Rage: My Intern's Notes
Montage by Victor Bloomberg, December 27, 2016
Preface: Half-Truths Aren’t Good
Remembering puts the shattered pieces of our selves back together again (re-member-ing); it is a quest for wholeness. At its best, it allows us to be changed and transmuted by grief and loss. But re-traumatization is about freezing us in a shattered state; it's a regime of ritualized reenactments designed to keep the losses as fresh and painful as possible. Our education did not probe the parts of ourselves that might be capable of inflicting great harm on others, and figure out how to resist them. (Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein, 2023, pp. 297-8)
Introduction
Almost a decade ago, an intern gave me their notes to help me write a book. Instead I earned my doctorate and redesigned my website for blogs and podcasts. Now was the right time to read their notes. I saw many themes that I continue to use as a supervisor, clinician and writer. I was curious, did the intern from yesteryear make notes about rage? Yes, and often. Here is what I found in their notes along with my current understanding.
Rage is Not Frustration or Anger
"That annoyed me a little." Clients often say something like that. I listen to the story and think: “Annoyed” is frustration or it’s sugar-coating for anger. It's time to make sure we share the language. Let's define frustration, anger and rage.
Frustration is a blockage from achieving something, but there is hope that a workaround is possible. For example, I'm driving to an appointment and the freeway slows down to a crawl. My workaround is get to surface streets and let them know I'll be late. If there's a pattern, the time and route might be changed.
Anger is a response to prolonged frustration and it first appears during infancy, if all goes well. In the earliest time after a baby is born, the mothering person pays attention every waking minute, day after day until they are certain that the little-one can be ignored a bit. Baby has not agreed to being ignored for even a moment. When denied food, cleaning, playing and so on, Baby begins to get agitated and can escalate to a tantrum to get what is being denied, withheld. When Baby is overwhelmed by too much (food, play, boredom, etc.), Baby becomes agitated to push it away. The behavior, agitation (to push away whatever is too much and to demand satisfaction of unmet wants/needs) is called “Anger”. Anger expresses hope, because we learn that it can work.
What relieves anger? (Set aside "anger management" which is a way to protect oneself and others from all sorts of injury.) Anger expresses denial of wants/needs and resistance to domination/control. Anger subsides when needs/wants are satisfied and autonomy (relief from domination) is regained. The waves of labor union strikes that have successfully gained better contracts (United Auto Workers, Screen Actors Guild, and others) illustrate how satisfaction and autonomy are closely connected. The solution to the workers' anger required steadfastness, insistence on recognition: We are not your beasts of burden and we are not commodities to be bought, sold, traded or trashed. We are not cogwheels in your machine, we are human beings.
What happens if the recognition never comes, satisfaction of our humanity is hopelessly denied, domination and control is inescapable? One response to inescapable, hopeless denial of our humanity is rage.
Rage: Destroy the Bad Thing
The intern wrote in their notes from supervision with me, "Rage need not be dramatic. Rage lacks empathy for anyone touched by destructiveness. Feel my pain, there is no [other] goal or hope [other than] domination and degradation." There is a pandemic of defining people as Things and the domination/degradation that flows from that; and there are daily reports of rage that flows from dehumanization.
Can a person turn themselves into a Thing and then rage? Can a person switch back-and-forth between Humanness and Thingness so that anger (that contains hope) becomes rage (that annihilates)?
The intern wrote, "Pain is intolerable until it is converted into power. Power can be guided by hate or by love." Let's say that hate can flow whenever a person is seen as a Thing and love flows from seeing another as a Human. Thingness is the setup for rage. How do we tell that Thingness is going on? The intern's notes contain quotes from clients struggling with Thingness:
"I do not need to listen, nothing you do or say matters to what I decide."
"My family kept telling me I'm nothing but a piece of crap."
"I'm sick and twisted, I want to create misery and destruction."
“You do what they want, but you go off the rails because that’s what you are, off-the-rails.”
“I’m alone and it’s not safe to be in my body, something creepy touches my body at night in the dark.”
“Dad beat Mom, she became a Zombie, my brother was a Werewolf who hit and bit, I don’t belong, people don’t see me, I’m a Vampire with no reflection.”
“At home they saw me, they got me, but school said I’m stupid and ugly, kids were mean to me, I’m the one who got suspended and then they put me in special ed.”
All of the clients used so much alcohol and other drugs for so long that they were severely damaged. Each time that they slipped into hopelessness, they did not care who they hurt, who they terrified, what they destroyed. In the aftermath, in the wreckage, some wanted help and others were there by Court orders.
Empathy Is Required to Dissolve Rage: Shared Humanity Quiets Thingness
The intern, in the last notebook from our work together (2016) described the method to instill empathy:
“Through consistent expression of unconditional love in session, past trauma (that drives dysfunction including addiction) is expressed in a way that permits reflection. Without reflection, the re-telling is Looping, the client is on the merry-go-round. The therapist facilitates the release of tension that is rooted in terror and rage. Thus the client no longer has to turn off the feelings from past trauma or current upsets. Once the client relaxes after a release, the client can use strengths including relationships. We call it surfing: activate tension, release, relax and reflect. The result can be seen: Looping occurs less often, doesn’t last as long and it’s not as intense.”
Update 2023
The pandemic was terrifying, as is climate catastrophe, wars, resurgent fascism and on and on. Terror and trauma, whether close up and personal or far away like thunder and lightning in the distance, activate the past experiences of being turned into a Thing, turning others into Things, feeling helpless and fearing hopelessness. Destruction and degradation is ongoing and for that reason healing and empowerment must be perpetual. This is the outline of lifelong power guided by love, hope through action.
Self-care (Self-Empathy)
Friendships and Allies
Community (Geographic and Digital)
Collective Action
Telling the Story to Transform Helplessness into Empowerment
