Dealing with anger/rage

Hi X,

Congratulations in making this fundamental connection. I am glad mine and Alice’s words helped you make this connection. This is a very important, because our anger/rage only starts to diminish when it is understood and felt in the context of our own childhood, otherwise it will remain in our bodies to be triggered again and again, endless by people that remind us of our childhood abusers keeping us unconsciously and compulsively reenacting our childhood drama and shackled to the chains of repetition compulsion.

The fantasies of revenge of the child you once were are very understandable, as a child you were a prisoner and could not escape your tormentors, so the child fantasied of killings his oppressors, so it could be free, but feelings and fantasies do not kill or harm anyone, only actions kill and harm others. I remember once as a teenage fantasying of killing my older sisters, so I could be free, because they were constantly in my way. Just like Alice’s said in her article What is Hatred?  : “As long as we are in such a state of dependency, or think we are, then hatred is the inevitable outcome. It is hardly conceivable that a person being tortured will not feel hatred for the torturer.”

Is completely understandable the child you once were felt the way it did, just witness his plight understand it and consciously feel the repressed justified anger of the child you once were directed at the people that deserves it, your childhood abusers, only it wants is for his plight to be seen as it really was and understood and his feelings felt, taken serious and validated, it will not harm anyone and will liberate you. 

I know the compulsion to misplace our pent up anger into scapegoats that remind us of our childhood abusers is very tempting, because society protects parents and does not permit the child's anger against them, making transference very hard to avoid and of course is never easy to handle, but we have to avoid this temptation and feel it in the context of our own childhood if we want to free ourselves. As children we could not escape our abusers, but the beauty of being a mature conscious and autonomous adult is that we can walk away from anyone that still an abuser and refuses to open his/her eyes to see.

As Alice said to me and sadly I witness it happening constantly on Facebook: “I have learned over the years of my work on the internet that there are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats. They thus live in a continual confusion pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them, and if the offended people begin to defend themselves they can become very mean. I can only urge you to trust your feelings and to NOT offer your empathy and interest to everybody just because they say they read and understood everything I have written. In most of the cases it is a lie. To understand my books means to overcome the fear of one’s parents, to honestly feel the justified rage TOWARD THEM and to no longer use others to getting free from the accumulated rage.”

Also in her book “Free from Lies” page 136, she says: “Once the client has achieved the ability to cope with old feelings and productive use of the “triggers,” there is no further need of the therapist’s presence.” Now that you made this connection and productively make use of your triggers you are on the way to freedom.

Wishing you much courage and strength,

Sylvie