Fantasy and meditative anger work

Anger work or the cathartic release of anger in therapy is a contentious issue. Some actively support it and others see it is a retrograde step that will just lead to more anger and violence. There are many ways to release anger in therapy ranging from the quite mild to restrained rage work on a mat.

Fantasy anger work is an interesting procedure and somewhat of a contradiction. In terms of cathartic release it is the mildest of all in that the person writes down or draws pictures of them self being angry. On the other hand it can be of a very violent and aggressive quality unlike any other type of anger work. Indeed it is limitless in its aggression and violence and people can do this type of anger work and think of things that are murderous and so forth. So on the one hand it is a very mild cathartic release of anger but at the same time it can be highly aggressive and violent.

Below is a statement of this type of anger work. After that is a paper sent to me recently by a friend. It uses a meditative or guided fantasy type of anger work. I have not seen this before in this way and adds an interesting addition to the area of anger work in psychotherapy.

Graffiti

The resolution of emotion using a two person psychology

(This is an edited version of the previous posting)

When one has a feeling the process usually articulated is the mechanism of tension followed by expression and then relaxation. This originally came from the work of Wilhelm Reich who plays a major role in this aspect of human functioning. He presented the powerful yet simple model of a feeling involving firstly tension followed by expression and then relaxation.

This upon reflection this is too one dimensional.  On occasion feelings occur in the context of a relationship or at least whilst in relational contact.  One may have a feeling reaction to another person directly or one may express a feeling about something else but in the company of another.

One could argue the response the other party plays is crucial to how successful the emotion is dealt with. Hence we arrive at the vulnerability anxiety equation.

Consider the situation where person A discusses an emotion not related to person B. For example person A is angry at her boss and is telling her husband (person B). The responses by the husband are going to influence how person A deals with or resolves the angry feelings. For example sometimes husbands can get into ‘fixing’ mode and  respond to the wife in ways where he is trying to help her to fix the problem with the boss. Often this is not what is wanted and she really just wants him to listen to her as she vents her thoughts and feelings about the matter. He does not understand this and as a result it leaves her with a sense of incompletion with her anger because there is a communication problem with her husband.

As one can see this adds an extra dimension to the original Reichian proposal of how one needs to ‘work through’ emotions. That is, resolving feelings (at least some of the time) is a two person psychological process. In this sense it is deemed erroneous to view the resolution of feelings as a function of one person alone. Instead the feeling, in some instances, must be brought into the relational with another person. 

If the other person responds in an effective way then the sense of resolution will be more complete in the emotion laden individual. If the husband had responded by just listening to the wife, then her sense of completion would be more satisfactory and psychologically healthy.

She takes a risk. If she does not raise the angry situation with him then he cannot respond poorly such that she is worse off after her exchange. At the same time if she does not raise it with him then she cannot get that greater sense of completion if he responds in an appropriate way.

It seems reasonable to suggest that dealing with and resolving emotions needs to be seen as more than just one person having some kind of cathartic release. Instead emotions play a central part of relationships and hence one needs to view them in the wider context of relationships which can assist or hinder the process of working through the emotion.

Graffiti

Shame - What it is and working through

(Originally presented in

“Thoughts on Shame”. The Transactional Analyst. The quarterly magazine of the Institute of Transactional Analysis. Summer 2012, Vol 2 (3), Page 21 - 24.)

Introduction

I have always found shame somewhat of a perplexing emotion. It has some unique features that separates it from the rest of the emotions especially in how one deals with it therapeutically. This has lead me to research and study this emotion and hence the motivation behind this article. Writing on shame abounds in the literature including Wright, Gudjonsson and Young (2008), Gao, Wang and Qian (2010) and Wolf, Cohen and Insko (2010). In the transactional analysis literature an excellent statement on shame is made in a theme edition on shame in the Transactional Analysis Journal (April (1994)). Including articles by the likes of Erskine (1994) and English (1994).

Shame the emotion

In surveying the literature on shame one quickly comes across a debate about the nature of shame and what it actually involves. In this article the terms emotion, feelings and affect are used interchangeably. One commonly finds three concepts mentioned in relation to shame - internalized anger, guilt and shame itself. There are differing views on these such that one finds confusion in the literature about the nature of and definition of shame. For example Goss and Allan (2009) in their discussion of shame state, "It blends the different emotions of anger, anxiety and disgust, involves social comparison and can have different foci,…"(p303-304). Others have disagreed with this and attempted to distinguish the various emotions involved with shame including guilt and anger, (See: Gao, Wang and Qian (2010) and Wright, Gudjonsson and Young (2008)). This is also well summarised by Wolf, Cohen and Insko (2010) who state, "What are shame and guilt, and how do they differ? Within psychology, as well as everyday conversation, the terms shame and guilt are often used interchangeably. There is a general confusion about the distinctiveness of these emotions, possibly because of their many similarities."(p337-338)

As mentioned before anger and guilt are often mentioned as relating to shame or being part of shame. My own view is that each of these constitute three separate psychological processes. They are three separate entities. However they can and often do occur contemporaneously. This could then explain why some see guilt as being part of the shame experience or internal anger being defined as shame on other occasions. If one can define the three separate psychological processes this would clarify the nature of shame and its associated processes. Fortunately Transactional Analysis theory allows us to come up with quite clear statements about the distinct psychological processes involved in each of these three emotions.

Internalized anger

There are two ways in which internal anger can occur in ego state theory. See diagram 1.

Diagram 1

People can express anger at themselves from their Child ego state. When this occurs people will do negative internal self talk such as I am stupid, I was a geek talking to that girl and so on....

Anger can also be expressed from the Critical Parent ego state to the Child of the person. In this case the internal self talk starts with a “You” statement when an internal chastisement occurs. Examples may be “You were such a jerk talking to that boy”, “You can’t even get a simple report right”, “You stupid jerk” and so forth.

