An Accurate Measure of Mental Health ISN'T Lack of Anger

An Accurate Measure of Mental Health ISN'T Lack of Anger

"Feelings are not good or bad in a moral sense. They just are. It is what we do with them that enters the moral sphere. We are accountable for our behaviors. What I have noticed after having lived this long is how often people are ready to instantly condemn you if you feel angry. Anger is one of those emotions considered to be always wrong in many people's estimation. They don't say this outright, but it comes out in how they address you and your anger. You need to get past it. You need to forgive. You need to forget about it. Move on. Etcetera ad nauseum. Never mind that your anger is an appropriate reaction to a gross injustice. Get over it. Why? Because they are uncomfortable with it? How narcissistic of them.

I've talked before about emotions vs. behaviors and how, no matter what our emotions are, we must behave in a moral way. Being angry is not justification for doing wrong by someone else. I am trying to get to something else so I won't go into more detail on this aspect.

What I want to get to is how do you know if you are in a healthy place in your head? How do you know, for yourself, that you are not letting your anger ruin your life? 

You have the psychobabblers and do-gooder Christian types clucking their tongues if you happen to show a flash of anger when talking about the narcissist. They immediately assume that you are not progressed yet to a place of 'healing' if, when talking about the evil narcissist and her evil acts perpetrated on your own life (which likely has ongoing effects on your life and is therefore a crime in progress), you dare display your outrage. People are afraid of our anger. Why? One reason is because they are sloppy thinkers. They think that our anger is the problem when the real problem is the monster who inflicts pain every chance they get. Our anger is an appropriate response to their inappropriate behavior. If the tongue-cluckers insist we should not let ourselves feel an appropriate emotion then they are, in reality, insisting we become like the narcissist--pretending our way through life and denying what we feel. I'm not going there for anyone."

The blogger above is right about anger. Denying our feelings is no path to mental health. I know one thing that she talks about which I struggle with is acceptance. In my mind there is a picture of what my family should have been, and of course my adoption possibilities play into this, where I think why didn't I get one ally or person like me. The other day I told my husband, "None of them were like me, how did I get stuck with this bunch!?" The fantasy of them ever saying "We are sorry" or treating me like a human being must be laid to rest. Anger is a natural emotion in response to abuse. There is nothing "wrong" with righteous anger. It is what you do with it that counts.

She is right the people who tell us we are wrong to feel angry are telling us to become like the narcissists and what the narcissists themselves demanded. Perfect smiles, no rocking the boat and giving positive narcissistic supply. 

You are Entitled to Your Feelings

Narcs shame others over having feelings because they have none. We all are entitled to our feelings. Of course what we do with them is what is important but most of us ACONs spent lifetimes being told that what we "felt was wrong".  Within my wicked family to even have feelings of nostalgia, missing anyone, or any other emotion that someone with a conscience was against their rules.

When this is replicated online by those who say they are representing ACONs or  tell us they are one themselves that makes no sense. Someone cannot represent the ACON community in any positive fashion and condemn people for natural emotions that are going to arise out of severe abuse. One thing I'd like to say to those who condemn ACONs for "not getting over it", is for most of us, our abuse did not end the day we turned 18 but expanded long into adulthood until the day we shut the door firm in the face of our abusers and walked away in no contact.

Some of us have lost our health and even livelihoods because of what narcs did to us. I have learned that anyone who tells me what to feel or condemns me for my emotions is not a positive person to be around. In fact when therapists deal with clients one of the first things they teach you when you are new to therapy is that your feelings are valid, and YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO FEEL THEM.

I dare say that there are personality disorders where the feelings have been so sublimated, is that they are no longer felt and they demand this of other people.  They want everyone else to shove the prodding conscience and feelings in the closet too until they are dead. The narcissists definitely don't want any messy emotions cluttering up their space as they connive and scheme. Narcissists have shut off a whole spectrum of them and demand it of everyone else.  Everyone who was a crying child around a narc parent knows what it was like to be smacked and told, "I'll give you something to cry about!". That happened to me hundreds of times. They failed to form me into the conforming and manipulated stoic they desired.  If my parents couldn't break me, well as I told friends, that Stasi would fail to. What is rat in a cage in the face, [thinking of Orwell here]when your body has done so many worse things to you?

