EMDR on anger, rage, pissed off

[BigLittle]

Hi,

Yesterday I did an online EMDR session on anger.

First question from my psychologist was: 'Where does your anger come from?'

My anger is almost always there. About the emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, physical abuse, relentless bullying on a daily basis for more than a decade, deranged narcissistic parents who were both doctors. Ex wife who brought out the worst in me. Other exes who cheated on me. So called best Friends who just tool advantage of me.

The ex from my current girlfriend who is a pedophile.

My father's Family who condoned his actions as pedophile, domestic abuse, attempted murders, beatings, cheatings, narcissistic mindgames and brainwashing, alcoholism, rage,...

My mother who put the blame on me for all failure in her life starting with my conception which was my father raping her, because she did not want a child. Being emotional and sexual abused by my mother from 3 to 14 years old. Alcoholism, shooting up morfine every day for 35 years, dozens of suicide attempts, making me her lover and partner instead of a child and son, keeping me locked in a golden cage for decades, brainwashing for decades, isolating me for decades, trying to crash the car with me in it in numerous occasions, keeping me sick, giving me meds that I did not need, teaching me at 7 years old how you inject morfine and this in her arm, destroying every relationship that was good for me, on the daily telling me that the was gonna kill herself, ..

And there is still more shit that is coming out of the fog in my mind that I had blocked and burried.

I am pissed off and will not be f*cked with again.

Does anybody have some tips or feedback how to deal with anger, rage, explosive reactions?


Thanks

 

[arfie]

rage has been one of my most pervasive symptoms. when i first started therapy, i cycled from irritation to rage faster than i could leap tall social injustices in a single bound. the cycle moved so fast that it took me a goodly while to realize that there were shades in between irritation and rage.

anger channels were my first step toward remediating this symptom. anger is a mind killer. until i was able to release some of the repressed anger, i lacked the intellectual capacity to see the phases and stages of the fear-to-rage cycle. demolition and shadow boxing were my most effective anger channels. on the demolition channel, i worked it as a double duty for community service by demolishing large appliances and pieces of furniture left to rot in those unofficial dump piles left by careless people. after the channeling calmed me enough for organized work, i then carried off a load of the eyesore.

 

[BigLittle]

rage has been one of my most pervasive symptoms. when i first started therapy, i cycled from irritation to rage faster than i could leap tall social injustices in a single bound. the cycle moved so fast that it took me a goodly while to realize that there were shades in between irritation and rage.

anger channels were my first step toward remediating this symptom. anger is a mind killer. until i was able to release some of the repressed anger, i lacked the intellectual capacity to see the phases and stages of the fear-to-rage cycle. demolition and shadow boxing were my most effective anger channels. on the demolition channel, i worked it as a double duty for community service by demolishing large appliances and pieces of furniture left to rot in those unofficial dump piles left by careless people. after the channeling calmed me enough for organized work, i then carried off a load of the eyesore.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Friday]

You might find this quite helpful

The Iceberg Of Emotions

Anger is an action, which is made up of many other emotions. When you understand the emotions that trigger anger, you can help yourself to control those smaller emotions, which in turn controls your anger. There is no miracle cure for anger control – only your self control and understanding of...

www.myptsd.com

 

[Freddyt]

In the same way EMDR helped bring these memories back to you - it can change how you feel about them. Been there done that with anger. It was everywhere trying to burst out.

I call it part of the "dark and twisted" part of me. As we went through all the rest of the trauma parts in therapy we finally came to where it needed to be dealt with. Been doing reprocessing since what October on that. Not surprised. There is a lot of it. And a lot of what I confused for anger is frustration. That has so many sources, frustration. Plus there is a lot of emotion attached to it.

With all that I have trusted my T to lead me along in therapy. There were times I thought we should be dealing with things but come to find out - my T understood the right time to tackle those things. And I appreciate it now. I wasn't ready to deal with that until last October, and the reprocessing work has been the longest and hardest outside the original trauma.

 

[Sideways]

Does anybody have some tips or feedback how to deal with anger, rage, explosive reactions?

You have a lot of things to be angry about. And they aren’t small things - they’re big and very personal injustices that have been committed against you.

For me? That approach validated my anger in a lot of ways. Which made it less intimidating. Actually, I had quite a celebration for myself when I went through my Angry phase of recovery. Because I was finally angry about it. It was worth being angry about. And probably most importantly, I was worth being angry for.

After the validation, there were probably 3 useful things that I did with my angry. First, I expressed it as best I could (primarily through journaling and art therapy) so that I could articulate it. Make it less a big messy emotion, and more something that was made up of a lot of detail. Big parts of my story were involved. And the thoughts that went along with it all, that had been trapped inside me in the mess of the anger emotion. I got them all out, and gave them language, structure, form. Something I could make sense of.

