Thursday 10 June 2010

Thought and feeling again - a personal perspective

I need to write this. Whether anyone else needs to read it remains to be seen. In case anyone who doesn't know me reads this, some personal detail is required if it is to make any sense.

In the last 18 months, I have, increasingly intermittently, visited two different counsellors. The idea was to get help with understanding, and hopefully managing, occasional outbursts of anger. I wasn't aspiring to sainthood, I don't think there's anything wrong with righteous anger, if it turns out to be righteous, and simply repressing anger can make it worse in the long run.

My problem is anger that pre-exists, and is really happy when it finds a target on which to vent spleen and spite, almost always way disproportionate to the perceived misdemeanour of the luckless target. Even worse, this is more likely to happen with someone with whom I feel safe, who deserves it even less, and whom I would do anything not to hurt when in my right mind.

OK, so off to counselling to find the source of this anger. The usual approach is that we're angry with someone whom we don't feel we should be angry with - typically a kind and loving parent. As a 5 year old blind child, I'm sure I was devastated by being shipped off to a special boarding school, even though, I knew my parents acted for what they thought was the best. Anyway, the point is that there's plenty to be angry about, and any counsellor will tell you that. Also, being blind can be frustrating, and I know I get angry about that sometimes. But a sighted counsellor is inevitably putting her/his sighted self in my position, which they have no way of understanding, since blindness is, to them, dark and terrifying, whereas I don't know what darkness is, and my status quo is not particularly terrifying to me (most of the time).

I did get something from examining my relationship with my parents, and the damage that boarding school inevitably did to it. And examining how I feel about blindness is something I hadn't bothered to do much, because it is just how things are.

Finally, I get to the point. This morning it struck me that, for all this searching for specific targets, parents, blindness ETC., what I'm really angry with is things that can't be changed. And the very pointlessness of being angry about what can't be changed is what makes me angry, because there's nothing to be done.

Now when I say "it struck me", I'm sure this idea had previously occurred to me as an idea. But one of my problems with counselling is that I'm definitely someone who says "yes I can see how that might be true". that's a totally non-emotional response of course, and I'm good at those thanks to boarding school, and getting beyond that rationalisation is the hard part. I'm saying that because I may be appearing to state the extremely obvious about the primary source of my anger. But, talking as someone for whom feeling is something of a novelty, I actually felt a very small penny drop.

In my last post, I was musing about thought and feeling, and here's a personal example of what I was talking about. Our reason is crucial to us of course, but its limitations are just as great as the limitations of that part of us which some would dismiss as mere wooly psycho-babble about emotions and spirituality. Wherever our faith, love, or potential self-awareness come from, it feels qualitatively different to me from the chemical stuff. And, unfamiliar territory though it is to me, I'm certainly coming to value it greatly.

2 comments:

  1. Reg, (and anyone else interested):
    This is such an important post to me, for so many reasons, not least of which is that dealing with the occasional (and sometimes terifyingly intense) occurrances of anger is something with which I have been dealing for many years. for anyone else reading this comment, you should understand that I share much of Reg's history and background, so it does not surprise me - though it does move me - to read his experiences and thoughts on the matter.
    I too, both individually and in a couple cituation, have tried to reach some peace and understanding through counselling and even clinical psychological intervention. Though such episodic encounters provide some short term help and relief, the provlem persists, however infrequently, and causes severe distress to those who either have to witness it, or who are unfortunate enough to be the unwitting target of its seemingly unstoppable fury.
    I think there are some definite clues in my own recall of the genisis of this phenomenon - clues in the sense of route explanations. I know that, shortly after being 'removed' from the relative security of a loving and struggling working class London suburban home, as a then only child, into the institutional care of the Royal National institute for the Blind (in both my and my parents' best interests of course, and because there was no real alternative in 1952), I began, when returned home for weekends and holidays, to unexplainably and unstoppably beat my head against the bedroom wall and cry until sleep calmed me down.
    this was never really explained, and though it slowly retreated, the tendency to self-harm and to rail against those I care about most has remained, mercifully largely dormant but nevertheless volcanically potentially active to the present day.
    I sincerely believe that, in whatever form it manifests itself and in whichever of us it does so, it is the direct result of traumatic removal from a loving family.
    I do not wish to imply here that the family is always loving and nurturing for children, it clearly isn't - but however beneficial our boarding school esperience might have been,culturally, educationally, and socially, the early experience of separation has I think taken a terrible toll.

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  2. Rory, perhaps I should reflect more before responding, but I can't restrain myself.

    My reaction is at once to be struck by our parallel response to a parallel situation, to feel great compassion towards you, in that you seem to have suffered more at the hands of this catastrophe than I did, and thirdly to wonder why it might be that you suffered more, or I suffered less.

    I should explain to other readers that Rory and I are both on a mail list composed of those who attended a school for the blind in Worcester UK. From this list, it clearly emerges how differently individuals experience fairly similar circumstances. Perhaps this shouldn't surprise me, but it does.

    But I did suffer enough to experience this irrational anger in search of a hapless target, and I agree with you that the outcome of therapy is uncertain, probably due to the difficulty of finding the right therapist. However, in my case, there is hope, and I would recommend your wish to overcome it, which I know you have, coupled with the patience and love of a perceptive human being; something which I also hope you now have at this late stage. At least even our little 5 year old inner selves might be convinced that someone who loves us enough to put up with that must really love us, God bless them.

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