wherein Liz talks about anger
Jun. 2nd, 2011 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingOne thing Manic made me think about was, well, my own struggles with anger when I was a kid. You would never guess it to meet me now, but when I was younger I had a flash-fire temper -- I went straight from annoyance to fury with no middle ground. And I did not express anger in the stereotypical female fashion of emotional aggression. I just hit people.
My temper faded as fast as it struck, and I was almost always very remorseful afterwards. I didn't like being violent and angry. I didn't like what I did when I wasn't thinking. But I couldn't get those crucial two or three seconds ahead of myself and clamp down before I exploded.
When I was seven, my parents got me a special necklace that I was supposed to clutch while I counted to ten in an attempt to get hold of myself and not, you know, beat people up. That did approximately nothing, though it did get me into the habit of wearing long necklaces with a single charm for several years.
When I was about twelve, I decided I hated being angry and violent so much (and I hated my reputation for anger and violence even more, because people assumed I was going to pitch fits even when I was actually being calm) that I tried to completely suppress my temper. No matter how angry I got, I wouldn't express that anger. I visualized myself wrapping all the frustration, anger, hatred, and violence into a ball in my chest and shoving it down.
That didn't work. Yes, it largely eliminated the minor incidents, but when I inevitably blew, I really, truly lost it. This is the period when I started to explode at my friends (though, thankfully, mostly in the form of screaming and throwing things, not by hitting them), when I did things like pitch a chunk of wood into a boy's eye from about six feet away (I am so lucky he was not permanently injured), and when I nearly stabbed my sister with a fork over an argument about whose turn it was to set the table (the only reason I didn't draw blood is because she dodged). This is also the period when I started to feel all twisted up inside, like something was physically congested in my chest.
I saw a therapist for a year in junior high, ostensibly because I refused to do my homework and this was construed as me having issues with authority or something (which was true, so far as it went), but what we ended up actually talking about was anger management. I have almost no memory of the sessions, but I do remember deciding that suppressing and denying my anger was a bad idea. What I needed to do instead was find a way to acknowledge and release anger without violence.
I also needed a way to undo that three-year-old tangle in my chest. My first thought was that I should find an isolated spot in the woods and scream myself hoarse for a couple hours, but I never could find anywhere isolated enough (or a room soundproof enough) to be sure people wouldn't come running on the assumption that I was being raped or murdered. Which would have made me die of embarrassment, and also I didn't want to trouble and/or annoy anyone. So even while I was trying to learn how to admit I was angry, and then let go of that anger, I still had this tight-wound ball of negative emotions twisting me up and keeping me off balance.
What finally unwound the knot was, of all the ridiculous things, going to see The English Patient with my mom. (We went because she was in the height of her Colin Firth obsession.) I don't have any idea if the movie was any good, but when the credits rolled I started to cry, just a little. And I felt that ball start to unwind.
I wouldn't talk to my mom on our drive home and I yelled at her until she stopped trying to talk to me. I knew if I got distracted, I'd stop crying and the ball would stop unwinding. And I needed it unwound.
I ended up curled up on my bed sobbing for nearly an hour. Mom and Dad were baffled -- and very worried, at first -- but after a while I managed to tell them, between sobs, that this didn't have anything to do with the movie, that I was all right, that I needed this, and please stop talking and just let me get this out.
(This, incidentally, is why I believe in catharsis.)
After that it was easier to learn how to manage anger. I still slipped up sometimes, but by my junior year of high school, I had been convincingly well-behaved for long enough that when I lost it and attacked a jerk in gym class (who had, after a year of being a jerkass with no meaningful correction from the teacher, just kicked a soccer ball point blank at my head and called for other people to help him "take that bitch out," so I had a certain amount of provocation), the vice principal refused to believe that I could possibly have hurt a boy six inches taller and about forty pounds heavier than I was. I confess I did not correct him. *wry*
For me, learning to manage anger had two main steps. The first was to disconnect irritation from anger. Just because something annoys me doesn't mean it's worth anger, particularly not when I find anger such an uncomfortable emotion. (Yes, even righteous anger. I have a very hard time holding a distinction between righteous anger and vengeful anger; to me, they feel exactly the same and provoke the same violent impulses.) That was partly a matter of growing up -- as I had more life experience, I realized that certain things I'd gotten furious about as a child were not actually that important to me. But it was also a matter of telling myself, over and over, that Thing A wasn't worth losing my temper, and Thing B wasn't worth losing my temper, that Thing C wasn't worth losing my temper, etcetera, until the repetition sank in.
