When we review our childhood, and find that there have been repeated boundary violations, we
ask ourselves why would people who believe that they love their children do this to them? I
believe that if you search well enough you will find that parents who violate their children's
boundary rights are people who felt like victims during their own childhoods. They are very
angry people. Indeed, much of this book has been about the childhood trauma experienced by
my parents, causing unremitting grief that turned sour into various forms unhealthy
entitlements and meanness.
But this leads to one of the most important insights that have come to me about the overeating
and obesity problems of myself and virtually every other fat person. All of us who have a
problem with fatness have internalized the anger of significant others. That is why we are so
stressed, and why we must continuously use food in a vain attempt to separate ourselves from
the anger that originates with others, but that lives actively within ourselves. We use food to
"swallow" this destructive pain of others; we use fatness to dissociate our "selves" from this
anger so that we can continue to be "ourselves" in a very angry world.
Look around you, and notice the really fat people in your experience. Then ask yourself: have
these people been forced to spend their lives around really angry people? Notice the word
forced. There are people who cannot escape the angry people in their lives. They feel trapped
because they are trapped. There are two types of trapped people in this world. First, the angry,
aggressive person who spews out toxic anger in a world where he feels helpless to solve the
problems of his life. Second, the people who, as described earlier, try incessantly to avoid
acting like the aggressive people that they see around them. They know that if they return "fire
with fire" that they will become like the bullying tormentors of their difficult lives.
How does someone become trapped? There are three human responses to stress: fight, run
or cope. All people need to be equally good at all three responses. The fight response is
basically a problem-solving response. Destructive energy has come into your life, and you take
effective action to remove it or set limits on it.
Anger, as such, is probably the most important to human civilization of the three human
emotions: anger, fear and grief. With anger we build things, solve problems, set limits, and
work towards our goals. We use anger-based problem-solving action whenever we know that
we have a good chance of being successful in our creative efforts to find solutions to real
dilemmas.
When the problem or threat is too big for us, we experience appropriate fear, and we seek to
run or escape from a destructive situation. But what if we are trapped, and cannot escape?
Then we spend a lifetime of grief, seeking constantly to cope with the stresses and losses of
our lives. We attempt to accept the hostility towards ourselves without making the abusers
aggression worse through assertive responses that would be useless, ineffective and even
dangerous. Sometimes a childhood replete domination and aggression causes the
development of what we call "learned helplessness", in which the person generalizes their felt
helplessness during childhood to the rest of their life, thereby cutting themselves off from the
learning of problem-solving skills.
Obesity may be the closest thing that most of us know about cult-induced brain-washing. In
cult-like groups, the victim is indoctrinated by both negative and positive stimuli, until they
become too tired to think. All family or workplace abusers use these same techniques:
inconsistent use of truth and lies is used to induce trauma and trance until the victim will
believe without question whatever he is told to believe. We know from studies of cult victims
that the indoctrination with a mixture of truth and lies makes it extraordinarily difficult for the
person to heal. This is because he does not want to be temporarily deprived of the truths he
has come to rely on, which will happen if he rejects the believed lies.
The fat person has had, however, a remarkable defense. The use of food can calm the
stressed brain, while the use of fat can serve as a form of dissociation from the abuser. The
abuser's anger is internalized, along with the calming food; but the obese person associates
his fat, not with his own anger, but with the harmful anger of others. The anger is there, but he
has successfully distanced himself from it. This defense explains why a person like me has
been able to progress towards our own personal goals, so long as we remain overweight.
The aggressiveness of others is internalized, but converted into a "not me" place in the
physical body.
Indeed, the presence of fat on a person may very well mean that weight loss should not be
attempted until the person is finally able to extricate himself from tormenting relationships,
followed by enough learned assertiveness to remain free from abuse in the future.
Unfortunately, when a young child grows accustomed to coping with abuse through overeating
and fatness, she may continue a lifetime of choices to maintain this level of stress. After all,
she is not only accustomed to this stress, she has also become very skilled at handling
difficult people. She may also be unable to find meaning in any activity other than helping
unhealthy, dangerous people because of unresolved grief. In my case, for instance, I may
never have overcome the grief over seeing my father succumb to mental illness, and have
therefore spent a lifetime trying to help others deal with the problems caused by abuse and
other forms of derangement.
It is easy to see that I developed a patient, rather courageous, skill at helpfulness towards my
own angry family members. This was accomplished by faith in God and the Bible, the healing
nature of education, music and food, coupled with the defensive properties of body fat. I had a
brief period of slimness, during a time that I felt free to progress towards my own goals. But
when I was twenty, I chose to marry a man, who through no fault of his own, had experienced
continuous trauma in his own childhood, and who had toxic unresolved anger that expressed
itself primarily in passive-aggressive and depressive ways.
