at the end of her tongue as she spits off my name like its some horrible disease that has no cure. I just don’t want to be like her and for me anger is my mother..that’s what anger is to me…its my mother. I do not know of any examples of anger carried out without some harm being done to the person OR someone leaving. It’s rejection, its abandonment and it’s physical and emotional pain. Hell no I don’t want to touch it, not with a ten foot pole. He gave me hand outs and they lay crumpled in the bottom of my book bag.
Austin
I dont do anger and dont get it and i think i understand how scary it can be and i too wouldnt have read the stuff your T gave you, seems way too hard for me.
Amelia
As you know I do EMDR with my therapist. It apparently works for some people and not others. I find that it at least stablizes my functioning and at best opens up options and new pathways that cause me to think differently about my abuse.
My therapist works extensively with me on creating new pathways in my brain so that I don’t have to have the same flashbacks all the time.
She describes it like this:
trauma causes the brain to store material in one part of the brain that becomes locked off…so like a train that goes down a track that ends at a dead end, the chemical “signals” in the brain sending the info down that track/neuro pathway, not only gets rutted the more it occurs, but is furthermore incabable of jumping pathways laterally/side to side, like intergrated functioning does. (ie…splitting and switching too.) Ideally, in the brain when info is sent down one pathway, it should be able to jump side to side to find another circuit/pathway to send the info to. (Like on your computer RAM, the computer fill the memory wherever it has access or can randomly find space.) This is why abuse survivors so often feel they have no options, because the pathway is rutted and stuck at a dead end, literally.
So, pathways must be created and bridged anew, like a stroke vitim who loses the loss of one side of their body. Through therapy, they can build new pathways and bridges in the brain that help the body recognize neuro-stmulus again, and hence move and function again. So think of trauma/prolonged abuse as a kind of emotional/personality “stroke” that you must in turn re-train your brain for to operate normally.
Perhaps this seems far-fetched to some, but remember back when Doctors thought rebuilding nerve tissue was impossible? Just 30 years or so ago? And now, that’s completely changed.
It’s just something to think about. I have an EMDR explanation on a comment I made to Wolfbaby at my site, if your interested.
Sorry this was so long and involved. Best wishes, Limbic Susie.
(Please let me know if there is a rule about “comments” length. I’m still learning here.)