Guilt

Guilt occurs when the person has a sense of breaking an internal rule which they have for themself. If a husband thinks the woman next door is hot and foxy but has a rule inside his Parent ego state which says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” then he can end up feeling guilt for having such thoughts.

Or a person may steal money from his brother and later feel guilt about it because he has the rule in his Parent that you don’t steal from your brother. People can feel guilty the next day after a night of drinking too much. Alcohol decommissions the Parent ego state and thus people behave in ways that they usually wouldn’t. The next day after the alcohol has worn off they feel guilty because the Parent ego state becomes active again. Diagram 2 shows the transactions.

Diagram 2

Shame

Finally we have shame which is a natural feeling reaction to particular environmental stimuli. Often, but by no means always, it is associated with sex, nudity or intimate bodily processes such as urinating or defecating. A prime example is the enuretic child who wets his bed at night. When the child wakes up and realizes he has wet the bed it is very easy for him to feel shame and he can go to extensive lengths to try and hide it. Indeed parents need to be very careful not engender a sense of shame in a child when he wets the bed. It needs to be dealt with carefully so as to avoid this. What is being suggested here is that shame is one of the innate feelings that all humans can experience. Others such as Adams (2008) and Kaufman (1992) have suggested the same. In this way shame is a natural Free Child reaction to certain events. Thus we have the shame transaction in diagram 3.

Diagram 3

As you can see this differs from the guilt transaction in that there is no Parent to Child transaction before for emotion is experienced. This is consistent with Freud’s presentation on shame which is probably best summed up by Lynd (1958) who notes that guilt is usually more related to transgressions of clear moral codes and rules. No better example of this is found in religious texts which define what behaviors, thoughts and feelings are regarded as sinful. These are incorporated into the Parent ego state by the young child and when transgressed the individual most often will experience guilt. 

With shame the rules are much less codified and clear. Transgressions of them are more by tactlessness, errors in taste or bad luck. As a result the Parent ego state is much less involved in the process. Again the example of the enuretic child demonstrates this. Wetting the bed does not break a Parent ego state rule and generally would not be regarded as sinful. Instead it results from bad luck or factors outside the child’s control.

Presented here are three separate psychological processes – inward directed anger, guilt and shame. They can occur on their own or they can occur together. However if we see them as separate processes then we are afforded the opportunity to understand shame without the usual confusion of guilt and inward directed anger.

Unique qualities of shame

What does a therapist do when a client presents with feelings of shame? One knows what to do when a client is angry. They feel the anger, they express the anger and when ready they drop the anger. When a client feels sad the therapist acknowledges the feeling, the client expresses the sadness with some kind of crying usually, one listens to the client, empathizes with them and is compassionate. Then the sadness is dealt with. 

The natural Free Child reaction to anger and sadness is a therapeutic one. There is a natural desire to talk about it, to have some kind of catharsis and release the emotion. This natural urge will result in the feeling being ‘worked through’ often with the support of a compassionate other. The feeling is naturally dealt with and resolved which of course is a desirable state of affairs and makes the therapy process clear.

However shame is different. When people feel shame there is a strong desire to withdraw or change the topic. The person wants to go into hiding in some way. Common bodily expressions when one experiences shame include a bowing of the head, an attempt to hide the face possibly with the hands, a blushing of the face, possible sweating, body bent over on itself and possibly a closing of the eyes. It’s like the person is endeavoring to make them self as small and invisible as possible and there is a strong drive to isolate self. This seems to be the natural Free Child reaction to shame. The problem with this, is it does not deal with it in the therapeutic sense unlike anger and sadness.

In essence it is an avoidant, ‘Lets try and forget about it’, approach. Therapeutically this does not resolve the difficult feelings. They need to be brought out into the open, experienced and then one can ‘get over it’. The Free Child reaction with shame is to hide and avoid. With most other feelings the Free Child reaction is a therapeutic one that will bring resolution of the painful event like expressing sad feelings when one’s cat dies. With shame the natural Free Child reaction will not bring resolution or closure to the event. Thus shame is somewhat unique in this way.

Society likes a temperate woman

Working with shame in the therapeutic process. 

Paradoxically therapists are often working with shame even before being aware they are. For instance clients with bulimia or those who self harm often feel shame about their behaviour. As the natural response to shame is to hide often the client will not disclose such behaviour for some time. The goal here is to establish relational contact such that the client feels ready to disclose what they see as shameful behaviour but the therapist will only know that in retrospect. However when the client does finally disclose such feelings then one knows that successful relational contact with the client has been established. White (1998) discusses this in detail in his paper on transference and humanness of the psychotherapist. Such transferential and counter transferential contact is made when the therapist allows himself Free Child ego state contact with the client. This as he points out is surprisingly difficult to do but if done then the transference established will promote the client to expose their sense of shame to the therapist. Thus achieving one of the first crucial steps in working with shame in the therapeutic process.

The next step in this method of working with shame is to diagnose what is actually happening. As I said before shame, guilt and inward anger are often confused. The therapist needs to question the client to ascertain which of the three processes is occurring to see if the person is actually experiencing shame. Indeed one of the indicators that shame is present is the fact that the person has been reluctant to bring it up. Often there will be more than one process occurring concomitantly. Once established this can be explained to the client so they are aware of what is actually happening with their emotions in this way. Which of the three processes they are actually experiencing.

If inward anger is diagnosed then of course the therapist deals with that appropriately as he does if guilt is indicated. The main problem emotion here is shame because as I mentioned before the natural Free Child reaction to shame is not a therapeutic one. 

The therapeutic response I have developed is really quite simple. As the natural response to shame is to go into hiding one invites the client to do the opposite. To come out of hiding and bring the behavior and feelings of shame into the relationship with the therapist. Basically they talk about it and the therapist responds in an empathetic way, also disclosing their Child reactions to the behaviour and feelings of shame. The therapist expresses his Free Child responses to what the client is saying. The goal is to normalize the shame response in the client.