We live in a narcissistic world that is growing colder and colder and part of that is telling people "emotions are wrong". I see this even with the positive ones, where one is supposed to freeze too heavy feelings of love or joy. One thing I took a look at myself was I was afraid to feel happy because it got ripped away whenever I did smile or laugh by my parents. Now I am better to express those feelings but it gave me a bigger picture. Others tell you that everything is supposed to be reacted to with Hunger Games stoicism. One rule among narcs I have noticed is never show any emotion, anger or otherwise.

 Take a look at books from the Victorian past even and notice how friends and others express love for one another and how even in mourning, they openly expressed their grief. Today everyone is supposed to be a dead-eyed drone and mindless consumer for the corporations and the powers that be. Smile serfs! They already tell us what to think in the media and now they tell us what to feel. The "change agents" and disciples of the "chosen" intelligentsia are busy doing just that. Some may consider me too conspiracy minded but there is a reason certain people with the smell of brimstone around them who got elected as the "popular" spokespeople for narcissism. There is a difference between being DIRECTED and having honest discourse among blogs. I have noticed elsewhere the "change agents" of narcissism, directing more dead emotions in the face of evil. They seek to shame ACONs instead of trying to understand that negative emotions in most human beings don't come out of a vacuum. 

One lie told out in the world is that it is WRONG to ever be angry. Anger itself is not always a sin. Anger can instigate sin, but it is not always itself wrong.

Ephesians 4:26 - Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

Anger has a God-given reason to exist from defending the innocent, to defending our boundaries and for standing up against evil. Milquetoast panty waist preachers will preach "Never be angry" and "Never judge" but this is one reason evil is allowed to run rampant in this world, because the "good people" with working consciences have been told to quell any protest or speaking out. Excuses are made for the wicked. I do not trust people who say "Never be angry!". In my experience most have been stood against justice and have sought to silence whistle-blowers in this world. They want you feeling guilty for your emotions, so you shut down and shut up. I believe God mandates certain behavior on my part, in not seeking revenge, and in trying to live a decent life, but is anger itself a sin? Anger in cases of severe abuse can keep you alive. It can keep you from being broken. The "Never be Angry" crowd, just don't get it. They would tell a rape victim, shut up and stop trying to punch your rapist in the face. I am not a pacifist. 

One thing I am kind of a different Christian, maybe like an "outsider artist", an "outsider Christian", the white picket-fence people who look and act so proper while some are decent people who had good lives, others are just with the appearance of righteousness.  Sugar-candy Christians are the ones who tell people "Don't rock the boat, "Ignore the fact Rev Perv is hanging out all hours with a 16 year old!" and "Hug the Vampire!" [a la Smakintosh's video I mentioned in another article]

I don't go with the "be nice"-"sugar-coaters" who barely believe Satan exists anymore. One reason sex abuse, and spiritual abuse is so rife in so many of the churches, is because the "good" people are told to forgive the "refusing to repent" reprobates and shut down all feelings of outrage. I left the Catholic church in 2002, when I was born again. I would have left alone finding out what a pedophile factory that place became and how the orders from the top were to protect the child-abusers. Of course sex abuse and other abuses are in every religion and denomination, but I have thought about for years why do so many stand silently by when so much evil is afoot? Most are shamed and told they are "too angry," "too bitter". This has been said to every activist in every cause in the world and that includes those who stand against fat discrimination. The message are "Get with the status quo!", "You are too angry!", "You can't forgive!", "You are bitter".

