The Iceberg Of Emotions
- Post starter anthony
- Start date
- Featured
- Status
Absolutely Anthony. Another way to put this is that anger is a "secondary" emotion as it is always dependent on and a response to a primary emotion.
Ferret Dancer.....calling anger an action is not saying that one is doing something in response to anger only that it is a response to an underlying emotion. One still can choose whether to take action or not when angry. The key is to understand what emotion made you angry in the first place. When you understand this it is much easier to see if you are over reacting or your anger is for a legitimate reason. This understanding can help a person decide what action would be most appropriate.
I don't know, maybe my response just confuses matters more....LOL!
No it doesn’t. I think you’ve got something there. The problem is though, when you can feel anger rising - that slow, hot, frustrated, sometimes painful, feeling in your gut - so many things can cause this reaction that sometimes it’s quite difficult to pin-point what actually did at any given time. I often leave a situation because I basically don’t know what the problem is. I just know that I need to get away and calm down. I’ve cut myself off from a lot of activities because of this reaction. Not sure that it is all about anger though.
- Post starter
- Admin
- #18
anthony
Founder
Anger is only the response, its all about what you begin to feel when you are reaching the point of having to get away and calm down. You have to look beyond anger, what are you doing at that time? Is that person giving a lecture and repeating themselves with a specific word, thus frustrating and annoying you? Is that person doing some act that is annoying you?
I discovered all these things when I looked deeper. Even watching a video the other day that goes with my counselling studies, the lecturer smacks his lips together every so often to make a noise, about every 10 or so seconds, and the microphone was highly sensitive that they recorded it with, and it drove me nuts. I had to identify the problem, as stated, review MY reaction to it, nothing to do with him, and then calm myself down to the actual severity of what this person was doing, then change my own brains response to accept that is the way he is.
I'm trying to understand this in terms of not dragging the last 20+ years of pain, frustration etc. into the current situation. As in knowing my current rage is not all from the current noise going on upstairs...or knowing the Rage some show to a spouse/friend etc. IS from the last 20 years and not from the current relatively minor event.
As I know this intelectualy and can look at the true internal emotion I find that in my case it doesn't change too much. Maybe it should change the degree of "rage" I'm dealing with. If the "current" situation is breaking every nerve I own, it is hard to consider what I am feeling as an over-reaction.
Is the point, then, that there is a "fix" to all the true internal emotions ; they have not been processed ? Or is the question, are all the true internal emotions from the past ? And which ones are in the past and which ones are right now.
I can see this clearly when sombody reacts badly to a minor situation with that spouse/friend, etc., when they are reacting out of many years of past pain, not just the current event.
I just can't seem to grasp it in my life.
As I know this intelectualy and can look at the true internal emotion I find that in my case it doesn't change too much. Maybe it should change the degree of "rage" I'm dealing with. If the "current" situation is breaking every nerve I own, it is hard to consider what I am feeling as an over-reaction.
Is the point, then, that there is a "fix" to all the true internal emotions ; they have not been processed ? Or is the question, are all the true internal emotions from the past ? And which ones are in the past and which ones are right now.
I can see this clearly when sombody reacts badly to a minor situation with that spouse/friend, etc., when they are reacting out of many years of past pain, not just the current event.
I just can't seem to grasp it in my life.
I have given this some thought and what I come up with, when reading it back, seems so trivial and yet it's effects are much more than I can express here.
It feels like anger, and it feels like a response to something that may be going on at that moment. On my own I move away from the situation - as in I have left a shopping trolley and walked out of the supermarket because someone is yelling at their child - and out with family I can usually see one or other of them give me a look, in a certain situation, that says stay cool.
I recognise when it's happening but I think I might make it worse by telling myself off for not being able to control it. The thing is I do control it but it's like "Take a deep breath! Take a deep breath!" It's involuntary and almost like someone is pulling strings.
I agree with you and mysihba, and realise that it's not just that situation in that moment that is the problem. I don't like the word conditioning but it's like an involuntary response to past conditioning - past events, childhood events that are perhaps tougher to rationalise.
I used to say that I wished I didn't have such a good memory and could easily forget the past but I've come to realise that it's not just what I remember that's causing the problem. There's information stored that I am not consciously aware of and therefore feel helpless when it comes to dealing with it all. And I hate feeling helpless.
Brontie, I hate feeling helpless. Lack of control is a huge problem for most of us, I think....a huge problem when living with PTSD. You are right on re "information stored...not aware of". IMHO that is where most of the big triggers/manifestatons come from...from the buried stuff. That is why they catch us off gaurd. That is why we must not keep anything buried....and do what it takes to "un-bury" it....no matter what it takes. EMDR in my experience was mind blowing, in it's ability to bring up things, that I didn't have a clue....were still there.
So it should be our choice to respond with anger or not....not an automatic response.....If there is a lesson here it is...do not allow yourself to get so far down that the only way you can react is out of animal instinct, PTSD at it's worst.....and "survival mode". Gee sounds easy....where did all the progress go...that I thought I made over years of working on this stuff ???????????
- Post starter
- Admin
- #24
anthony
Founder
Having to revisit the past is not always the solution, however; if the past is haunting the present, then you must revisit it emotionally in order to deal with what is undealt.
Saying that... there is also a line of confusion with habit vs. past affecting the present. Identify which it is, is the trick. How much is something from the past still playing in your mind vs. how much is habit that you don't know how to break?
Think about this question by looking at both PTSD cup models, depending which one fits you, as in, I have not looked if ex-military or not, so both can be reviewed:
[DLMURL]http://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/the-ptsd-cup-explanation.13737/[/DLMURL]
[DLMURL]http://combat.ptsdforum.org/threads/combat-ptsd-cup.170/[/DLMURL]
So... what is in your cup already, ie. just PTSD or combat training + PTSD?
You can see how the later leaves even less room for daily stressors, then if you add habit to this, how much of your current reaction is based on habit?
- Status
