+++++++++++++++++++

This post is a follow-up to my previous post,+DAYS WITHOUT WORDS – FOCUSED SURVIVAL AND DISSOCIATION, as I complete the cycle (the continuum) of relationship as I see it between anger, fear and sadness.  I stated, “Anger is NOT so much about learning something completely new as it is about using what one knows in a new and different creative way.”  What about the other two related emotional states?

If one finds within the state of anger that nothing one knows, and no creative combination of what one knows can actually solve a problem (usually one that involves threat of some kind to well-being), then the next step by default becomes fear.

“Oh, no!  NOW what can I do?”

The place of fear reflects increased pressure to find a solution.  It is extremely motivating, more so (perhaps strangely!) than anger is!  Anger reflects the use of KNOWN active coping responses.  Fear happens when none of them actually WORKED!

Fear belongs to the “Learn something new FAST” category of response at the same time it reflects response to increasing levels of ‘danger’ because it is by nature’s design a stance of increased NEED and vulnerability.

Fear is NOT a place to remain stuck in!  Actually NONE of these three primary survival-based emotions are meant to continue very long.  They are stress response reactions that drain the body, and can do so to exhaustion!  They reflect a lack of safety, security, well-being and peaceful-calm-connection to and in the world — the state we are supposed to return back to as quickly as we possibly can.

If something new CAN be learned while in the escalated state of fear, a person then returns to the productive energy state of ‘anger’ and goes to work competently and confidently solving the problem and overcoming the obstacle to well-being.

If nothing new can be learned, the slide now is into sadness!  Oh, dear, sadness!!  The biggest risk to remaining very long in the state of sadness is that its deeper ends lie in hopelessness and despair.  Yet at the same time sadness carries this risk for remaining powerlessness, it also reflects the other end of liability:  Sadness allows for an openness to NEW learning.

Letting go — finally and not without a fight — of everything that we know of to solve a problem is NOT FUN!  Realizing that we DO NOT KNOW how to protect ourselves, how to solve a problem, how to avoid or escape a threat is extremely humbling.  Yet at the same time sadness reflects a lessening of our grip on all that we know, of all that has worked in the past, or might have worked now allows us to be open to the newest, latest, BEST and POSSIBLE solution.

++

In following this thinking of an ever-activated stress response system (caught perpetually and uselessly in one of these primary states of anger, fear or sadness) it seems obvious to me that the pattern of movement through the cycle has its purpose — and always has.

What gave our species the cutting edge we needed to meet all challenges to our survival has always been not only our brilliant brain’s ability to combine and recombine what we have learned in the past, but most importantly our ability to LEARN SOMETHING NEW.  Learning something new — finally!  Can feel like stepping off the edge of the known universe completely into the unknown.  “Will this work?  Do I have this right?  Is there any hope?”

What makes sadness evaporate (at least somewhat and temporarily for those of us who had sadness built into our body as our center set point) is that magical leap reflected in these words:  “I think I’ll try this something new.  I have nothing left to lose.”

Making this leap takes the will to live, the will to survive, the will to TRY, the will to risk, the will to hope against all hopelessness.  Making this leap to learn something entirely new and then to APPLY whatever we come up with or whatever comes to us, can often require of us that we access just a tiny bit MORE energy than we can possibly imagine we have.

This is endurance, the endurance of the long distance runner, the mountain climber, the swimmer who cannot POSSIBLY run or climb or swim ANY MORE.  “YES, we CAN!”  And in this “YES, we CAN!”  place lies the completion of the cycle because it involves a level of fighting ANGER that is damn good for us!

This is an energy of “I can do it!  I can fight against the unfightable — and win!  I will take this new piece of information I have learned in my wide open most vulnerable state of sadness — and I will FIGHT back!”  Here we have come full circle back to a stance of active coping, of confidence and of competence.  Nothing wrong with that!

But survivors of early abuse have an extra obstacle to overcome:  We have been stuck in one of these states so long that moving forward or backward can seem impossible.  The first step to rocking ourselves out of the deepest rut is to “Give it some gas!”

++

NOTE:  In my thinking having a continually active stress response system is the same thing as having an insecure attachment system/pattern/disorder.  When our stress response system is ON so also is our attachment one.  BOTH mean that we do not feel safe and secure in the world and do not feel peaceful/calm/connection/well-being.

+++++++++++++++++++