Dealing with Your Anger

« Grief and It’s Impact on Relationship Selection | Home | Is This “Normal”? »

By Lisa E. Scott | January 15, 2010

by Kathy Krajco

If you are still smarting from narcissistic abuse, try something the next time your anger rises.

Go somewhere apart, where you can be alone. Then just sit down and admit to yourself, “Boy! am I angry!” Let yourself feel it.

I guarantee that you will feel great relief. Even comfort. Yes, you deserve your own sympathy even more than you deserve the sympathy of anybody else.

Why do you feel this immediate relief and comfort? Because you just took the lid off a pressure cooker. You stopped trying to repress your anger. You stopped trying to deny it. You stopped trying to unfeel it = distance yourself from it.

You stopped viewing it as a flaw. You know it’s justified. And you know that you must temper its influence on your conduct.

It hurts. It’s psychological pain. A very unpleasant state of mind, perhaps the most unpleasant this side of fright.

And, like any pain, it WILL pass. But you can’t wish it away. All you can do is delude yourself by repressing it. That’s not dealing with it. Anger is like grief: you can deal with it now, or you can deal with it later, but sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with it.

This is why “venting” sometimes helps the victims of narcissists. In venting to others they are owning their feelings. I don’t think that’s as helpful though as just going off by yourself and venting to yourself alone. Why? Because you’re more honest when not performing for others. You’ll own your vulnerability and do more weeping than fuming.

Venting to others is like releasing the valve on a pressure cooker, whereas venting to yourself is like taking the whole lid off.

We don’t blame those sick in the flesh for their pain, so we shouldn’t blame those sick at heart for it, either. They are responsible only for their conduct, not their feelings. If somebody hits you with a club, whether physical or psychological, THEY are the one responsible for your pain.

The pain, in all its manifestations — not just of anger, but of grief, sorrow, and shame as well — is a huge burden, and it is unfair for you to have to bear it, because the narcissist is the one responsible for it. You are carrying his cross, paying for his sins.

That’s not forgiveness of his debt: that’s extortion.

Now, think what it means then for everybody else to dump also the BLAME for your painful feelings on you. That heaps insult upon injury to outrage. That’s the unbearable part. That’s what cannot be tolerated.

http://narc-attack.blogspot.com