Managing Anger: Simple Steps to Dealing with Frustration and Threat. Gael Lindenfield
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‘In this world there are winners and losers.’
– ‘Who am I to reason why?’
– ‘There’s no point in crying over spilt milk.’
– ‘Let bygones be bygones.’
– ‘Everyone has a cross to bear.’
– ‘They probably didn’t mean to hurt me, so there’s no point confronting them.’
– ‘They were probably doing their best or what they thought was right.’
So the depressive grows up ‘thinking’ that if they are hurt or abused, there are merely two available options:
1 self-blame
2 denial of blame
It often simply does not occur to them that there could be a third option, i.e. to lay the blame at the door of the people who may be responsible for perpetrating the hurt or abuse. It is this third option which gives us the right to feel justifiable anger and the right to find a reasonable way of expressing this feeling.
And, as I said earlier, one of the knock-on effects of the depressive’s denial of anger is that their personal relationships are often unhappy and they do not get the ‘breaks’ which other people seem to get. In addition, they may not get the promotion they deserve, the social invitations to events they could enjoy, or the love they crave, because the reality is that most people do not want depressed people around for long, either at home or at work – even the kindest and cleverest amongst them end up being boring and exhausting companions and colleagues.
Eventually, depressives experience so many let-downs that they protectively ‘imprison’ themselves in a state of non-feeling. Once they have built walls around themselves it is very difficult to entice them out. They actually do not want to escape because their ‘prison’ feels preferable to the awful world which they perceive is around them, or indeed, the awful world which they have, in reality, built for themselves.
By this time, they have probably lost total sight of the hurts and frustrations (e.g. redundancy, incurable disability, broken marriage, bullying friends, sadistic teacher, abusive father, or ineffectual mother) which originally gave rise to the depression. Ask them what is wrong and they will usually reply ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Nothing’; ask them if anyone or anything has upset them, and they will insist ‘No, its just me.’ And ask them if you can help and they will usually say ‘No, just leave me alone.’
But we mustn’t forget that, unlike the manipulative aggressor, the person who is in a state of depression is not ‘trying it on’ – they actually have forgotten the hurt, they can no longer feel the anger, they do think they are powerless, and do honestly believe that no one can help them.
And of course, there’s nothing more frustrating than being with someone who is in such a state – especially if you suspect or know that they are actually harbouring a grudge or resentment, and you suspect it may have something to do with you! You know that even if you express your anger and frustration, it will bounce back off the ‘prison’ walls, so you too swallow yours and walk away, either literally or emotionally, leaving the depressed person to sink even further into their hole. Eventually the only people with whom they may be able to communicate are those who also spend most of their lives in similar black holes, share their attraction to self-destructive habits and understand their fantasies of suicide. Interestingly enough, they may one day find themselves obsessively attracted to people who think as negatively as they do, but who, instead of turning their anger in, actually aggressively act it out – on them, of course! Therapists often talk in terms of one person ‘holding the anger’ for both people or indeed a group of people. (This is the stuff that unhealthy sadomasochistic relationships are made of, and it is also the food that scapegoats in a family or other group are given!)
But there is a way out of the depressive’s prison, if their anger can be acknowledged and they can be taught how to manage it more effectively. I agree with Dorothy Rowe, a leading expert in the field of depression, who maintains that the first step is to directly challenge the ‘Anger is Evil’ belief and expose its crazy irrationality.
If you have a tendency to get depressed, as you are progressing through this book, I would suggest that you could pay special attention to the exercises which will help you change your basic anger patterns, and also those designed to help you heal the backlog of hurts and give expression to your buried resentments (Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9).
ANGER CAN FUEL OBSESSIONS, PHOBIAS AND ADDICTIONS
Obsessions and phobias originate from situations when, for some reason or other, we feel we are either losing control of ourselves or the world around us. Psychologists refer to them as defence mechanisms. They seem to arise naturally in all cultures. On a large scale, we notice nations who feel under threat often revive old rituals and become more obsessive in their religious practices. At the level of the organization, we see more bureaucracy and obsession with corporate image and practice, as the people at the top have a sense of losing control.
On a smaller scale, we can observe young children becoming obsessive and phobic when they are learning to cope with the feelings aroused by the frustrations and insecurities of the outside world. For example, they may not be able to sleep without going through certain bedtime rituals; they can become obsessed with one story, toy, blanket, or piece of clothing, or develop ‘food fads’. One of my favourite books was the Winnie the Pooh poems. I was particularly taken by one about walking on the cracks of paving stones, and for many years would find myself doing this as I walked to school. Perhaps this obsessive behaviour saved many children and teachers from receiving the ‘bashing-up’ that I secretly fantasized about giving them.
Any parent who has had to cope with this kind of behaviour knows that the answer does not lie in confronting the ‘symptom’ – in fact, doing so, can often make matters worse. For example, You’re a big boy now, you don’t need Teddy’ just makes a child hold on tighter. The obsessive behaviour also becomes worse whenever the child feels hurt, threatened or anxious.
Fortunately, most parents do find (often through a process of trial and error!) that they can help the child let go of these obsessions and phobias by dealing with the feelings that underlie them. But, if these feelings happen to be anger, in either a family or national culture where this emotion is taboo, they will stand little chance of being fully aired. Consequently, a child may never learn how to manage this emotion and will grow up relying on obsessive or phobic rituals to feel some sense of control over his or her frustration and anger. So, when these children become adults and are, for example, unfairly criticized or let down, instead of expressing the forbidden emotion, they can be observed indulging in their compulsion to eat or work, shop, clean, tidy, wash, drink, smoke, seek isolation, find an open space, etc.
Unfortunately, people who live in close proximity to someone with obsessive or phobic tendencies are usually not much help. They tend to ‘live with’ their friend or spouse’s ‘peculiarities’ because they learn that to rock the boat means that they may get an outburst of frightening pent-up rage. In turn, they too hold on to their feelings and the relationship slides into superficial blandness.
I first noticed this phenomena when, many years ago, I started a self-help group for phobics. Everything seemed so suspiciously nice – the husbands and wives were so ‘wonderful’ and ‘understanding’ and even the children were so ‘good’ – but the relationships lacked passion and excitement. The groups became very cosy, pleasant venues for people to sit around and swap interesting developments in their symptoms intermingled with tale after tale of kindnesses that they had experienced. Eventually I experimented with more confrontative therapy which drew out all kinds of buried resentments about sick mothers, alcoholic fathers, abusive grandfathers, bullies at school, unjust discrimination, frightening traumas, etc. It was very rewarding to watch the growth of confidence, spontaneity and creativity in people as they learned to admit and safely express the buried feelings from the past and then begin to use their new skills to add some spice to their current relationships.