Once the client has made such a disclosure the therapist can also raise the events at the appropriate times. One needs to be somewhat forthright in this way as this assists the normalizing process. The more it is brought up, talked about in an open way with no ‘shock and horror’ responses from the therapist the less shameful it becomes. The shame loses its potency over time. If the therapist always waits for the client to bring it up then the normalizing process can be very protracted. If mentioned only very occasionally there may be little if any normalizing occurring at all. 

Often the therapist needs to be proactive here and raise the shame producing events especially if the client never initiates talking about it. This is where clinical skill comes to the fore. One does not want to be always bringing it up but it does need to be raised from time to time. How often that is, depends on the client and the circumstances. If successfully managed then over time the shameful event becomes something that can be easily discussed with little or no shame reaction. At this point it can be said that the shame has been worked through.

Conclusion

While the Free Child of the client has a natural drive to work through feelings like anger and sadness this is not the case with shame. Hence the therapist needs to intervene to halt the natural hiding away reaction by the client to their shame. The therapist brings out the shaming experiences at appropriate intervals, they are discussed and over time the potency of the shame significantly reduces such that open discussion can occur and there is little sense of shame in the client.

References

Adams, S.A. (2008) “Using transactional analysis and mental imagery to help shame-based identity adults make peace with their past.” ADULTSPAN Journal. 7, 1, 2-12

English, F. (1994) "Shame and social control revisited." Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 109-120.

Erskine, R.G. (1994) "Shame and self righteousness: Transactional analysis perspectives and clinical interventions." Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 86-102.

Gao, J. Wang A. and Qian, M. (2010) "Differentiating shame and guilt from a relational perspective: A cross cultural study." Social Behaviour and Personality. 38, 10, 1401-1408.

Goss, K. and Allan, S. (2009) "Shame, pride and eating disorders." Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy. 16, 303-316.

Kaufman, G. (1992) Shame: The Power of Caring (3rd ed.). Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books.

Lynd, H.M. (1958) On Shame and the Search for Identity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Wolf, S.T., Cohen, T.R. and Insko, C.A. (2010) "Shame proneness and guilt proneness: Toward the further understanding of reactions to public and private transgressions." Self and Identity. 9, 337-362.

White, T. (1998) "Psychotherapy and the art of being human." Transactional Analysis Journal. 28, 4, 321-330.

Wright, K., Gudjonsson, G.H. and Young, S. (2008) "An investigation of the relationship between anger and offence-related shame and guilt." Psychology, Crime & Law. 14, 5, 415-423.

Working with the depressed person

This is not a statement on how to treat depression but some things which are often factors in counselling the depressed person.

Stroke deprivation. Depressive like symptoms can result from a person experiencing stroke deprivation. They are not getting enough strokes (positive or negative) so as to satisfy the Free Child. The Free Child can put up with such deprivation for only so long before it starts to psychologically deteriorate. If the level of strokes is quite low then the rate of deterioration can be quite rapid

Put another way, we all have our own level of relational needs. We have to get “X” number of relational units met each day. We have to feel and be involved in relational contact with another person reasonably regularly. However it seems the level required can vary quite considerably from person to person. For some the number of units of relational needs required are quite low and for others it is quite high.

Childhood depression is an interesting phenomena

However if they are not met then depression can result. Whilst the treatment of this seems clear, that is to have more relational contact, for some that is a most difficult thing to do as the schizoid personality will tell you. If it was easy to do they would have already done it and would not need to come to counselling to deal with it. In addition establishing a social life is not an easy thing to do. It takes time and sustained effort. 

If one is socially isolated making ongoing friendships is not that easy. People have busy lives and if a new person enters into your social world that means one other must drop out because there is only a certain number of hours in the day.

High Critical Parent. This is common in the depressed person. If the person drinks alcohol ask them if they feel the depression lift when they first feel the effects of the alcohol. If it does then you know a high CP plays a role in this persons depression. As I discuss in my book - Working with alcohol and drug users - alcohol quickly and effectively blocks out the CP. This can make drinking appealing to the depressed person because it gives them temporary relief from what can be a very savage and relentless internal critic inside their head. However this can result in a drinking problem.

Also what happens most often is the depressed person will keep drinking and then the personality is effected in other ways, the person gets drunk and then they end up worse off and feeling even more depressed. Whilst there is an initial positive outcome by turning off the CP if they continue to drink then this positive is lost amongst more negatives that result from the continued drinking.

Repressed emotion especially anger. Depression can result because the person has emotions they are not expressing and then releasing. This is especially so with any anger that is not being expressed. Instead it sits like a sore in the persons psyche slowly but surely pulling them down into depression. This again is a problem for the FC, as stroke deprivation is. A basic FC need is not being met and over time the person will psychologically deteriorate as I mentioned above.

The repression of emotion can occur in a number of ways

1. Don’t feel

2. Don’t feel x, feel y

3. Don’t express your feelings

4. Feel x, but express y.

In number 1 the person is not even aware they are having a feeling When the FC is that repressed or detached the person may not even be aware they are feeling angry, sad or scared. If they are not aware of it, they certainly are not going to express it in a productive and healthy way.

In number 2 the person becomes aware they are experiencing a feeling but it is a substituted feeling. Typically women do this when they feel anger and they substitute it for sadness. Typically men when they feel sad they substitute it for anger. Either way there is not the possibility of a healthy expression of the feeling such that depression can result.

Number 3 highlights the difference between the experience of a feeling and actually expressing a feeling. Two quite different psychological processes. Some people are aware of the feeling they have and it is an appropriate feeling but have an inhibition against the expression of the feeling.

In number 4 the person feels the right feeling but expresses a different one. When the woman who get angry starts crying which is more appropriate for sadness. Or the man who feels sad and all of a sudden he is showing anger.

In any of these depression can result because feelings are not being expressed in a psychologically healthy way.