Second thing was the physicality of anger. Some emotions, like grief, are energy-draining, depression-fuelling greyness. Anger is like joy - there’s bucketloads of energy that went with it. And that was something that I needed to (quite literally) run out of myself. I was most fit during the anger phase of my recovery, because I was running every morning and hitting the gym for boxing sessions multiple times a week. I was pretty depressed mental health wise, but there was a lot of angry energy that I had to process physically (else I’d have directed it the people and things around me as aggression…which was more destructive than I was okay with).

Third? I used it as a motivator. And this is what I love most about anger. Sadness doesn’t inspire anything. Joy is okay, because it motivates me to keep doing things that have meaning to me.

Anger, though, is in a class all of its own when it comes to motivation. Because it’s so often fuelled by injustice. Something unjust happened to me, and it’s not okay. And what do I do about that? I made changes to my life, the people in it, where I directed my energy and passion, the boundaries I set for myself, the things that I decided to go out into the world and work to change. Anger motivates us to make changes, if for no other reason than “I won’t cop that shit again”.

Anger is still intimidating and uncomfortable. It’s not an emotion that I can usually afford to let just “wash over me” like some milder emotions - it requires attention and action to stop it becoming toxic. But I still try and celebrate it when it happens. Because of what I can do with it.

 

[BigLittle]

You might find this quite helpful

The Iceberg Of Emotions

Anger is an action, which is made up of many other emotions. When you understand the emotions that trigger anger, you can help yourself to control those smaller emotions, which in turn controls your anger. There is no miracle cure for anger control – only your self control and understanding of...

www.myptsd.com

Thank for this

In the same way EMDR helped bring these memories back to you - it can change how you feel about them. Been there done that with anger. It was everywhere trying to burst out.

I call it part of the "dark and twisted" part of me. As we went through all the rest of the trauma parts in therapy we finally came to where it needed to be dealt with. Been doing reprocessing since what October on that. Not surprised. There is a lot of it. And a lot of what I confused for anger is frustration. That has so many sources, frustration. Plus there is a lot of emotion attached to it.

With all that I have trusted my T to lead me along in therapy. There were times I thought we should be dealing with things but come to find out - my T understood the right time to tackle those things. And I appreciate it now. I wasn't ready to deal with that until last October, and the reprocessing work has been the longest and hardest outside the original trauma.

Thanks for this. I often feel like a kid when reprocessing or even learning basic coping skills, that I now am teaching to my girlfriend her 6 and 8 year old boys.

Big chunks of basic growing up skills are missing or were not taught to me as a kid, teenager, young adult and so on.


But... I am lucky that I that I can teach those things myself now from books, people, T, Google and others.

Cheers

You have a lot of things to be angry about. And they aren’t small things - they’re big and very personal injustices that have been committed against you.

For me? That approach validated my anger in a lot of ways. Which made it less intimidating. Actually, I had quite a celebration for myself when I went through my Angry phase of recovery. Because I was finally angry about it. It was worth being angry about. And probably most importantly, I was worth being angry for.

After the validation, there were probably 3 useful things that I did with my angry. First, I expressed it as best I could (primarily through journaling and art therapy) so that I could articulate it. Make it less a big messy emotion, and more something that was made up of a lot of detail. Big parts of my story were involved. And the thoughts that went along with it all, that had been trapped inside me in the mess of the anger emotion. I got them all out, and gave them language, structure, form. Something I could make sense of.

Second thing was the physicality of anger. Some emotions, like grief, are energy-draining, depression-fuelling greyness. Anger is like joy - there’s bucketloads of energy that went with it. And that was something that I needed to (quite literally) run out of myself. I was most fit during the anger phase of my recovery, because I was running every morning and hitting the gym for boxing sessions multiple times a week. I was pretty depressed mental health wise, but there was a lot of angry energy that I had to process physically (else I’d have directed it the people and things around me as aggression…which was more destructive than I was okay with).

Third? I used it as a motivator. And this is what I love most about anger. Sadness doesn’t inspire anything. Joy is okay, because it motivates me to keep doing things that have meaning to me.

Anger, though, is in a class all of its own when it comes to motivation. Because it’s so often fuelled by injustice. Something unjust happened to me, and it’s not okay. And what do I do about that? I made changes to my life, the people in it, where I directed my energy and passion, the boundaries I set for myself, the things that I decided to go out into the world and work to change. Anger motivates us to make changes, if for no other reason than “I won’t cop that shit again”.

Anger is still intimidating and uncomfortable. It’s not an emotion that I can usually afford to let just “wash over me” like some milder emotions - it requires attention and action to stop it becoming toxic. But I still try and celebrate it when it happens. Because of what I can do with it.

Thanks for this. Putting in the work seems to work even if it is energydraining and exhausting.

 

[Freddyt]

Big chunks of basic growing up skills are missing or were not taught to me as a kid, teenager, young adult and so on.

I am finding that because of my ptsd and the changes it made in my brain, some of that development never happened like it should have. It wasn't a matter of learning, it was a matter of not being able to learn those complex interactions. (It's one of those sources of frustration).

 

[BigLittle]

Yeah, still having issues with accepting that hence the rage