One of the strongest and potentially most destructive feelings a trauma survivor can experience (apart from chronic shame) is helpless anger. It triggers the deep sense of powerlessness that we experienced during trauma time and combines it with the uproar of energy found in anger. We often can’t handle the energy and turn it against ourselves in an act of auto-aggression. To manage helpless anger without self-harm or eg entering a binge/purge cycle we need to take 3 big steps.
Step 1: Orientation and Grounding
We need to create distance to the situation that caused the helpless anger.
Look around and become aware of your surroundings.
While you might hold a letter with bad news in your hand, there is no actual danger in this room. Become aware of the day and time and at least 5 things you can see around yourself.
Use the grounding exercises that work best for you.
Right here and right now there is no reason to despair.
You got triggered. But today is not TraumaTime anymore and your expectation of harm is not happening.
The situation sucks. But it is not the same situation as the threats in your past.
The more mindful you are, the easier you will be able to ground yourself again.
More about getting out of hyperarousal
Step 2: Overcoming the helplessness
We need to divide the helpless anger into helplessness and anger and deal with them separately. Face the helplessness first, otherwise you won’t be able to reach the anger underneath.
Helplessness can be solved by finding choices.
Look at the situation and find choices and options to act, no matter how small.
Can you
- try something else?
- Talk to someone else?
- Ask someone for help?
- Take legal steps?
- Set a boundary?
- Clarify things?
- Block someone?
- Confront something?
- Negotiate?
- Choose a different way?
Breathe and find new options. The moment you have found a choice, the helplessness will go down.
More about overcoming helplessness
Step 3: Managing the anger
Anger is complex. It is full of energy, often related to other people in some way and it doesn’t just go away because we hit or destroyed something. Those are not just unhealthy (and expensive) ways to cope, they don’t even work that well. Here are some better alternatives:
- Sports: any kind of movement will do, but it helps if you choose something that needs your attention to be with your body. We personally prefer kickboxing. Hitting is not proper anger management. Any kind of martial arts has a high focus on self-control, not on wildly hitting something and hurting yourself. The key is to release the energy while focussing on self-control.
- The angry letter: it should be addressed to the object of your anger and there are no rules about vocabulary. The more your wording fits your thoughts and feelings, the more honest you are, the better it will work. Angry letters are not meant to be sent and really shouldn’t. They are just a tool. You give room to your thoughts and feelings toward a person or institution, but you contain it on a piece of paper. That way it is less likely to flood you while you express yourself. It can be helpful to review letters with your T and work them into something you can use in a real letter or conversation.
- Talking to someone: Rant. We try not to do it publicly or on social media but in contact with close friends. The anger needs to get out, it should not be quenched, so they should not try to calm you down or offer a solution for the problem (you found your solution in step 2). The presence of a trusted other will give you the benefits of relational regulation. It can also further reduce feelings of helplessness. You are not alone.
- Using the anger: this will only work if you have overcome the helplessness and you are able to contain the anger and not explode in rage. Then you can use the energy you gain from your anger to push through the situation, make things happen, enforce your boundary, defend yourself strongly and generally don’t let anyone mess with you. More
- Humor: for some it is helpful to turn toward dark or silly humor. It creates distance and a position of power over the situation. It also dissolves the sense of doom. I know it is hard, but try to avoid sarcasm. That is actually a form of clinging to the anger in a highly emotional way and sometimes hurtful for yourself and people around you. Don’t allow anger to make you bitter or hateful.
- Relaxation: maybe you want to use a breathing exercise like breathing out anger and breathing in peace. That can also be connected to colors, like breathing out red rage and breathing in cool blue, filling the tense places with calm. You could also focus on a positive image that helps you to relax or use PMR.
- Go for a walk: the idea is to change your location for a while. It will create some distance from the person or the piece of paper that triggered you. It also buys you time to calm down and look at things from a different perspective. Walking outside can help you to reframe your bad news. Look at the world out there, it is so big and beautiful and your problem is very small compared to all that. There is so much more than this problem in this world. Look up into the sky, it adds a whole new dimension.
- When you have done all that can be done, don’t dwell on your anger. If you return to it with your thoughts over and over again you just keep it alive a lot longer than necessary. Let it go. If you are religious, maybe you want to forgive.
Like everything, managing helpless anger will need practice. Make sure to stick to the right order of the steps. It doesn’t work if you get it mixed up.
More about being triggered and what to do about it
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