477
by Bisbee
In these past weeks, I've been dealing with a lot of rage. I have a lot of experience with this after recovering from PTSD many years ago (after a rather serious motorcycle accident where my friend was killed in front of my eyes by a L-turn driver while I survived). But years of working with a trusted psychologist gave me tools to manage strong emotions and the intensity subsided over time. It's interesting to observe such strong emotions rushing back now at this time, completely outside of my control, and not due to any particular event or memory that haunts my dreams.
At least I have an understanding of what is going on inside this time. And I suspect the process works the same for other people as well. I wish to share some of my experiences and what I've learned about myself.
My anger is a sort of petty shortness of temper these days. I've studied it. Observed my inner processes like a lab rat. I feel a stab of anger easily when people "stand in my way" from accomplishing what I set out to do. And if that person is a man that is physically larger than me, I puff up and verbally spar as if readying myself to throw punches. I don't expect to win, possibly expecting to lose the fight. It feels like another form of punching tree trunks or 2x4's that I did alot of during PTSD just to feel physical pain on the surface of my fists rather than having emotional pain locked up inside where I can't claw at it. It shows me how messed up I actually am. In the past I had the ability to see that when someone says something stupid or otherwise act nonsensical, a more balanced individual me can understand that person forced to work in public during a lock-down order is themselves under a great deal of stress and may not be acting right. Now I am willing to join them in a macabre ritual of inflicting pain.
At any rate, I've discovered through walking my process through PTSD that many American men have been culturally taught to turn emotions of sadness, fear or anxiety into anger or rage. (Did any of you also read Hulk comics growing up, or are now paying attention to what John Wick teaches our sons and nephews?) Put it simply, fear is seen as incredibly emasculating for us men. We are not allowed to express our fears or even sadness as easily as women; not given cultural license to do so therefore most of us don't give ourselves that pass to simply feel the emotion. Instead, we turn the "weak" emotions into rage and experience that rush of power. Anger is energizing and provides the illusion of agency. Rage is interpreted as potency even if it is often (self) destructive in the end. From a feelings of impotency to that of power. That is the underlying dynamic of what happens in PTSD. We are emotionally traumatized and naturally experience fear. Instead, we turn the "weak" emotion into anger, express it as "powerful" rage.
Yet the opposite often happens to both men and women. Fear and anxiety is not processed and not actively transmuted into anger. Instead the emotion it just stays within the systems and builds up over time in a sort of positive-feedback loop. Unconsciously a willful decision not to feel fear leads to an overabundance of something left undone. Like most procrastination, it leads to depression.
In this case the answer seems to be a direct engagement with our emotional selves. How that happens, how we access and process our emotions differs for the individual. often it isn't an active process but merely a decision to stop turning away from it. We know when emotion is being processed and when it is not. For fear, it is particularly difficult but also very obvious in men when we are in touch with strong emotions laden with cultural baggage.
And often it comes out of physical activity. Men often more easily accessed their emotional bodies through their physical bodies; much more than through their minds or verbal communication. Physical exertion can often tax our energies past our minds ability to block out emotions. When that happens a floodgate breaks so to speak and we experience a huge wave of mixed emotions that might be frightening but often leaves us feeling better, more cathartic.
I have also felt unexpected emotions through stories, movies, music or poetry which touches a tender are of our psyche. Allowing that sudden stab of emotion to widen and breach our normal cultural defenses is actually an acquired skill. Too often we automatically clamp down on emotions due to fears of cultural impropriety. This is true for both men and women.
In all cases, the willingness to engage strong emotions of anxiety, fear, anger or rage is healthier than shutting it down and making ourselves feel hopeless and depressed. Better still is to experience fear and anxiety in its raw form rather than turn it into rage for cultural reasons. Dealing with rage, as I've been feeling, just takes longer in understanding it is now a two-step process rather than just feeling fear.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi