Posted by shar on January 29, 2003, at 11:43:49
In reply to Re: Anger, Honesty, Me, You » shar, posted by Greg on January 27, 2003, at 18:04:12
Well, you know I have always had enough suicidal ideation for several people. And, the idea of killing oneself is related to rage (this is my take on things), and raging against the self. It is the experience of beating oneself up taken to the logical conclusion--beating oneself to death. In that sense, the rage, which in most cases should be directed outward (or, at least the anger should), is all focused in a tight beam against the self.
I'm talking in pretty airy terms here. Not every day anger, but more a psychological position learned VERY early in life. That I am worthless, and (in my case) anger expressed is not conducive to survival. Those two go hand-in-hand in my case. Thus, when events occurred that were threatening to me, I didn't have what it took to get mad on my own behalf and possibly deal with the threat. Instead, I used the anger against myself to reinforce how worthless I was/am. So, one can only BE so worthless, and the solution is death (oh, we should probably throw in a very healthy portion of hopelessness and helplessness, because this all was set up at a time when I was, in fact, powerless to have any real impact on changing the situation).
My comment that homicidal ideation is better than suicidal ideation came off sounding more cavalier than I meant it. The key is the ideation part; that in my situation, it would be healthier to be angry at the real threat, not myself. Taking that a step further, if I felt angry enough to kill, and angry at the appropriate target, I would be thinking about homicide and not suicide. Certainly, neither is a good thing, and my T and I weren't talking about the possibility of me acting on any of this. It was more the idea that if I was in a life-threatening situation, do I see and get angry at the responsible party, or turn the anger back on myself.
Therapy always happens in the context of one's own unique experiences, so it may be that the idea of homicide vs. suicide wouldn't really apply to anybody but me and my own special weirdnesses, and, on second thought, I probably shouldn't have made that statement. As you can see, there are about 4 paragraphs of additional information that should have accompanied it.
When I think of my son, though, and him facing a threatening situation, I would much rather his anger be directed outward than inward.
xoxo
YIC
poster:shar
thread:35331
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030120/msgs/35913.html