Response to trauma not been worked through. This is similar to the one just mentioned but entails much more than just the expression of emotion. In this instance the person can see that the  timing of depression is related to an event. The person may have been in a bad car accident or been assaulted. They do not work through the trauma and hence depression can result.

Secondary gains. All of us have what is sometimes called normal person depression. We all experience depression to some degree from time to time. But it is not bad enough to be debilitating and we struggle through it and come out the other side without too much difficulty.

As with any neurotic state there is always the possibility of secondary gains forming. The woman who feels starved of love starts to feel a bit depressed and she tells a few of her friends and husband. She discovers that as a result of her disclosure all of a sudden she finds people being loving and caring of her because she is ‘ill’. A secondary gain has formed that meets her need to feel loved hence the depression can persist and magnify in intensity, often this is out of her awareness.

Graffiti

Theory of contracts - Part 3.

In the previous post on contracts KYLady makes some good comments about lying to self, others and breaking them.

Thanx for that as it allows me to clarify what I mean by lying to self. In one sense people lie to themselves regularly and indeed one could say it is the role of the counsellor to ‘expose’ these lies in some way. Any time one packages off part of their thinking, feeling or behaving to the unconscious you could say they are lying to self. They are pretending to self that they are one way when they are in fact another. Every projection is a lie to self as is every denial that we all have.

For example, I was working with a woman recently and she expressed much sadness about being sent to boarding school as a child. Within just a few minutes it became obvious to me (as an outside observer) she also had considerable anger at her mother for doing such a thing. She was completely unaware of this and she had used the defence mechanism of denial. To be angry at her mother was unacceptable to her so she moved it into her unconscious and then could pretend to herself that she was not angry. 

For some of us our own inner angry child is unacceptable. To deal with this we place it in the unconscious and then can pretend it does not exist.

I suppose one could call this a lie, and one of my jobs as the counsellor is to expose the lie and bring it into her conscious which I did. I had to say it on 4 different occasion before she acknowledged what I was saying. Finally she did let in what I saying and then expressed some surprise that she felt such anger.

However this is not really what I am talking about when it comes to contracts. I often suggest homework contracts to the client at the end of the session. When they make them I will often ask, “Do you think there is any chance you will do it” and people generally can answer that question quite readily and easily. Sometimes they say yes with certainty and other times they will say no. If they say no then I suggest they forget the contract. This is what I am really talking about when it comes to lying to self.

If you know you are not going to do it or there is quite a probability you wont then don’t make the contract in the first place. What I am communicating to the client is - Contracts are not promises or statements from you to me. If you know you wont do it then don’t make it and most people quickly see that is a senseless task, as indeed it is. I not only do this with homework contracts but will do it with every contract including a no suicide contract. If a person will not make a no suicide contract that does not mean they are necessarily a current suicide risk.

In this sense the process of contracting is changed. Consider the contract, 

“I will tell my husband I am angry he wont keep to the budget each week”.  

Bill Holloway makes this point about contracts:

My preference is that the client elaborates the objective to include behavioral confirmation that the objective had been reached. A simple question by the therapist is often useful, “How will you know and how will I know that you have achieved the change you desire and intend?” (end quote)

Others would agree with him as this is not an uncommon thing to do with contracts. The client and counsellor define what behaviors will show the contract has been completed. This works on the basis that the client may or may not carry out the contract and effort is expended in the contracting to establish if they have or have not. For example the wife may say, “I will sit down with him after dinner on Wednesday and tell him about my angry feelings”. After Wednesday the client and the counsellor will know if she carried out the contract or not.

The contracting I am suggesting here is that even before the contract is made the client has established they are going to complete it so there is no need to ask the question suggested by Holloway. The ambivalence or reluctance to complete the contract is dealt with before the contract is made rather than setting the contract and then seeing if it is completed or not. 

If a contact is a statement the individual makes to self then this alternative approach has to be the case. They will not make a contract in the first place if they do not intend to complete it.

Finally KYLady:

If you break promises to self all the time I would suggest  you don’t make them. If you break most of them what is the point. If you stop making them, after some time you may find a new attitude developing in yourself about this.

Graffiti

Strokes and racket development

Already mentioned has been the role of temperament in racket development and how the use of emotions in parenting can also effect the development of certain rackets.

However one of the more powerful ways of fostering a racket is with strokes. When a child displays a certain feeling how do the parents respond with their stroking patterns. Do the strokes they give foster the feeling being displayed or tend to hinder its development.

This is reasonably easy to ascertain. One simply recalls when they were young and how they observed the parents responding. See the chart below:

The patterns of stroking others does not stop in childhood but we are constantly being stroked in certain ways for the emotions we display. In many instances both parties are unaware of what is happening as it is unconscious communication. Indeed the vast majority of human communication is unconscious as this diagram shows.

To ascertain these conscious and unconscious stroking patterns with those in your current life one simply changes a few questions. See the diagram below:

Of course this is a two way process. Whist you are being influenced by the stroking patterns of others you are also influencing them in exactly the same way. To gain some insight into this one can answer another series of questions:

Graffiti

Self harm

This was sent to me today by a self harmer who did this to her leg.



It catches the emotional core of the Borderline personality. A mixture of anger and fear.

She makes an interesting distinction between ‘playing” self harm and ‘punishing’ self harm. This is playing self harm where the cuts a quite superficial but with punishment self harm the cuts are significantly deeper. And it is the bleeding that has the most psychological significance.



In my book - Working with suicidal individuals - I propose 8 possible motivations for self harming:

1. Self harming as part of gang tattooing behaviour.
2. Self harming to make self feel real which can be found in those who dissociate.
3. Self harming to make self feel something.
4. Self harming used as a means of tension relief and to release pressure build up.
5. Self harming as a physical expression of emotional pain. Self harming is seen as providing concrete evidence of the pain.
6. Self harming as a means to self nurture. It allows the person to care for self as can be found in Munchausen Syndrome.
7. Self harming as a means to punish self and an expression of self hatred.
8. Self harming as a means to manipulate others or as a cry for help.

