Overwhelmed and Angry

[weary]

Subject says it all. I am exhausted and feeling very detached and out of it. I need a break. I need a rest. The depression has given way to a lot of anger and frustration lately. I have experienced intense anger several times in the past week. Sometimes at myself, sometimes in response to something that my wife did. I have simmering, latent frustration against my wife, my father, my employer, and myself. I am so fucking exhausted right now I can barely think. My home life is a fucking emotional rollercoaster every day. It's like every 2.5 days there is some kind of explosion/meltdown with relative calm and even sometimes normal and hopeful periods in between, but unfortunately it is not predictable enough to plan for, so I am always on alert.

I talked to my therapist about anger the other day. Basically, I hate anger. I am not good at feeling it, even worse at expressing it, and I hate it when other people are angry. I wasn't allowed to be angry growing up. Even now, I never feel justified being angry, and when someone else is angry (even if they're not directing it at me) - I feel scared, anxious, guilty, and two inches tall. I think I have a hard time with anger because it seems to me like a selfish emotion - I am making my thoughts, my feelings, my wishes the most important thing in the world at that moment if I am angry, and I don't feel entitled to that. My therapist thinks that my depression is because of all of the accumulated anger that I have either stuffed down or just tried to will away or have just been too damned afraid to express. When I express anger to my wife, it ends up in a fight and I always end up losing or at least emotionally beaten down worse than I was to begin with. And I hate, hate, hate making her angry. Or when she is angry at all (which is often).

So all of you out there, how do you deal with anger? When is it "OK"(i.e. acceptable, justifiable) to be angry? What is an acceptable way to express it? What's the point of getting angry at someone? What does it accomplish other than making the other person upset as well and maybe starting a fight that you will lose? How long is too long to stay angry? How do you get over something that hurts and let it go without just denying that it hurt you and avoiding the feeling entirely? I hurt about a lot of things, and I don't know what to do with them.

[manuel_moe_g]

I suck at anger. My anger turns instantly into rage and fury. So I try to stuff it down lest it get out of control. I will leave situations, or say things to shut down situations, or just escalate situations so the other person has to leave. I lot of times I just want to be left alone.

[weary]

Manuel_moe, that's what I have historically done (shut down and avoid) and it has screwed me. Because the anger doesn't go away when I do that. It just simmers. And avoiding dealing with the anger and the situations that cause me anger means that the situations never get addressed/resolved and the anger just builds.

Sometimes I really do want to be alone like you said, but sometimes I feel like I need to express that anger to someone (usually my wife), but I don't know how to do so in a way that doesn't make the situation worse.

And I feel like it's never OK or acceptable to be angry. And that really sucks and makes me sad. I hate being angry. I hate when my wife is angry. I hate feeling let down, disappointed, disrespected, taken for granted, cheated or ripped off. I hate feeling like what I want and need isn't important enough for anyone else.

I also fear loss of control, but when I suppress my anger in a fight I often end up just turning it inward and completely losing control crying and sobbing instead of getting angry and yelling. One form of loss of control traded in for another, I guess. When I give up my anger I feel like that makes me weak and defeated and pathetic because my feelings really don't matter anymore.

[irrationalpersist]

Hi Weary,

I feel your exhaustion and your frustration. My husband and I went through a really bad patch for about 5 years. We could not communicate our needs and whenever we tried to address them things quickly escalated into an ugly scene.

I wanted to let you know that things can improve. It takes hard work, and a deep commitment to change, but it can get better. It does mean we have to leave behind the patterns of family relationships that we grew up in. It also means we have to be willing to let our vulnerability show.

One thing that helped me and my husband get to a new place was realizing we were a very efficient mutually reciprocal triggering machine. I would trigger him. His being triggered would trigger me. It didn't take very many rounds of that and we were both in extreme states of distress, often exhibited as rage on his part and panicked tears on mine. When we realized we were not going to learn anything new from each other if we were triggered, we agreed that when either of us was triggered we could put a bookmark in the conversation to take care of our emotional state. We didn't expect each other to assuage our emotions, we knew we had to look to our support network for that help, including a power greater than ourselves. Once we were calm we could try again to talk about the difficult situation. If we got triggered again, the difficult situation had to be put on hold until we were ready to proceed.

Instead of prioritizing resolving the difficult situation, we prioritized taking care of ourselves when facing emotionally difficult situations. In time, the difficulty was resolved and we were both able to feel our dignity and self-respect had been preserved. The collateral benefit of this approach was that we were actually able to hear each other instead of insisting that our partner MUST listen to us. That led to more empathy in the relationship and empathy de-escalates tension. Empathy always seemed to lead us to realizing we both wanted the same things and we just needed to know we were working together.