The second step was learning to disconnect anger from violence. In some ways, that was easier, because I have never liked the aftereffects of my own violence. I don't like the adrenaline crash. I don't like the guilt. I don't like myself when I feel petty satisfaction at hurting a jerk. (Which doesn't stop me from feeling that satisfaction, as you can tell from the story about the gym class incident, but still. I don't like what the emotion says about me, so I prefer to avoid that kind of situation.) Suppressing anger is useless. Pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it actually disappear. It just goes underground and waits.
I ended up using another visualization exercise, like the tangled ball of string, only this one isn't self-destructive. I picture anger like a hot tide of corrosive fluid rising in my body. I feel it all through my chest and limbs. It makes me shake. And then I let it go -- falling and falling, in a cascade down my body, through my feet, and into the cool of the earth where it is neutralized and lost. And I breathe. And breathe. And breathe.
An unexpected side effect of this is that sometimes, when I do jump from irritation to fury, I get icily polite/precise instead of reaching for heat or violence; thinking of "cool" snaps me all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Icy disdain is a more socially acceptable form of displaying anger, but I still think of it as a slip, and it still leaves me with adrenaline crash shakes afterwards -- it's still me losing control instead of letting go.
...
Anyway. Mostly this is to say that while I am not an angry person anymore, I was once, and it was a long, hard road to a more even temper. So in that sense, watching a movie about a teen with anger management issues was weirdly familiar for me, though I was never as bad as Lyle in Manic. And for that, I am very thankful.
My temper faded as fast as it struck, and I was almost always very remorseful afterwards. I didn't like being violent and angry. I didn't like what I did when I wasn't thinking. But I couldn't get those crucial two or three seconds ahead of myself and clamp down before I exploded.
When I was seven, my parents got me a special necklace that I was supposed to clutch while I counted to ten in an attempt to get hold of myself and not, you know, beat people up. That did approximately nothing, though it did get me into the habit of wearing long necklaces with a single charm for several years.
When I was about twelve, I decided I hated being angry and violent so much (and I hated my reputation for anger and violence even more, because people assumed I was going to pitch fits even when I was actually being calm) that I tried to completely suppress my temper. No matter how angry I got, I wouldn't express that anger. I visualized myself wrapping all the frustration, anger, hatred, and violence into a ball in my chest and shoving it down.
That didn't work. Yes, it largely eliminated the minor incidents, but when I inevitably blew, I really, truly lost it. This is the period when I started to explode at my friends (though, thankfully, mostly in the form of screaming and throwing things, not by hitting them), when I did things like pitch a chunk of wood into a boy's eye from about six feet away (I am so lucky he was not permanently injured), and when I nearly stabbed my sister with a fork over an argument about whose turn it was to set the table (the only reason I didn't draw blood is because she dodged). This is also the period when I started to feel all twisted up inside, like something was physically congested in my chest.
I saw a therapist for a year in junior high, ostensibly because I refused to do my homework and this was construed as me having issues with authority or something (which was true, so far as it went), but what we ended up actually talking about was anger management. I have almost no memory of the sessions, but I do remember deciding that suppressing and denying my anger was a bad idea. What I needed to do instead was find a way to acknowledge and release anger without violence.
I also needed a way to undo that three-year-old tangle in my chest. My first thought was that I should find an isolated spot in the woods and scream myself hoarse for a couple hours, but I never could find anywhere isolated enough (or a room soundproof enough) to be sure people wouldn't come running on the assumption that I was being raped or murdered. Which would have made me die of embarrassment, and also I didn't want to trouble and/or annoy anyone. So even while I was trying to learn how to admit I was angry, and then let go of that anger, I still had this tight-wound ball of negative emotions twisting me up and keeping me off balance.