It would seem that reason number 7 is part of the motivation to self harm. As for seeing the blood and bleeding one would need to enquire as to what it means for the self harmer. It could be a variety of things such as found in reasons # 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.

Graffiti

Anger and forgiveness in psychotherapy

On occasion there is the need for some anger expression in therapy. A recent example brought this to the fore.

A woman in her 50s had a life time of being ignored by her mother. But to make matters worse her two sisters were often highlighted by her mother at times in front of her. In public the mother may talk about the exploits and successes of her two sisters but never of her. It seems safe to say that there was favouritism in this way.

The woman would at times recount such situations that had occurred many times in her life and often felt anger as she did remember. When this happened it was not long until she would mention that she did not believe that her mother did this on purpose. That she was probably unaware that she was even doing such a thing. And from what I was told I tended to agree with her. In addition her mother was now quite elderly and frail and the client would say that how could she be angry at such an elderly person. Her goal was simply to forgive her mother for the mistreatment that she had received over the years in the way described above. However this meant she was directly avoiding being angry. Unfortunately this kept reappearing, her anger at her mother kept resurfacing.

As a therapist I am all in favour of the idea of forgiveness. I think it is a very wise psychological goal to aim for. Forgiving ones parents for that they did or forgiving ones abuser for the abuse received is a wise psychological goal. However sometimes this is the situation:



At times in order to get from the hurt to the forgiveness you have to go through a period of anger. If it is only a minor transgression then one does not have to. If it was significant especially at a young age and especially when over a period of time then one cannot go straight from the hurt to the forgiveness. They have to go through a period of anger.

This is where a lot of people get stuck, in one of two ways. Firstly, as in the case cited above the person is uncomfortable with anger and finds it difficult to go through that stage. They try all kinds of ways to avoid it and the example above shows some of the rationalisations that people will come up with in order to do that. Secondly, the other individual does not avoid it but gets stuck in it. This is not an uncommon scenario to come across in therapy. Some one who is chronically angry at their abuser. Quite often they never see their abuser now or the abuser may even be dead. The client may be carrying around a sack of anger on their back towards some one who died years ago. What does that achieve, and more importantly who suffers from the sack of anger - certainly not the dead person.


Some find forgiving their abuser this hard to do.




If the person does successfully transverse the anger then they are well on their way to achieving a sense of forgiveness. Once done, their life in the here and now is more pleasant and they are capable of more staisfying relationships in their current world. Indeed their current relationships are much less likely to be damaged by such unresolved past events.

However the difficult part for the therapist is to judge how long the angry period is meant to last. This is not an easy thing to gauge. As is often the case in therapy it is usually best to leave it up to the client and they will tell you in one way or another. However this is not always the case. For instance it is highly likely that the client described above will be saying she is ready to pass the angry stage before she is.


Living in the here and now. Can't enjoy this if your head is stuck in the past.



But she may tell the therapist in another way. Over time one will notice that she spontaneously brings up the issue of anger at mother less and less. When this happens she is ready to begin the forgiveness work and the therapist starts that phase of therapy.

Graffiti

Larissa - anger case study and results

I appreciate your posts on anger because it’s a huge problem issue for me. I’m not really sure how to answer these questions because my parents left when I was young (around two). They came to visit sometimes so I had parents, but they were more like guests and not really like parents. I think my parent ego state is based on my father’s parents (grandparents). So if there's anything I've said here that would help me deal with anger better, I'd love to hear it.

My Parent ego state and anger

When my grandfather was angry he would (Hit, withdraw and sulk, shout, swear, give a lecture, get sarcastic, eat, fight, get depressed and so on)

Say - nothing

Do – slam the door on the way out and leave for awhile

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

Do – threaten to send me away, threaten to send my brothers away, threaten to hurt me, blame me for ruining her life

My Child ego state decisions about anger

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Feel – she hated me more than usual

When I saw grandmother or grandfather angry I would

Say - nothing

Do - hide

Feel - scared

What did your grandmother and grandfather say about expressing anger. (OK, not OK, good, bad, time & place, men & women, etc) I learned very young that it was not acceptable for me to be angry or even look angry in front of them…ever. I don't remember them ever saying anything about it.

As a teenager did you get rebellious and angry? If so how did you express it and how did the parent figures respond? As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things. Sometimes I ran away. I stayed away as much as possible. Sometimes my grandmother found my stash and she flushed it (or hell, maybe she really kept it for herself) and she'd tell me I was trash like my mother and a nutcase like my mother's father. Fortunately, I had a couple of really good teachers in high school who motivated me to stay out of trouble and encouraged me to escape home by finding work rather than laying drunk in the alleys. They saved my life.

Summation of early decisions = Anger is forbidden.

---------------

Results

This case study is a good example of how a person can acquire contradictory script messages about anger and its expression. As we can see Larissa made a Child ego state decision:

“Don’t feel anger”

or at least

Don’t express your anger”

This is held in the Child ego state. At the same time she would have introjected her grandmother’s anger expression into her Parent ego state. This is shown with the statements like:

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

and

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Thus she has a strong model which shows that it is OK to feel angry and to express that anger in a forthright and demonstrative way. Thus Larissa has a contradiction in her personality in this way.

It is probably safe to say that the early decisions are more influential in the personality than the models, however at the same time the modelling of behaviour is recognised as a significant factor in personality development.

Logically there are 4 possibilities
1. Decision made with consistent modelling
2. Decision made with contradictory modelling
3. Decision made with no modelling
4. No decision made but with modelling of behaviour

Larrisa is possibility number 2 and this could lead to some outright
contradictory behaviour with anger at times. Or what is more likely is that the decision behaviour will by overt with the modelled behaviour being expressed in a more convert way. Indeed this may be the case with Larissa (however this is based on very minimal information)

She says:
As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things.