I remember telling one woman, in the Catholic church I left, "I am so disgusted!" She got upset and told me sex abusers need love too and the pedophile protecting bishops knew best.  Here is a place where people don't even understand how evil works and how bending down before and offering pearls before swine allows you be rend and how they want people to shut down emotions in their service.

If you are an ACON remember one thing about your family? How you were UTTERLY IGNORED unless they were busy beating you or cuffing you on the ear or doing a put down session? Your feelings didn't matter during the times they weren't telling you to shut up.

 I was thinking about something the other day, how mine simply did not care how I felt and told me I had no right to my emotions and today I say I do. The me of today will feel what I feel and own it. No one else has the right to tell me what to feel. No one else can read my mind or know what I have been through or not. Raise your hand if you have several chronic disease that have almost ended your life several times via medical neglect and abuse. No? Who are you to judge me then?

I have my good days where I am focusing on the myriads of life--comics, nature and time with husband and friends, but then bad moments still can come. I cried the other day, thinking my mother still gets to spend time with siblings who love her, while mine do not. Mother's Day obviously puts us all on edge. I spent years being told I was not allowed to have feelings, and to be frank if someone feels anger or bitterness, I hope they can deal with it in the proper fashion but for someone to tell someone who has been severely abused they don't have the right to their own emotions is completely and utterly wrong. They are not coming from a place of love or compassion but one of false judgment and "emotion control".  They are joining the chorus of narcissists and abusers who told us to hide our tears and squelch our anger and take the abuse.

Well forget that.......

Emotional Abuse: The Rules of Engagement

Emotional Abuse: The Rules of Engagement

"The victim of emotional abuse dismisses his own pain: The victim learns to not trust his own feelings. He ignores his own flushes of rage and shamefully swallows words he wished could be spoken. Never feeling safe from criticism or safe to tell the truth, the victim remains vigilant for the slightest sign of disapproval, waiting for the whisper of collusion among peers. The victim grows accustomed to distorting his feelings to appear properly socialized."

I know I am caught in this spot lately of wondering what is safe to say? I ask myself am I retreating too easily? Am I saying too little or not enough? One thing in my recovery I have noticed is I am often ignored when I speak up.

It is something that worries me and I am not sure why it is happening. It is something that troubled me when dealing with the flying monkeys and mind slaves in the family how entire paragraphs in letters would be ignored, how they couldn't wait to get away from me because I was breaking "the rules" and daring to question Queen Spider. Even the other day in a group [not any group related to my church thankfully], I told some people they were being RUDE with their bragging, and they were, and it's just like they stepped over me, ignored what I said and kept bragging. I should have gotten up and walked out instead of sitting there tossing a few sarcastic barbs that were ignored as well.

 The last sentence really jumped out me. "The victim grows accustomed to distorting his feelings to appear properly socialized". Here the Aspie cloaking can actually leave one more vulnerable. Your mask of social acceptance and "fitting in" can become a prison of sorts.  You fear speaking out and the resultant judgments. For too long, I hid my true feelings not to have people "get mad" at me.  I was so used to being invalidated by the family too. I still think about how I sat in that group, a knot building in my stomach.  I am glad I spoke up but failed to make the right choice when I was ignored. What do fellow ACONS think reading this?

"Normalizing the abuser's behavior doubles the victim's pain: you're inferior for being targeted and more so for being upset. The advice to "get over it" isn't instructive or soothing to any degree; it's merely the statement of a desired result. No one says how to "get over it."

These words don’t heal; they compound the hurt.

Collaborators make excuses for the aggressor's behavior, providing weak advice to avoid their own discomfort while simultaneously adding merit to the aggressor's behavior. Defending the aggressor merely moves the collaborator out of the line of fire, until the aggressor wants something from the collaborator.