What finally unwound the knot was, of all the ridiculous things, going to see The English Patient with my mom. (We went because she was in the height of her Colin Firth obsession.) I don't have any idea if the movie was any good, but when the credits rolled I started to cry, just a little. And I felt that ball start to unwind.
I wouldn't talk to my mom on our drive home and I yelled at her until she stopped trying to talk to me. I knew if I got distracted, I'd stop crying and the ball would stop unwinding. And I needed it unwound.
I ended up curled up on my bed sobbing for nearly an hour. Mom and Dad were baffled -- and very worried, at first -- but after a while I managed to tell them, between sobs, that this didn't have anything to do with the movie, that I was all right, that I needed this, and please stop talking and just let me get this out.
(This, incidentally, is why I believe in catharsis.)
After that it was easier to learn how to manage anger. I still slipped up sometimes, but by my junior year of high school, I had been convincingly well-behaved for long enough that when I lost it and attacked a jerk in gym class (who had, after a year of being a jerkass with no meaningful correction from the teacher, just kicked a soccer ball point blank at my head and called for other people to help him "take that bitch out," so I had a certain amount of provocation), the vice principal refused to believe that I could possibly have hurt a boy six inches taller and about forty pounds heavier than I was. I confess I did not correct him. *wry*
For me, learning to manage anger had two main steps. The first was to disconnect irritation from anger. Just because something annoys me doesn't mean it's worth anger, particularly not when I find anger such an uncomfortable emotion. (Yes, even righteous anger. I have a very hard time holding a distinction between righteous anger and vengeful anger; to me, they feel exactly the same and provoke the same violent impulses.) That was partly a matter of growing up -- as I had more life experience, I realized that certain things I'd gotten furious about as a child were not actually that important to me. But it was also a matter of telling myself, over and over, that Thing A wasn't worth losing my temper, and Thing B wasn't worth losing my temper, that Thing C wasn't worth losing my temper, etcetera, until the repetition sank in.
The second step was learning to disconnect anger from violence. In some ways, that was easier, because I have never liked the aftereffects of my own violence. I don't like the adrenaline crash. I don't like the guilt. I don't like myself when I feel petty satisfaction at hurting a jerk. (Which doesn't stop me from feeling that satisfaction, as you can tell from the story about the gym class incident, but still. I don't like what the emotion says about me, so I prefer to avoid that kind of situation.) Suppressing anger is useless. Pretending something doesn't exist doesn't make it actually disappear. It just goes underground and waits.
I ended up using another visualization exercise, like the tangled ball of string, only this one isn't self-destructive. I picture anger like a hot tide of corrosive fluid rising in my body. I feel it all through my chest and limbs. It makes me shake. And then I let it go -- falling and falling, in a cascade down my body, through my feet, and into the cool of the earth where it is neutralized and lost. And I breathe. And breathe. And breathe.
An unexpected side effect of this is that sometimes, when I do jump from irritation to fury, I get icily polite/precise instead of reaching for heat or violence; thinking of "cool" snaps me all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Icy disdain is a more socially acceptable form of displaying anger, but I still think of it as a slip, and it still leaves me with adrenaline crash shakes afterwards -- it's still me losing control instead of letting go.
...
Anyway. Mostly this is to say that while I am not an angry person anymore, I was once, and it was a long, hard road to a more even temper. So in that sense, watching a movie about a teen with anger management issues was weirdly familiar for me, though I was never as bad as Lyle in Manic. And for that, I am very thankful.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 08:31 pm (UTC)That was a very deep bit of sharing, Liz. Thanks for trusting us with this.
I have a few anger management issues of my own, but mostly if I'm REALLY angry, I get very, very quiet. So maybe that is icy disdain, though it could be more "You really wish you hadn't done/said that."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 11:38 pm (UTC)Thank you for listening!