This could indicate that the permission to express anger has resulted in her expressing anger at herself. Which resulted in some self destructive behaviour. In relationships with others there maybe a suppression of the anger as the decision demands.

Graffiti

Anger in my personality

Anger work - How anger is structured in my personality


My Parent ego state and anger

When my father was angry he would (Hit, withdraw and sulk, shout, swear, give a lecture, get sarcastic, eat, fight, get depressed and so on)

Say -

Do -


When my Mother was angry she would:

Say -

Do -




My Child ego state decisions about anger

When I was angry mother (father) would

Say -

Do -

Feel -

When I saw mother (father) angry I would

Say -

Do -

Feel -


What did your mother and father say about expressing anger. (OK, not OK, good, bad, time & place, men & women, etc)



As a teenager did you get rebellious and angry? If so how did you express it and how did the parent figures respond?

Summation of early decisions =



Graffiti

Anger in the personality

Two ways of incorporating personality factors about anger

Injunctions - early decisions by the child (Child ego state)
Parent communicates to the child in some form that it is not OK to feel and/or express anger. As the young child has no Adult or Parent ego state it accepts the message in its Little Professor ego state, (The Adult in the Child ego state (A1)). 1. The child hears the parental directive in its A1
2. The youngster also listens to its own feelings (provided by the C1) as a reaction to the directive .
3. The young child makes its early decision based on these two bits of information and stores that decision in the P1.



Modelling based Don’t be angry injunction (Parent ego state)
As the child grows it begins to store modelling in its Parent ego state in a very rudimentary form. These can never be fully expressed in a grown up way until the Parent ego state gains maturation in the teenage years. The young girl will model on mother and if mother has a strong aversion to expressing or feeling anger the daughter will model that and incorporate it into her own Parent ego state.



The more the Child ego state decisions are consistent with the Parent ego state modelling the stronger the influence in the personality. At times they will be consistent and at other times they can be direct opposites. Consider this example. Johnny gets angry and hits his sister on the head with a piece of wood. On seeing this mother approaches Johnny angrily. With a raised angry voice she smacks Johnny on the back side and tells him not to hit his sister.

Johnny thinks in his A1 ego state. I was angry, that made mother very frightening to me and I got hit so I decide, “Don’t feel angry”. (Child ego state)

At the same time Johnny models on mother’s anger and her expression of that anger by hitting. (Parent ego state)

Thus the Child decisions about anger and the Parent modelling about anger are contradictory.



Problems with feeling and expressing anger

Starting with the most serious psychopathology moving to the least.

1. Don’t be sane. This person does not even acknowledge that a event has occurred that one could feel about. One may have been put down or say ridiculed and the individual does not even recognise that the event has occurred. The Adult ego state is so dysfunctional the facts of the situation are not recognised or comprehended.

2. Don’t feel. This person recognises that an event has occurred but does not feel anything in response to it. Person gets their wallet stolen but has no feelings about it.

3. Don’t feel X, feel Y. Person acknowledges the event, has a feeling in response to the event but it is not the appropriate feeling. Instead of feeling angry at being unjustly criticised the person feels scared or embarrassed. Women will often feel scared instead of angry and men will often feel anger instead of scared.

4. Don’t express your feelings. This person acknowledges an event has occurred, feels the appropriate feeling about it, but does not express the feeling.

5. Feel X, but express Y. This person acknowledges an event has occurred, feels the appropriate feeling about it, expresses the feeling but it is the inappropriate feeling. The woman who feels angry and then cries, the man who feels sad but shows anger

(Ref: Treatment of character)

Graffiti

Anger work in psychotherapy

Preliminary notes

It is necessary to use anger work in a context in counselling. In some areas such as the bodywork approaches this is not done and anger work can be used just as an exercise in itself. It must be relevant to the contract at hand and have a clear role in assisting the client to achieve that contract.

For example a client could say, “I want to shout at my father because of the way he treated me the other day”. In order for a therapist to go along with such a contract he needs to be aware of what happened between the two people as the anger work could be just a part in the game. What is the client’s script messages about anger and its expression. The client may be chronically angry and to go ahead and do the anger work would be contraindicated.

Anger work is a regressive technique. That is it encourages the client to ‘regress’ into the Child ego state and out of the Adult and Parent ego states. This has obvious uses for the individual who is stuck in his Parent and Adult and excludes the Child ego state, which many people are who attend psychotherapy. On the other hand there are people who are too much in their Child ego state and exclude the Parent and Adult, clearly one would need to be careful in doing such anger work with these individuals. For example the chronically angry person, and the hysteric personality type.



Anger work also destabilises the personality. This is one of its great therapeutic advantages. A client’s script becomes set and solid over time after many, many rehearsals and reinforcements day after day. Anger work can be used to shake it up and loosen the concrete holding it together. Once loosened one can then restructure the script into another form that allows the individual to live a more emotionally liberated life. That is, less script bound and more autonomous.

The down side of this destabilisation is that what if the client is already destabilised such as can be the case with schizophrenia, dependent personality, borderline personality and the obsessive/compulsive personality. One would need to be cautious using anger work in such situations.

Another difficulty with anger work is that anger always has the potential to turn into physical violence. So if the client is impulsive and has a tendency to be explosive then one needs to be very careful with anger work particularly if the client is bigger than you.


These women need to do some anger work, for sure!


In all my years of counselling I have never had a client express their anger in a way which hurt me or any of my property. One can use “Stop” techniques if necessary. Another advantage of this is with the client who comes from a physically violent back ground. By doing anger work they get first hand experience that there can be anger without physical violence.

Anger expression can be self validating. If one feels they have been wronged, then the act of saying so , especially to the face of the other party says to the individual - “I am worthwhile”. So to say such things with the expression of anger can assist with the self esteem.

Graffiti

Expressing internalized anger

The internalised anger transaction can take two forms.



