Transformative Power
of Rage by Dr Elizabeth
McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
That someone is very attractive –
too attractive. We want to get close to him or her, but…. they are kind of dangerous: really
handsome, beautiful even, but too hot to handle. They are the life of the
party, popping pills, drinking straight from bottles. Spirits of the party. We
want to get close, really close, but… it’s like moving in with a handsome sleek
lion. Are we nuts?
Somehow or other, we wake up the
next day in bed with this gorgeous stranger, and then the next morning, and next thing you know, we are a
couple. It is outrageous, this connection we have. He, or she (this is not a
gender specific story), is too wild; his devil-may-care attitude flings us this
way and that. It’s like being taunted by a tornado. Thrilling, for sure, and
addictive. Yes, he uses too many drugs, some legal (he doctor shops), some
illegal (he shops with the guy across the street), and smokes and drinks. He’ll
settle down, we think, once the relationship becomes more stable. We clean up the vomit on the bedroom
floor, silently throw out the bottles with the empty packets of pills, we wash
his clothes and the sheets and spray room fresheners around; we are good
partners, never complaining, and to all intents and purposes, we are no
different from everybody else. The fact that we are angry, so incredibly angry
doesn’t come into it.
Time goes by and we’ve heard the
story before, quite a few times now.
(S)He’ll change; it’ll never happen again; he’s on the straight and narrow
and he loves us. Life seems good, maybe. His sleek gorgeous looks are fading.
There’s a bit of a paunch and a stray blood vessel appearing on his nose. He is
quite attractive, still, in a sort of moth-eaten old leonine way. We say so, he
goes out to celebrate and we don’t see him all day. We use this time to angrily
clean the house, attend to the business of finding him a job and we secure an
interview for him, because he lost the last one through turning up to work
drunk. We wait, and wait, feeling like we are about to implode. He turns up the day after tomorrow,
though it is a Tuesday and he has an interview at 10am. He is incoherent, dirty
and still very very drunk. There is no way he can attend, so we ring the
workplace and say he has come down with the flu.
Some label our place in this
relational pattern as codependent. This is a term that doesn’t quite sit well
for me, and some others. Essentially codependency is enabling the other person
to maintain an addictive life-style.
I don’t like the term because it ignores too much, and it pathologizes
what is actually a complicated process.
One of the early theorists on
this subject, Robert Subby said in the 1980s, that codependency is “an emotional,
psychological and behavioural condition that develops as a result of an
individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules
– rules which prevent the open expression of feeling as well as the direct
discussion of personal and interpersonal problems.” This “set of oppressive rules” are cultural and family
scripts, such as “you are a wife now, your role is to look after your man
without complaint”. Other factors may be at work as well, such as, guilt, a
desire to be loved and supported (and supporting the partner is a way to achieve
that, so the thinking goes), a desire to have the relationship our parents
didn’t have, a hope for comfort that somehow never eventuates.
The term codependency has
many descriptions. Some have seen it as the denial or
repression of the real self, forgetting that the self is not a thing, but a process, and is always relational
to the social and economic realities of our lives. Some have described codependency as a self esteem issue. It
may well be this at one level, but more critically, it is a sense of being
locked into a relationship that seemed to have so much promise, but has become
endlessly unfulfilling. The primary issue in this relationship is that is less
an individual problem than something that is occurring between two (or more)
people.
There is nothing
wrong, nor pathological, with wanting a loving relationship. It is a basic and
necessary human need. The problem,
as I see it, lies with the belief that it is good to forgive another person’s
appalling behaviour, always. But it isn’t, particularly when it impacts on
one’s own emotional stability, and that of other family members, especially
children. It isn’t good to subsume our own needs endlessly for those of an
abusive other. It may be nice to visit the lion in his den, but it isn’t a safe
place to bring up children, nor a place for ordinary everyday happiness.
Be angry. Rage. Be
the rage. This is the point, the fulcrum, that seems to be overlooked in
codependency literature. Here, in the rage, is where transformation can take
place. Here, in the trembling of anger, is where therapy is most effective and
life takes a new course. Here in the rage is a relationship with the self and
thus it is the point where the relationship with the other person can be
broken, or healed, which ever we choose. There is nothing calm about rage, but
it is a gift of incredible energy that can shift everything stuck and
voiceless. Finding its direction, though, is the skill to be learned and it is
a skill to shape the rest of our lives.