As with my original family, I was helpful with him, increasing both his happiness and success
in the workplace, while using food to cope with my stress, frustration and disappointment. It
could be said that where one person has toxic anger, the other person will carry toxic grief.
Probably on their bodies in the form of fat or other disease.
Later, I chose a profession that would bury me under the the grief and pain of the
disadvantaged and/or unhealthy persons among us who need help, coupled with the toxic
energy of many social work professionals. Notice that the client's problems did not make me
fat. Working with peers who seem to live off of the energy that toxic anger provides most
certainly did.
How do you know when you are around toxic, negative energy? Quite simply, you feel tired. If
you look closely, things tend to wilt. Energy is lost, almost as if a planet in the universe traveled
too close to a "black hole."
Look at the negative effects of toxic anger on our society? Children in school who cannot learn
because of the overemphasis on punishment and unwholesome structure. Children in
families who cannot adapt because of constant domination, criticism and punishment.
Marriages that break up because each partner tend to limit the other's happiness and
opportunity through possession, domination, criticism and control. Work groups that make no
profit because the angry workplace environment uses up all the human energy and effort.
Communities that neither thrive nor grow because negative energy keeps leaders out and
people depressed. A nation that chooses greed and war over prosperity and creativity.
Churches that run in circles, like tigers biting their own tails, and never discovering the freeing
liberation that is the love of a creative, energizing God.
When did I become able to lose weight and choose to set limits on toxic energy? I think the
greatest gift was my opportunity to work with clients through my private practice. Throughout
this work, I see people who through their own hard work and faith convert their grief and toxic
energy into problem-solving ability and renewed capacity for love, faith and tenderness towards
others. The joy of the work makes me unwilling to waste time on interpersonal games that
people use to dispel their own negative energy. I have been in private practice for ten years,
and the last five of those years has been devoted to the possibility of weight loss.
This work has also meant that I am able to remain independent of social groups that are
unhealthy and unwilling to heal from destructive interactions.
Nowhere has this ability to escape negative environments been so obvious as in my efforts to
find a church that matches my need for companionship with others who share my belief in
God's love and transforming power. This difficulty has discussed elsewhere in terms of my
own personality limitations. But for the moment, I can celebrate the reality that I no longer have
to join groups where there is too much toxic energy, too much sarcasm, too much
meaningless competition, and too much resentment.
Grief is acceptable and normal. Grief can result in new life, new growth, and new construction.
But toxic energy destroys everything in its path, and I don't need it in my life. I am not trapped.
Now, finally, because of the life I have lived, the work I have done, and the faith that is renewed,
I can walk away from toxic groups, and search for what I want in personal relationships.
I have learned an important fact about myself. People who are sensitive enough to help people
with their problems are by nature highly sensitive to sources of anger and dysfunction within
groups. In therapy, I enter into the pain, grief and anger of my clients. Together my client, God
and I work that pain into recovery and growth. We do this by agreement, and by sincere
intention and effort.
By contrast, in a toxic environment, the sensitivities of a therapist-type are hard to turn off. We
see people around us that have a need for healing, but we also know that we have no contract
to work with them. We feel their pain in situations where it would be unethical to work to
resolve that pain because of dual relationships and absence of a work agreement. Therefore,
the whole experience of being in a dysfunctional group is extraordinarily tiring, in comparison to
the joy and energy involved in real problem-solving with clients. I learned that I must belong to
healthy groups, or else, for the sake of my health and my practice, avoid them.
I will find a church in which I can enjoy creative, loving religious experiences in my future. This
is partly because I finally know what to ask for in my prayers.
As long as I am still working as a therapist and a writer, I will feel blessed to be making a
contribution to the health and well-being of very special people, and to be serving God by what I
do, and by the person that I am.
It is very likely that my abilities at group organization will be met through group activities
sponsored through my own practice, including a Happiness Now group, a grief group, and
possibly even an anger recovery group.
I am indeed blessed. I no longer have to carry on my body the internalized anger of other
people. The more that I humbly accept that other people have a right to their own beliefs,
feelings, choices and goals, the more I am able to detach myself from their anger. The more I
learn to respect my own anger over boundary violations, the more I am able to assertively
require that others respect my rights. The more I give up self-inflated ideas about myself as a
helper, the more I am free to choose healthy groups where people do not need my skills for
dealing with toxicity.
In sum, I can protect myself by making good evaluations and judgements, by being assertive in
setting limits on those who wish to take advantage, and by avoiding toxic people. I don't need
food or fat anymore; I don't need my fortress anymore. I have God. I have myself. I am useful.