Do what you need to do to recover your own good humour. Trust the process and release the hounds to run in the woods. Feelings pass and you will feel better for letting them go.

[weary]

Irrationalpersist, thanks for your post. There is so much in what you wrote that rings true. We are also a mutually reciprocal triggering machine. I think of it almost as a game of ping pong. One feeling causes a reaction, which causes a reaction, and it quickly escalates out of control. In our case, generally her negative feelings (anger, sadness, anxiety, shame) get projected more loudly and I instead generally shut down (just to protect myself from the onslaught, and try to grit my teeth and ride it out until it's over) until I am pushed to a breaking point that is more often breaking down in sadness rather than anger. But the anger and frustration is there. And as a result I feel like her feelings get out there with a frequency and intensity that takes up all of the time and space and my feelings never get properly aired, acknowledged, validated. But when I try it ends up with more pain for both of us.

I'm really interested in more details about how you made changes. I understand the learning to recognize the emotional dysregulation and calling a time out before things escalate beyond the point of no return. A problem for me is how that seems to contradict the need that I have to stop avoiding and addressing some of these problems that make me so angry and upset. It still comes back to how do we learn to talk about difficult and painful situations and emotions without hurting ourselves and each other worse. And so many things are things that I can't work on by myself because they are things that she does or doesn't do, or things I need from her that I can't get, or things she needs from me that I can't give. We have both been in therapy for years and while a few things have gotten better, our marriage is still really broken and I don't always even think we could even agree on the things that are broken about it.

Also, neither of us has much of a support network. That is a big problem.

[irrationalpersist]

I'm glad my experience can help. Both my husband and I were in recovery support groups when we met. We knew that our marriage would not survive if left to the two of us to manage so we put a safeguard in our wedding vows. We vowed to get the support we needed to be healthy for the marriage. That has been a marriage saver.

Both my husband and I have PTSD as well as co-dependance issues, and we are both in recovery for alcohol and drug abuse. We both have a tendency to turn ourselves into 'victims of circumstance' and look to each other to be rescued from those circumstances. As survivors of childhood neglect, emotional enmeshment, and traumatized family systems, we did not develop appropriate coping and comfort skills suitable for sustaining long term, intimate adult relationships. We both have a tendency to turn our gaze on our partner to fill the perpetual void of unmet childhood needs for connection, comfort, and validation. When that effort fails, because it is an impossible demand to place on the marriage and our marriage partner, we would both devolve into our own forms of panic - mine was to shut down, curl up in pain, and eventually lash out in a tumultuous rage demanding we end the marriage. His was to get louder and louder, more aggressive and demanding, and then storm out in frustration.

The difference between shutting down and calling a time out is that shutting down is a coping behaviour that does not address the problem that needs to be discussed, nor does it acknowledge the emotional condition that is triggering the need to shut down. No problem solving takes place and the initial problem does not get aired, discussed, and resolved. Also, the problem of overwhelming emotional intensity is not addressed, which means the same conditions can quickly re-establish. When we are shut down we are not learning, we are simply rehearsing old patterns that we used as children to survive.

Calling a time out acknowledges there is a problem and that the problem will not be ignored. It also acknowledges that the intensity of the emotional condition at the moment is unacceptable and that further communication must be suspended until cooler heads prevail. Calling a time out exercises high functioning self-care in a moment when we would typically engage in self-destructive behaviours to try to protect ourselves. It also opens up the possibility for authentic communication and connection, to becoming vulnerable and honest with our loved one. That can feel very uncomfortable for those of us who have been psychologically and emotionally scarred in our primary bonded relationships (with parents, siblings, friends).

There is a special kind of discomfort that comes with self-care. The discomfort of doing something different, of being in an unfamiliar situation. The discomfort of being out of control of the outcome - no one is going to storm off or curl up in a ball. The discomfort of feeling close instead of habitually keeping loved ones at arms length.

This is the hard work of marriage, it forces us to grow in ways that we would not otherwise attempt. It is worth it because we all seek that feeling of connection, of comfort, of being known by our loved ones. In that security we can finally let down our guard and rest.

[weary]

irrationalpersist, I wish I could do the things that you describe. I think things are too far gone. Not just the moods and the intensity and the scripts... The day to day functioning. I can't meet her needs because they are unreasonable and I don't think she is capable of meeting mine even if I was better at articulating them. It shouldn't be up to me to make her accountable for taking care of herself or acting like a responsible adult... But I am the only one in a position to create consequences for her behavior and I have to suffer because of it.

[irrationalpersist]

Sometimes I feel trapped and all I want to do is strap on a backpack and head for the hills. I don't need anyone or anything.