When victims repeatedly receive such advice, the advice becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as to how the world really works. When aggressors go unchallenged, it is how the world works. Emotional abuse demands others alter their perceptions of themselves in order to accommodate the aggressor's self-perception. Those who do diminish themselves to meet the aggressor's needs become victims. "

One reason my relationship with my brother is dead in the water, is because he told me to "get over it", ie: get back in line and take more abuse. If he had shown me just one iota of loyalty things could have gone far different. I had endless people telling me to forgive and forget while no one ever told my mother to treat me better. My brother never would even dare to tell her to change her ways. No one has ever corrected her. When I would stand up to her with the family in the midst, I would be ripped down and shredded as they played a "who could lick her boots" faster game. We are told to diminish ourselves by endless collaborators and these collaborators sadly are whom give the narcs so much power to begin with. One thing I know is I let these people with no loyalty have too much of a place in my life. They dug holes deeper for me and helped the narcissists and hurt me just as much.

 "If a victim can recognize the camouflage of abusers who he is "supposed" to trust and "should" love, if he can recognize the feeling of being engulfed by another's narcissism, then he has the resiliency to emotionally defend himself. If a victim can decide whom to trust and then act on those decisions, the fallout will repel aggressors.

Resiliency acknowledges the world is not an "all or nothing" proposition. Resiliency acknowledges that everyone will have conflict—emotional or physical—throughout his or her life. Resiliency acknowledges there will be a cost. The former victim may lose a "friend," may "cause problems," and may even be perceived as "not nice." These may seem like monumental challenges, but if the victim's own self-diminishment does not eliminate the pain, he must, logically, look outside of himself for the cause of the pain.

Doing so lifts the burden the victim assigned himself, but also presents a hard decision: to define one's self, there is a cost. Accepting that cost separates "us" from "them," for "they"—the aggressors—always measure risk and reward, remaining unwilling to fight, but only win.

The courage to withstand those conflicts is necessary. We must be willing to accept conflict, win or lose, to begin creating our own self-definitions."

I am getting better at seeing narcissists out there and learning who to avoid. As an adult I don't have to associate with anyone who takes snipes at me, or who rips me down in front of others. I automatically distrust braggarts. Recognizing the camouflage of the abusers has opened the door for me to find a happier life with people who treat me with respect. One thing that will happen to an ACON that goes NC, is when the fog disappears, they will see the ones who joined their narcs in ill treatment. What you learned by getting away from your toxic family will be applied to your outer social world. I don't want to tolerate being invalidated by anyone.  It is better to be thought "not nice" and to remain true to yourself. 

Righteous Anger From Narcissistic Abuse

Our anger has a reason to exist. We don't need the preaching of false forgiveness for the unrepentant wicked. We don't want the anger to destroy us and need to avoid revenge, but our anger has a reason because it is a natural reaction to insanity. Ollie says some interesting things here, like telling ourselves "Get over it". He is right that some of us took abuse for decades. I took it for over 40 years, with the exception of this no contact and the few years of my first no contact. Getting over it in one year isn't always going to happen. He is right about that.

"Your anger now is coming from a place of knowledge of what happened to you and a place of righteousness because you were the victim, and you were the abused. Led to believe through decades of abuse that you were the problem. You have every right to that anger."

......

"That anger's righteous." 

I was made to feel like I was the problem my whole life, and now I realize I was not. I have been able to forgive myself even knowing that my abuse for my severe medical problems and Aspergers was beyond the pale. That disgusting woman had me even blaming myself for being sick for far too many years. A kind nurse before I went NC, asked me "Why do you blame yourself for being sick?" I know why.

Ollie stresses how the narcissists beat into our heads that everything was our fault and that we were pieces of garbage. He admits even after 5-6 years of NC in his case, he still has to remind himself he isn't the problem. He is right we have to get over the decades of their training.

"The more you find out the more pissed off you get"

That comment made me laugh, because the more I have remembered and more I have assessed what happened to me. I am pissed. I think feeling the anger [making sure to handle it maturely and wisely] is part of the healing process. He is right we can put a name on it and identify it.

"I wasn't the problem, these people were deliberate abusers"

These are the things we have to remind ourselves of, as we work through being ACONs and being NC from our abusers.