I have love. I embrace life, and all those who come my way in peace. God bless.
ask ourselves why would people who believe that they love their children do this to them? I
believe that if you search well enough you will find that parents who violate their children's
boundary rights are people who felt like victims during their own childhoods. They are very
angry people. Indeed, much of this book has been about the childhood trauma experienced by
my parents, causing unremitting grief that turned sour into various forms unhealthy
entitlements and meanness.
But this leads to one of the most important insights that have come to me about the overeating
and obesity problems of myself and virtually every other fat person. All of us who have a
problem with fatness have internalized the anger of significant others. That is why we are so
stressed, and why we must continuously use food in a vain attempt to separate ourselves from
the anger that originates with others, but that lives actively within ourselves. We use food to
"swallow" this destructive pain of others; we use fatness to dissociate our "selves" from this
anger so that we can continue to be "ourselves" in a very angry world.
Look around you, and notice the really fat people in your experience. Then ask yourself: have
these people been forced to spend their lives around really angry people? Notice the word
forced. There are people who cannot escape the angry people in their lives. They feel trapped
because they are trapped. There are two types of trapped people in this world. First, the angry,
aggressive person who spews out toxic anger in a world where he feels helpless to solve the
problems of his life. Second, the people who, as described earlier, try incessantly to avoid
acting like the aggressive people that they see around them. They know that if they return "fire
with fire" that they will become like the bullying tormentors of their difficult lives.
How does someone become trapped? There are three human responses to stress: fight, run
or cope. All people need to be equally good at all three responses. The fight response is
basically a problem-solving response. Destructive energy has come into your life, and you take
effective action to remove it or set limits on it.
Anger, as such, is probably the most important to human civilization of the three human
emotions: anger, fear and grief. With anger we build things, solve problems, set limits, and
work towards our goals. We use anger-based problem-solving action whenever we know that
we have a good chance of being successful in our creative efforts to find solutions to real
dilemmas.
When the problem or threat is too big for us, we experience appropriate fear, and we seek to
run or escape from a destructive situation. But what if we are trapped, and cannot escape?
Then we spend a lifetime of grief, seeking constantly to cope with the stresses and losses of
our lives. We attempt to accept the hostility towards ourselves without making the abusers
aggression worse through assertive responses that would be useless, ineffective and even
dangerous. Sometimes a childhood replete domination and aggression causes the
development of what we call "learned helplessness", in which the person generalizes their felt
helplessness during childhood to the rest of their life, thereby cutting themselves off from the
learning of problem-solving skills.
Obesity may be the closest thing that most of us know about cult-induced brain-washing. In
cult-like groups, the victim is indoctrinated by both negative and positive stimuli, until they
become too tired to think. All family or workplace abusers use these same techniques:
inconsistent use of truth and lies is used to induce trauma and trance until the victim will
believe without question whatever he is told to believe. We know from studies of cult victims
that the indoctrination with a mixture of truth and lies makes it extraordinarily difficult for the
person to heal. This is because he does not want to be temporarily deprived of the truths he
has come to rely on, which will happen if he rejects the believed lies.
The fat person has had, however, a remarkable defense. The use of food can calm the
stressed brain, while the use of fat can serve as a form of dissociation from the abuser. The
abuser's anger is internalized, along with the calming food; but the obese person associates
his fat, not with his own anger, but with the harmful anger of others. The anger is there, but he
has successfully distanced himself from it. This defense explains why a person like me has
been able to progress towards our own personal goals, so long as we remain overweight.
The aggressiveness of others is internalized, but converted into a "not me" place in the
physical body.
Indeed, the presence of fat on a person may very well mean that weight loss should not be
attempted until the person is finally able to extricate himself from tormenting relationships,
followed by enough learned assertiveness to remain free from abuse in the future.
Unfortunately, when a young child grows accustomed to coping with abuse through overeating
and fatness, she may continue a lifetime of choices to maintain this level of stress. After all,
she is not only accustomed to this stress, she has also become very skilled at handling
difficult people. She may also be unable to find meaning in any activity other than helping
unhealthy, dangerous people because of unresolved grief. In my case, for instance, I may
never have overcome the grief over seeing my father succumb to mental illness, and have
therefore spent a lifetime trying to help others deal with the problems caused by abuse and
other forms of derangement.
It is easy to see that I developed a patient, rather courageous, skill at helpfulness towards my
own angry family members. This was accomplished by faith in God and the Bible, the healing
nature of education, music and food, coupled with the defensive properties of body fat. I had a
brief period of slimness, during a time that I felt free to progress towards my own goals. But
when I was twenty, I chose to marry a man, who through no fault of his own, had experienced
continuous trauma in his own childhood, and who had toxic unresolved anger that expressed
itself primarily in passive-aggressive and depressive ways.