Firstly the person receives information of some kind. It is disturbing information to which the person reacts in an angry fashion. The person may have been criticised at work, they may have got a “B” for an assignment when they expected an “A”, they may have been rejected by someone or many, many other possibilities.

Once the information has been acknowledged by the Adult ego state the internalised anger can be expressed in two ways which are indeed quite different in their origin and indicate two quite different psychological processes.

The person can express such anger at the Child ego state from the Critical Parent ego state (CP). This person can be said to have a large internal critic inside their head which at times actively scolds and derides them. The origin of this comes from an introjection in childhood of the parent figures around them.

The child may have observed mother and father being critical of others and themselves and he copies that. However the more potent source of an active internal CP is when the parents have expressed criticism of the person when they were a child. The young child is criticised directly by mother and father. This criticism is then internalised by the youngster and stored in their Parent ego state through the process of introjection.



Often the words the person says inside their head as an adult are exactly the same words that were expressed to the person as a child by mother and father. Or the self criticism is about the same kind of things mother criticised the about child as a youngster.

This type of self directed anger is the least pathological and the easier of the two to treat. As with all treatment contracts it is better to look at increasing some behaviour rather than decreasing behaviour. One would not want the contract to be - “I will decrease my Critical Parent comments”. Instead one would want the contract - “I will increase my Nurturing Parent comments”. If one increases their Nurturing Parent ego state then the Critical Parent will naturally go down. One focuses on the Nurturing Parent rather than the Critical Parent.



Interestingly if a person has a high internal critic directed at self then there is always the potential for it to be directed at others as well. If one is working with a client who has a high CP for self then one also wonders if there are high CP thoughts about the therapist as well.

Some with a high CP for self can also have a high CP for others. Those critical thoughts of others may be openly stated or they may never be stated and just remain internal thoughts. But the potential is always there compared to the individual who does not have a high internally directed CP.

Child ego state anger
As the diagram shows the other type of internally directed anger comes from the Child ego state and is directed at the Child ego state. As a consequence these angry statements are not introjects from our parent figures. Instead they result from decisions that the Child has made about itself. These represent more serious psychopathology and thus the person can be seen to be more ‘damaged’.



The nature of the CP statements tend to be; “I am bad because...”

The Child ego state angry statements may also be precipitated by an event and thus one gets statements like: “I am bad because..... and there is an inherent badness in me anyway”. At other times there may be no precipitating event and the person simply expresses anger at self for no obvious reason. At times this can result in self harming type of behaviour.

Whilst an internal directed CP is common, almost every one has an internal critic of some kind. The internally direct Child statements are far less common. It requires the person to believe and feel there is something basically and intrinsically bad about self. This probably represents 5% of the population. As a result it is much more difficult to treat as one is looking to remediate a basic belief about self and not simply encourage NP statements to counter the CP statement from the Parent ego state.

Graffiti

Shame - edit #4 (Part 1)

This post will develop over a couple of days

When one reads the literature on shame one finds a bit of confusion as to what shame is and is not. Or perhaps it is better to say that people have differing views on it. One commonly finds three things mentioned in relation to shame.

Internalised anger
Guilt &
Shame

These three things are often mentioned as relating to or being part of shame. My own view is that each of these constitute three separate psychological processes. They are three separate entities. However they can and often do occur contemporaneously.



This would explain why some people may see guilt as being part of the shame experience or internal anger as defined as being shame on occasion. They can occur at the same time and often do. If one can define the three separate psychological processes this would clarify the nature of shame and its associated processes.

There are two ways in which internal anger can occur as shown in the diagram



People can express anger at themselves from their Child ego state. When this occurs people will do negative internal self talk such as I am stupid, I was a geek talking to that girl and so on....

Anger can also be expressed from the Critical Parent ego state to the Child of the person. In this case the internal self talk does not start with a “I” statement but with a “You” statement when an internal ‘telling off’ occurs. Examples may be “You were such a jerk talking to that boy”, “You can’t even get a simple report right”, You stupid f**k” and so forth.

Guilt occurs when the person has a sense of breaking an internal rule which they have for them self. If a husband thinks the woman next door is hot and foxy but he has a rule inside his Parent ego state which says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife” then he can end up feeling guilt for having such thoughts and feelings.



Or a person may steal money from a brother and later feel guilt about it because he has the rule in his Parent that you don’t steal from your brother. People can feel guilty the next day after a night of drinking too much. Alcohol decommissions the Parent ego state and thus people behave in such ways that they usually wouldn’t. The next day after the alcohol has worn off they feel guilty because the Parent ego state becomes active again.



Finally we have shame which is a natural feeling reaction to a particular environmental stimuli. Often, but by no means always, it is associated with sex, nudity or intimate bodily processes such as urinating or defecating. A prime example is the enuretic child who wets his bed at night. When the child wakes up and realises he has wet the bed it is very easy for him to feel shame about that and he can go to extensive lengths to try and hide it. Indeed parents need to be very careful not engender a sense of shame in a child when he wets the bed. It needs to be dealt with very carefully so as to avoid this. Thus we have the shame transaction.



As you can see this differs from the guilt transaction in that there is no Parent to Child transaction before for emotion is experienced. This is consistent with Freud’s presentations on shame which is probably best summed up by Lynd(1958) who notes that guilt is usually more related to transgressions of clear moral codes and rules. No better example of this is found in religious texts which define what behaviours, thoughts and feelings are regarded as sinful. These are incorporated into the Parent ego state by the young child and when transgressed the individual most often will expoerience guilt.

With shame the rules are much less codified and clear. Transgressions of them are more by tactlessness, errors in taste or bad luck. As a result the Parent ego state is much less involved in the process. Again the example of the enuretic child demonstrates this. Wetting the bed does not break a Parent ego state rule and generally would not be regarded as sinful. Instead it result from bad luck or factors outside the child’s control.

Lynd, H.M. (1958) On Shame and the Search for Identity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.


