Changing Family Patterns of Anger

Changing Family Patterns of Anger

A dynamic constellation of energy is passed down from generationto generation.

The glue that holds this constellation together is unresolved trauma.

To break this pattern, so that future generations don’t inherit it, takes the intelligence, courage and commitment of just one person.

One person’s decision to heal affects everyone ~ past, present and future.

Anger is a Survival Response

Fight (anger/aggression), flight (running,hiding) and freeze (shut down/dissociation) are automatic, unconscious responses ~ like breathing, sweating and digestion ~ we don’t need to think about

doing them they are automatic (autonomic nervous system).

We experience them when our environment doesn’t feel safe; when we feel under threat.

The threat could come in the form of: Developmental trauma (0 - 3 years)

ShockOngoing stress

We need these survival mechanisms ~ they are there to protect us from harm.

BUT they are meant to be time limited; when the threat, either perceived or real,has gone our nervous system (the fight/flight/freeze response) should return

to its natural regulated state.

Many, maybe most of us, get stuck in one or a combination of these responsesbecause we are unable to complete what we needed to, or the support and safety we need

isn’t there to help us.

Our focus is on anger but it can’t be separated from our other survival responses. So in the following pages there is an outline of the 5 stages of trauma. The more we understand these, the more we will be able to make sense of impulses as they arise when we begin to work with our anger.

For example:

Imagine that you are a small child. In your parents eyes you have been very naughty and deserve a good hard smack. You parents rage drives them to land a fierce hit on your leg.

How do you respond?

Maybe something like this:

You need your parents to care for you, and you love them. You depend on them for your survival so you can’t run away and you know you can’t get angry with them.

The sight of an enraged parent has frightened you. When you look down at your leg you see the red hand print. It stings. It hurts. The sight of your wound shocks you. The person you love more than anyone else has hurt you deeply. Because you can’t retaliate or run away your only choice is to shut down. Your heart closes and you dissociate to release yourself from the painful feelings in your body. This is the freeze response. This response also contains your fight and flight responses but they are unresolved and will become unconscious.

Parents know far more than you so they must be right ~ you must have deserved it, you must be a bad person. Enter SHAME.

Let’s stay with this example:

Your leg heals and after a while you forget about it.

You are now a parent yourself, about to give birth to your second child. Your first child (aware of the huge changes which are about to rock his safe world) lashes out at you in anger.

Caught off guard, you land a smack on his leg. He is afraid.....you know the rest!

You feel mortified and can’t believe what you have just done to your beloved child. It has never happened before. You feel ashamed and shocked and automatically go into freeze. You can’t speak.

At an unconscious level your own survival responses came into play. You felt threatened by your child’s anger, which triggered your anger and then freeze response from your childhood.

So it isn’t just about anger but how you respond as a result of it. In this example expressing anger leads to the child’s default response of freeze, which is linked to shame.

We all do it! But we can gradually change this pattern.

When you read the following pages, which outline the 5 stages of trauma, listen to your body.

If you start to feel sleepy, stop for a moment and orient to your surroundings (Audio 1), feel the seat

you are sitting on supporting your back, your bottom on the seat and feel your feet on the floor which is also supporting you.

The 5 Stagesof Trauma

helen@childrensanxietycoach.comhttp://childrensanxietycoach.com

Created by:Helen Lees

Children’s Anxiety Coach

ARREST

Before you start reading the 5 Stages of Trauma, orient yourself to the here and now. And as you read, try to feel the words too.

This is the first stage in the trauma response. Imagine you are sitting quietly reading or watching TV and you hear an unfamiliar noise.

You turn your head towards the sound, wait, listen carefully and keep your eyes firmly fixed,scanning around for the source of the sound.

This is hypervigilance.

We always turn towards the source of the threat, but if we can’t see where the threat is coming from and our body continues to signal that it’s there, we will continue to scan our environment until we detect it.

FIGHT

When we are in danger, facing a threat to our security, an accident, bad news or we are experiencing ongoing stress, our first and natural response is to stand up for ourselves; to stand our ground, to use our natural aggression to keep us safe and warn the one who is threatening us to leave or back off.