As with my original family, I was helpful with him, increasing both his happiness and success
in the workplace, while using food to cope with my stress, frustration and disappointment. It
could be said that where one person has toxic anger, the other person will carry toxic grief.
Probably on their bodies in the form of fat or other disease.
Later, I chose a profession that would bury me under the the grief and pain of the
disadvantaged and/or unhealthy persons among us who need help, coupled with the toxic
energy of many social work professionals. Notice that the client's problems did not make me
fat. Working with peers who seem to live off of the energy that toxic anger provides most
certainly did.
How do you know when you are around toxic, negative energy? Quite simply, you feel tired. If
you look closely, things tend to wilt. Energy is lost, almost as if a planet in the universe traveled
too close to a "black hole."
Look at the negative effects of toxic anger on our society? Children in school who cannot learn
because of the overemphasis on punishment and unwholesome structure. Children in
families who cannot adapt because of constant domination, criticism and punishment.
Marriages that break up because each partner tend to limit the other's happiness and
opportunity through possession, domination, criticism and control. Work groups that make no
profit because the angry workplace environment uses up all the human energy and effort.
Communities that neither thrive nor grow because negative energy keeps leaders out and
people depressed. A nation that chooses greed and war over prosperity and creativity.
Churches that run in circles, like tigers biting their own tails, and never discovering the freeing
liberation that is the love of a creative, energizing God.
When did I become able to lose weight and choose to set limits on toxic energy? I think the
greatest gift was my opportunity to work with clients through my private practice. Throughout
this work, I see people who through their own hard work and faith convert their grief and toxic
energy into problem-solving ability and renewed capacity for love, faith and tenderness towards
others. The joy of the work makes me unwilling to waste time on interpersonal games that
people use to dispel their own negative energy. I have been in private practice for ten years,
and the last five of those years has been devoted to the possibility of weight loss.
This work has also meant that I am able to remain independent of social groups that are
unhealthy and unwilling to heal from destructive interactions.
Nowhere has this ability to escape negative environments been so obvious as in my efforts to
find a church that matches my need for companionship with others who share my belief in
God's love and transforming power. This difficulty has discussed elsewhere in terms of my
own personality limitations. But for the moment, I can celebrate the reality that I no longer have
to join groups where there is too much toxic energy, too much sarcasm, too much
meaningless competition, and too much resentment.
Grief is acceptable and normal. Grief can result in new life, new growth, and new construction.
But toxic energy destroys everything in its path, and I don't need it in my life. I am not trapped.
Now, finally, because of the life I have lived, the work I have done, and the faith that is renewed,
I can walk away from toxic groups, and search for what I want in personal relationships.
I have learned an important fact about myself. People who are sensitive enough to help people
with their problems are by nature highly sensitive to sources of anger and dysfunction within
groups. In therapy, I enter into the pain, grief and anger of my clients. Together my client, God
and I work that pain into recovery and growth. We do this by agreement, and by sincere
intention and effort.
By contrast, in a toxic environment, the sensitivities of a therapist-type are hard to turn off. We
see people around us that have a need for healing, but we also know that we have no contract
to work with them. We feel their pain in situations where it would be unethical to work to
resolve that pain because of dual relationships and absence of a work agreement. Therefore,
the whole experience of being in a dysfunctional group is extraordinarily tiring, in comparison to
the joy and energy involved in real problem-solving with clients. I learned that I must belong to
healthy groups, or else, for the sake of my health and my practice, avoid them.
I will find a church in which I can enjoy creative, loving religious experiences in my future. This
is partly because I finally know what to ask for in my prayers.
As long as I am still working as a therapist and a writer, I will feel blessed to be making a
contribution to the health and well-being of very special people, and to be serving God by what I
do, and by the person that I am.
It is very likely that my abilities at group organization will be met through group activities
sponsored through my own practice, including a Happiness Now group, a grief group, and
possibly even an anger recovery group.
I am indeed blessed. I no longer have to carry on my body the internalized anger of other
people. The more that I humbly accept that other people have a right to their own beliefs,
feelings, choices and goals, the more I am able to detach myself from their anger. The more I
learn to respect my own anger over boundary violations, the more I am able to assertively
require that others respect my rights. The more I give up self-inflated ideas about myself as a
helper, the more I am free to choose healthy groups where people do not need my skills for
dealing with toxicity.
In sum, I can protect myself by making good evaluations and judgements, by being assertive in
setting limits on those who wish to take advantage, and by avoiding toxic people. I don't need
food or fat anymore; I don't need my fortress anymore. I have God. I have myself. I am useful.
I have love. I embrace life, and all those who come my way in peace. God bless.
| What goes into a man;s mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' Matthew 15:11 You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. John 16:20b |
© Copyright by Nancy Carter, LCSW, ACSW
The Internalized Anger of Others
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