Anger and isolation

muaddib wrote:Sometimes a little more knowledge about the other person's situation helps, sometimes you're still connected enough that you can forgive them, and sometimes you have to stand by your anger, curse your enemy, knock the dust from your sandals, and go looking for life elsewhere.

muaddib wrote:

PerplexedMan wrote:Just realised something about myself and was wondering if it applied to schizoids in general. I am a very angry person. I don't mean that I constantly lash out at people. But rather that I have deep-seated anger issue. It's consuming that I would say anger is my defining emotion....

What I'm really getting at is that this deep well of anger is what causes a wedge between me and society at large. It's probably the main cause for my detachment and lack of bonding.

I don't know about schizoid PD, but I can sympathize with a lot of what you wrote. I have a very long fuse, and I've only really let my anger out a few times in my adult life, but it does feel like I'm riding a tiger when it comes out. I can still guide it thankfully so I've never worried about doing something I can't take back.

I totally identified with your idea of it lingering and becoming your defining emotion too. It does seem to be the only emotion I can actually sustain for more than a few minutes. I do think there's something to the idea that it can be baked into you and define how you relate to the world.

It's interesting too because I know a lot of religions just stress the importance of forgiveness, but I don't think it's that simple. I think the idea is that many religions assume a basic state of connection to the rest of your community when just saying you have to will yourself to forgive. Maybe to put it into a picture, imagine all the people in a community are tied to each other with rubber cords, some of them more flexible than others. It's like most religions assume that when people fight, their cords are stretched and under strain, but not broken so you just have to choose to move back towards the person you fought with, and then the cord will go back to how it should be.

I think in the case of you or me though, it's more like most or all of the cords were pushed too far long ago and actually snapped. Now no matter how much we try to move back towards other people, the cord is broken. It takes something other than forgiveness to fix that. I could be wrong, but I think that what can build those bonds from scratch ultimately isn't forgiveness but a sense of justice. Maybe the key is to find people that genuinely treat you fairly, then gradually open up yourself more and more to those relationships built on justice.

Holodeck wrote:This aspect has chilled out for me after I was able to work out why certain people were the way they were. I realized why they acted that way, and understood how they responded in the terrible ways they did.

I wound up forgiving them, though I don't plan on meeting up with them for lunch or anything soon.

I do think this is a good point, that understanding (which isn't necessarily the same thing as forgiveness) can also bring some relief, but I don't think there's a single emotional response that works for all the possibilities. Sometimes a little more knowledge about the other person's situation helps, sometimes you're still connected enough that you can forgive them, and sometimes you have to stand by your anger, curse your enemy, knock the dust from your sandals, and go looking for life elsewhere.

PerplexedMan wrote:I absolutely agree with you on this point. When I feel wronged and get angry as a result, it is unquenchable. I get upset but there is no way for me to calm myself down. There is obviously something linked with injustice because I simply cannot accept that I was wronged. That's the stumbling block to forgiveness. I think the regular person who isn't broken and doesn't feel like they got dealt unjustly in their life would experience that forgiveness with much ease. It's simply because their ego is not as involved in forgiving.