If this natural aggression is blocked we shut down but the aggressive impulses stay in the body. Anger is a powerful energy and if, after the threat has passed, it is unexpressed it continues to live on in the body.

So in the case of this woman imagine the tension she feels in her neck, shoulders, jaw, head stomach and legs. If she is unable to express her anger, after a while she might begin to experience pain in her body and have digestive and elimination problems. Her lower back might ache because her adrenals are still under stress.

FLIGHT

If the one who is threatening us or the situation we are suddendly faced with is bigger, stronger or more powerful than we are, the next response is to go into flight; to run away or hide.

In a flash our survival response has kicked in, adrenalin is pumping through our system, blood is pumped to the heart and increases oxygen levels to the muscles, which become tense ~ this is an SOS to your body; get away or be killed!

Whatever the situation, whether it is a car crash, your husband announcing he has been having an affair and is moving out or the death of a beloved family member, this automatic reaction is the same.

The body senses danger and reacts accordingly.

FREEZE

When we can’t fight or run away, we freeze, play dead and dissociate. This is almost the last resort ~ it’s the 1000 mile stare ~ appears dreamy,vacant and not here.

The heart rate slows down completely ~ every biological function goes into hypo-arousal, rather than hyper-arousal of fight or flight.

(We can live in ‘Functional Freeze’ all our lives without realising why we are workaholics, prone to addiction, struggle with our weight or extreme risk takers.)

Stuck in a cycle of anger that doesn’t seem to change. Anxiety disorders and syndromes like Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia.

Living in Freeze is like driving a car with your foot an the brake and the accelerator at the same time. Eventually the engine will burn out and we get sick.

FOLD

This is the end of the line ~ the inevitable is about to happen. Our survival response floods our body with hormones, which will numb us to unbearable pain. There is a complete giving up on a deep inner level.

We can see this in those who have coped with an extremely stressful homelife, physical and emotional abuse, loss, ill health and poverty. They feel as if they have no control over their fete and numb themselves to further pain by collapsing.

Circumstances don’t always appear to be extreme to outsiders. But it may be that just one more stressful event like a letter about an unpaid bill is too much to bear and we fold...we collapse.

Orient yourself again now.

Notes To Help You

Every time we experience a threat and go into survival (fight/flight/freeze)

and are unable to complete what our body wants and needs to, those incomplete impulses get stuck in the body.

For example: Have you ever wanted to yawn but your yawn didn’t fully come out. It feels uncomfortable ~ unfinished. This feeling goes when we yawn fully and completely. It is the same with each of the survival responses.

When we start to bring the body, (emotions and sensations) online and when we have learned about safety / orienting, we need to allow our body to lead us and have the freedom to express these incomplete movements and impulses.

Trust your body to know what it needs.

Fight: Be curious about what your body wants to do. Your legs might want to kick, your hands might want to make a fist to mimic punching your attacker. The jaw is often where we hold a lot of anger so you may want to make sounds like the growl and snarl of a

wild animal. Sometimes the movements will big and aggressive, sometimes very subtle.

Flight: If you think about the earlier example of the little child who has been smacked, the impulse to run away will stay in the legs perhaps as twitchy leg syndrome or even pain in the legs. So in this case when we start to listen to what our body wants it may be that the impulse to run surfaces. We can resolve this by mimicing running, imagining that we are running from danger so that our

body and mind are engaged in the process. This will help to bring us out of Flight and reset the nervous system.

Freeze: The freeze response is not quite as straight forward. It is shut down and dissociation (which we do to protect ourselves from feeling more pain than we can tolerate) and fight and flight. So we need to very gently and tenderly spend time teaching the body

that it is safe to come back online. This can take quite a while and needs to.

A Final Note:

A common question is,

Do we need to go back into traumatic events to heal them?

No! Trauma is not in the event; it is in the nervous system

This is what we need to work with.

Safely in the here and now.

Be Curious ~ Continually Focus on Feeling Safe & your Connection to your Environment ~ Be Tender & Loving with Yourself

Now go to Audio 1