But I Just Want To Work on My Anger?
Often someone will come to therapy and they state something like “I want to control my anger that shows up in my interactions with my boss, co-worker, or even partner. I go from 0-100 in seconds and don’t know how to control myself.” They will usually state, “It doesn’t have anything to do with my past…I’ve put all that aside. I just want to learn new tools to get better with my mood regulation.”
While I can absolutely teach Cognitive Behavioral tools for mood regulation, and the use of Polyvagal Theory to help with behavior modification, it won’t get to the core of that visceral experience that happens unconsciously inside someone’s body that actually brings the anger or rage to the surface. That unfortunately is most likely related to a part of self that was wounded at a very early time in someone’s life…before language even came on line. From an EMDR perspective and Erikson’s stages of development, we are talking about the preveral time before age 2 where messages and/or non verbal experiences started to create feelings inside your little person’s body that are getting triggered now in present day life.
Toxic Shame
Toxic Shame is more significant than the regular shame that everyone experiences to some degree. We all have a bit of self-criticism that causes us to doubt ourselves, or beat ourselves up for doing something stupid. We live in a world that compares us to others. While this shame can be worked through, it differs from toxic shame which opens the floodgates to anger, self-disgust and deep-rooted feelings of worthlessness, invisibility, and a sense of having no value, not being deserving, loveable, or an inability to trust others. How might you expect those triggers to show up in relationships both personal and romantic?
Let’s take for instance the child who was born to a mother who was sick or who had depression. Mom’s inability to provide appropriate attachment, appropriate facial cues and playfulness with a baby can create distress in the infant. The child tries to interact with mom, but the mom is incapable of engaging in a way that is nurturing so the child begins to disengage or feels like a burden for asking for anything. That child might develop some beliefs such as I’m not deserving of anything, or I’m a burden. On a deeper level they might even believe that their existence is a burden or that they are a problem to others. That’s a deep-rooted toxic shame.
On the flip side, what if a child was born into a very chaotic environment with a very anxious parent, or the parents fought a lot. What if one parent was very angry and there were a lot of verbal outbursts and negative energy in the household. This could be all verbal without any physical abuse. Or what if there was another sibling with high physical needs or emotional disregulation? How would you expect that litte infant to perceive their environment? Likely this baby wants to avoid conflict, wants to make themselves small or invisible so that they don’t have many needs that will cause anger from their parents. They might also start to believe that they have no value to offer. Their caregiver might be cold or hot, so therefore the unpredictability of their caregiver’s response causes the little self to not trust others.
Maybe you grew up with a single mom who had to work 2-3 jobs and wasn’t present (not because they didn’t love their baby but because of the reality of financial circumstances). That child might also develop some feelings of abandonment and not loveable or worthy of their parent’s attention.
Regardless of the Circumstances
None of us really come out of childhood completely unscathed from the misfortunes of caregiving. Heck the “Ferber Method” was taught in parenting books and later we learned that leaving a baby to cry and self-soothe caused anxious kids with lots of negative beliefs about themselves. Yet our parents were doing the best they could with the tools they had. It still doesn’t negate the fact that things happened to our little selves that impact our functioning and the way we interact socially and romantically in relationships.
EMDR Targets These Somatic Sensations
EMDR looks at the bottom-up process of the lower emotional brain that holds all the feelings and somatic experiences within the body and helps clients connect the memories that are not connected to the logical part of the thinking brain. There’s a gap that is blocked. Once the block is uncovered and the body feels the energy attached to the emotional experience, they can begin to feel less triggered by whatever shows up for them in their current life. Working through these emotions allows the brain to work toward a sense of awareness that things happened to them, without the disturbance attached to the memory any more. It’s a power modality for even the little T traumas of development attachment.
I’m amazed every day at the incredible work that clients are able to do and the healing that happens in these cases. EMDR is based on an Adaptive Information Processing model that says “Our past is in the present, and our brain has an innate desire to move itself toward healing.” Our brain sometimes just needs a little help connecting the dots.
To find out more about EMDR, click here.