A Krakatoa State of Mind

My therapist has been talking some about anger, and it has got me thinking about the topic, as well as my own relationship with anger.

There is a scripture I first heard in the King James Version of the Bible that says:


Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath Ephesians 4:26

Maybe you think the Bible is the word of God, and maybe you think it is a human document written by people about their faith thoughts, but either way, the phrase may contain some sort of truth. The truth is that there is a way to be angry that is positive, healthy, or enhancing to life, and there are sinful, or negative, hurtful way to be angry.

Anger bothers me. I don’t mean to imply that I am anger free, far from it. I am full of anger.

I wrote this Ransom Poem about anger. 1

A Krakatoa State of Mind by tex norman

I am erupting like Krakatoa.
My core is screaming.
There’s a battle raging, Angel,
and I am tired, so very tired.
I feel fine about this, morally,
fine about erupting to make my point.
And yes, I feel I’ve carried more than my share
for this lifetime.
My mama stabbed, scratched, stung,
gouged and tripped me, debunking my fears.
“Whoa! Are you going to catch
it now,”
my mad mama hissed.
I do not care.
I’m asking for permission to
duck, dodge, dart, or flee
this most unholy burden,
and render this volcano
I’ve been sitting on inactive
-- this a mound of black,
jagged, Vulcan glass.
I’ll sit this one out,
alone,
in a hard place
grown cold.

My therapist seems concerned about my suppression of anger.

Of course I know where I learned to suppress anger. As a child if I expressed anger, or displeasure, or disapproval, or a differing opinion, emotion, or leaked a hint of independent thought my parents would hit, slap, spank, belittle, or in some way unpleasantly punished me. Experience taught me that if I held my emotions in I avoided being crushed by parental disapproval. Actually, what I learned is that one way or another anger and emotion had to be crushed, thwarted, pressed down, squeezed, compressed, and that it hurt less if I did my own suppressing.

While there are those who subscribe to the ole, “squeaky wheel get’s the grease” philosophy, and while it does seem to work for some folks, it doesn’t have that same appeal to me.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.
Toni Morrison

In my past, a display of anger seldom ever ended well. Complaints, disagreements, arguments, nasty faces at close quarters, accomplishes little and often makes things worse.

Some might claim that venting your anger will make you feel better. To venting anger makes me feel worse. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be my anger. Being near an angry Venter is like standing too close to a dirty bomb – it contaminates you. “Venting” as a positive act got popular back in the 1960s, but remember a lot of pot and LSD was consumed in the 60s, so some of their thinking was barely thought out at all. yogi gurus and pop-psychology turned “Letting it all hang out” into a hippie, yuppie mantra. Venting promised to free the psyche of its pent up feelings, freeing the pent up was suppose to somehow lead to healing.

But suppressing anger is said to increase your blood pressure, allows depression to dig a trench in your MIND field, and it is bad, bad, really bad.

When I do let my anger show I have usually just hit my finger with a hammer, or broken something I was trying to repair, of had some sort of accident. In a short span of time I may lob and F bomb, and scold as harshly as possible, but the target is usually me. The YOU STUPID IDIOT my parents used to say has turned into I’M SUCH A STUPID F-ING LOSER!”

When they say depression is hatred turned inward they say right.

When people vent their anger my heart beats faster, I get that fight or flight feeling, but flight is preferred, and I am deeply uncomfortable. My therapist tells me there is something to add to fight or flight, and that’s the ole deer in the headlights freezing up. When my therapist said this it had the ring of truth. I could identify with that freeze up scenario. I don’t fight, and rarely can I withdraw, but I do freeze up. I stand there and wish I were somewhere else and wait for the earth to stop quaking.

Maybe it is bad to suppress. I don’t just suppress anger, but I suppress most of my emotions. I close up joy in a tin can. I put exuberance in a hermetically sealed bag. Love is hidden in a steel drum and encased in lead like it was kryptonite.

I’m like a big ole Caldara with a churning pool of magma deep inside, there is the potential for an eruption, but it can look dormant, and calm for the next thousand years. Maybe.

1. A Ransom Poem is created the same way they make kidnap demands in the movies. You read two or three prose works, you circle words and phrases that catch your attention, and then you arrange them on a page so that they make up something new. The new thing is what is called a Ransom Poem.