This indicates that there are three separate psychological processes - inward anger, guilt and shame. They can occur on their own or they can occur together. However if we see them as separate processes then the situation as to what shame is and is not can be kept more clear.


The separateness of these three psychological processes can be understood experientially as well. In therapy I may ask the client the following questions:

Recall a time when you felt guilty.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of guilt feels like for you?

Recall a time when you felt shame.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of shame feels like for you?

Recall a time when you felt angry at yourself.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of self directed anger feels like for you?

Most people find this quite easy to do and report that the experience of shame and guilt are different which supports the contention that they involve discrete psychological operations.

If any one here wants to do this exercise I would be interested to hear your answers.




Shame and embarrassment

Under normal circumstances shame is not an emotion that is experienced all that often. The feelings chart shows there are various groups of feelings.



I have purposely used the word “Family” because they are like that. There is a commonality amongst the feelings but they are also all different. Just like members in a family, they all have a basic commonality and they are also all different.

It is proposed that shame and embarrassment are like this. Embarrassment is a minor version of the full shame reaction and thus embarrassment is a much more common feeling for people to experience. It is safe to say that most people could relatively easily recite situations where they have felt embarrassed. Under normal circumstances there would be far less events to recall where the person felt shame.

They both come from the same emotion but vary in their impact. Whilst embarrassment is an unpleasant emotion to experience it does not have the devastating effect that shame can have. Charles Rycroft notes that shame is the cinderella of the destructive emotions. The experience of shame tears at the core of who we are. It effects us at a deep level and the understanding of who we are.



With guilt people can have the experience of,

“I am bad for doing that thing”

whereas with shame the person is more likely to end up with the feeling of,

“I am bad”
Whilst the shame will be connected to a certain event occurring the resultant comprehension of it is more about me as a person rather than about something I have done. Shame has far more destructive power than most other emotions.

As stated above under normal circumstances shame is infrequently experienced. It tends to only be experienced in relation to quite unusual circumstances, where as embarrassment is more frequently experienced in reaction to a wider range of events. There is however an exception to this.


Will he feel embarrassed about ending up like this? Lots of people are watching!


Parents quickly learn that emotions are a effective way to get children to conform.

They can use guilt.

“Mummy will feel sad and hurt if you don’t eat up all your food”.

They can use fear by threatening abandonment.

“Unless you have your bath now mummy will get a policeman to come and take you away”.

These emotions cause pain in the child and thus the child will tend to behave in order to avoid the painful experience. The same applies for shame which can be a very unpleasant emotion to experience. Thus parents can say things like,

“You should be ashamed of yourself for.....”

It works in getting a child to behave in a certain way but it is also particularly destructive in the ways described above. I would strongly advise parents not to employ this kind of child rearing practice.


This will get people to conform, but at what long term psychological cost?

If you are working with a client who reports this kind of parenting in their childhood then you know the person may be damaged psychologically at quite a deep level. Also they will tend to report the experience of shame in the present more than average. They will tend to react to events with shame whereas others would tend to only experience embarrassment. This of course just amplifies the problem.

Rycroft, C.
1971. Reich. Fontana: Great Britain

The discussion about using shame as a parenting technique provides insight into the difference between neurotic shame and Here and Now (H&N) or reality based shame.



This figure shows the two different types of shame are functions of two different parts of the personality. Reality based shame is a function of the Free Child aspect of the personality and the Adapted Child ego state is where neurotic shame would result from.

This proposal rests on the assumption that shame can be a normal and natural human emotion. An assumption that gets plenty of support. Firstly Freud (1942) notes that shame is “,,, organically predetermined...”(p.46). Then English (1994) discusses the topic in some depth. As she notes it would be impossible to instil shame in a child who did not already have the organic receptors for it. The ability to feel shame can be seen to have some evolutionary advantages as well.

English reports that Charles Darwin suggested that shame had certain evolutionary advantages. Shame is often around nudity and sexual matters and that covering up the genitals afforded more protection of them which also increased the likelihood of the propagation of the species. The expression of shame often involves blushing and a desire to hide which corresponds to the feeling of being dangerously exposed.


Why only cover up those parts of the body?



English, F. (1994) ‘Shame and Social Control Revisited.’ Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 109 - 120.

Freud, S. (1942) Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. London: Imago.



As a result humans are so constructed that should a particular set of circumstances arise they will naturally feel shame. To make the assessment of reality based shame versus neurotic shame one needs to judge the appropriateness of the circumstances that have lead to the shame reaction.

Sometimes this is clear but at other times it is harder to assess. As said before shame is often, but by no means always, associated with nudity, sex or intimate physical and psychological factors. Below are some instances where many would feel shame as an appropriate H&N reaction.

The child who wets its bed or soils itself.
A woman discovers her ex-partner has placed intimate nude photographs of her on the internet for all to see.
A man is publicly exposed as an adulterer in his church group.
A man publicly jokes about his wife’s vaginismus.
A woman pokes fun at her husband about his baldness which she knows he is very sensitive about.



If a person reports feeling shame in such situations these could be diagnosed as Free Child shame reactions.

Some times the circumstances are less clear.
A teenager gets an F for his maths test.
A lecturer trips on steps as he walks up onto the stage to give a lecture.
Is it appropriate to feel shame in these examples, is harder to judge.

Many people with a social phobia report shame and embarrassment that is neurotic in nature. They feel as they walk into a social gathering that everybody is looking at them, they look awkward and odd such that they experience shame. Or as they talk they think they are blushing and saying stupid things and feel shame as a result.

These are likely to be Adapted Child ego state responses of shame. One reason why these occur can be due to the parenting styles as described above. If the parents have used shame as a method of punishment and said things like, “You should be ashamed of your self for...” the person is primed to have shame reactions as an adult. As a result they will have reactions of shame when most others would not.



This leaves us at the next juncture of what does one do when they feel shame? Thus the distinction between neurotic and reality based shame assumes some importance.


Graffiti