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Some part of myself is assuring me that I will not be able to publish books that contain my TRUTH without having to find – for the first time in my entire life — what my rage feels like. This involves me becoming absolutely clear about WHO/WHAT am I REALLY ANGRY at?
Last week I thought for awhile that the beginning of my preface on this upcoming book to be published would be about the day around the 4th of July, 1977 that my baby sister (she was 21, I was 25) rode a bus from Edmonton, Alberta to my home in northern Minnesota (2 weeks before her delivery date for her firstborn). I was going to mention at the start that when she said to me, “If you are not very, very angry at Mother for the things she did to you when you were growing up there is something REALLY REALLY wrong with you!” – I had absolutely no reaction.
I did not respond to her — etc — but I was most certainly NOT angry with Mother – so therefore I guessed there indeed MUST be something wrong with me.
During all the years of therapy, recovery, research, etc etc etc that I have gone through since that day – I have NEVER felt angry at Mother.
That’s all part of my story – whereas TODAY – and yesterday – and the day before that I am feeling the rising of my rage as if it were a Tsunami coming.
I HATE RAGE – but so what. In the interest of finally finding my own truth – so I can get this business done of publishing books – I am saying, “BRING IT ON!!”
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As of TODAY – I am quite singularly ENRAGED at the entire HUMAN RACE – well, at least those of my culture – which are the only ones I have ever been in interaction with.
Yesterday – as this rage-finding mission moves forward – I realized that because no human being ever took an interest in me or in my well-being during the first 18 years of my life in hell — NO WONDER I loved the Alaskan wilderness.
Humans were the LAST thing I needed. My life taught me that!
Humans are the LAST thing the wilderness needs.
No wonder the wilderness and I were such friends, had so much in common, shared implicit understanding of what LIFE was really about.
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Humans. Pitiful social connection seeking pandering pitiful (did I mention that?) – selfish persuadable useless parasites upon the earth?
What do I know?
But it is illogical to me that I will continue to track the scent of my rage without entering parts of my being that have NOTHING good to say about humans.
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Stop the Storm 
Linda,
Hmm. I wonder if there is a gender difference in how we process our traumatic pasts. Within weeks of me first beginning to remember who my father was I began thinking of the situation in terms of how severely I would beat him if I ever saw him again. The degree and violence of my anger became so intense, disturbing and disruptive after 6 or so months of me playing out the beating of my father (every day without fail), that I had to deliberately begin to take control of the story in such a way that I would only ever do something like that if he actually got in my face and tried to use his voice to intimidate and threaten me, the way he did when I was young.
Almost without exception, any time I begin to think about that part of my life, it leads me straight to rage. I’ve found that I have to be vigilant in pushing the rage aside and exploring the other emotions that are lurking within/behind/under the rage. If I don’t make a deliberate effort, I fear I will stay stuck in those debilitating emotions and never evolve beyond those wounds into whatever it is that someone like me is supposed to do with his life. I’m just saying, I certainly do not have to make an effort to feel my rage.
Onward ho!
Certainly there is a physiological gender difference!! Have you found/read any of my writings on how I see the cycle of the stress-calm response system in terms of anger/rage, fear, sadness/grief?
If not, most briefly:
anger/rage — we attempt to solve an environmental challenge to our peaceful calm using every KNOWN tool in our ‘arsenal’ – what has worked before. To me, males are genetically geared to FIGHT – physiologically prepared from our species’ beginning to solve a problem this way – so of course you would notice this most especially as a male!
fear — when our known tools don’t work – we quickly at this stage in the cycle reach for anything ELSE we can find
sadness – grief – in sadness, I believe, we are most open to learning something entirely new about how to solve these challenges. If we don’t – especially if we have nobody of our species to help us – we will grieve
the point is to get back to peaceful-calm attachment to self and world
For a rough-draft example – I recommend this of my personal history in example to rage related to abuse survivorship–
+Age 14 – SCRUBBED IN THE TUB
at
https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/the-devils-child-my-childhood/vignettes-from-my-abusive-childhood/age-14-scrubbed-in-the-tub/
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My thought — men have a harder time either recognizing or admitting that the anger stage has nothing to offer in real-time to solve the problem – we have to always define clearly what our problem even IS! What are we actually trying to solve NOW?
what is the challenge to our equilibrium NOW??
If the anger is not solving this challenge that we have defined for NOW – we must move on through these other stages – if we find something in our FEAR stage, if we apply it and it works — we go directly to peaceful-calm
if we can’t, we will move into and through the sadness stage, as I have described
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I am thrilled to hear of your MOVEMENTS – in your thinking, in your emotions, in your awarenesses!! Getting STUCK is to be paralyzed in any one ‘state’ without solving the problem/challenge/trauma
while our own life goes on
WITHOUT US!
Keep up your wonderful work!!
xo
Rage, such a powerful word that I wish I could experience. I was not allowed or dared to every express anger, rage growing up because of the survive abuse I would experience.
This past week I’m finding that i will be back in court dealing with my divorce. This process is hard enough to go through and people who can feel rage I feel are able to handle this so much better then I can. I want to get anger, I want that rage, that strength that helps you get through hard times.
This is other emotion that been rob from me and somehow have to find the strength to face my ex. again. I dislike conflicts, disagreements, anything that upsets the peace I want so much to find. Without rage it steals the power in me to face what I have to face and fight for myself. I only want to ran and ran far away.
Hi Twin – Boy, it scares me to find my blog pages are not working properly right now! My entire book I am working on is on the blog – but I am glad it seems to have at least let me get to your comment!!
I am 61 – and only now RARELY feel anger and rage – and it scares me. It is foreign to me. I don’t understand it – I only learned how rage HURTS people – and I, too, never want to hurt anyone.
Something that helps me – even though I only figured this out for myself and have not read it anywhere else — is to look at the fight-flight-freeze response system in terms of our primary emotions
I’ve written about this on the blog – but not sure where – so – briefly
when we have a challenge we MUST respond to the first stop is the fight stop – which I equate with a useful anger place. In this place we look around inside of our self for ANY POSSIBLE useful response that we have used to solve a problem successfully before.
If we can’t find anything useful, the next stop around the circle is FEAR – where we realize we better figure something out QUICKLY ’cause it seems we are heading for big trouble.
If we can’t find anything to use THERE to solve our problem, the next stop in the cycle is sadness and grief – but although we don’t think of it this way, mostly ’cause our society does not HELP us — is that it is HERE we are most prepared to learn something entirely NEW to use!!
Then we can get to work to solve the problem, and then – which is hard for trauma survivors to do — we return to a state of inner peaceful calm.
Perhaps this might be useful for you to think about instead of just taking what our culture says on the surface about our feelings. They are FAR MORE than emotions. They relate to states of being in the world – and NEVER are we supposed to get stuck in any one of these places!
I hope the blog lets this publish right now – and thanks, so good to hear from you – and you WILL find your own good way through all of this!!!! xo
pan•dered pan•der•ing
Definition of PANDER
Intransitive verb
: to act as a pander; especially : to provide gratification for others’ desires
— pan•der•er noun
First Known Use of PANDER
1523
Pander noun
a : a go-between in love intrigues
b : PIMP
2
: someone who caters to or exploits the weaknesses of others
See pander defined for kids »
Examples of PANDER
1.
Origin of PANDER
Middle English Pandare Pandarus, from Latin Pandarus
First Known Use: 1530
Take a look at this:
http://www.sheknows.com/baby-names/name/pandarus
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what is the connection with this word and PAN, PANDEMONIUM, PANDORA and her box?