Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

(On Internalised Anger, Love, and Self-Punishment)

“My transformations in those days were — were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf. I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead…”

(Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

I’ve been trying to figure out why I have a history of beating myself up. Why I mentally berated and punished myself for many years. Starting as a small child.

After a lot of soul searching (and interrogating my dad about what I was like as a five-year-old) I concluded that the reason behind my self-punishment was multi-layered. But I also realised all those layers came back to Dabrowski’s theories.

My innate need to achieve, particularly at intellectual endeavours like school – overexcitabilities. My tendency to freak out at any mistake made – a socialisation from my mother. But there was something else at work, and it took me a long time to figure out this last piece of the puzzle.

Eventually I realised what it was – I was the wolf who bit myself.

Dabrowski would probably call my aggressive tendencies a manifestation of my “lower” self. My parents would have agreed. “Don’t hit back”. “Turn the other cheek”. “Be nice”. “Young ladies don’t…” But that in itself was social conditioning.

I couldn’t help it. I got angry about shit. Even as a little one. I saw things in life that pissed me off. Noticed things other kids probably didn’t. Felt injustices at a level I wasn’t supposed to. The problem was that with no way to externalise my anger, I turned it on myself.

As a small child, my inner psychic milieu wasn’t developed enough to effectively deal with anger. Anger I felt at being unable to defeat life to my liking. Anger at the way the world “was”, and why it wasn’t “what it ought to be”. So, I took it all out on the one person I could get away with – me.

As I got older, I learned how to deal with anger, disappointment, and all sorts of other negative emotions. But behaviourally, the damage was done. After a while, I couldn’t even remember why I continually punished myself. It just became “who I was”. What’s worse, no one had really tried to stop me doing it.

In the process of unwinding the behaviour, I started to nail down the root causes, but it took me a while to figure out that my own aggression fit into this picture. It took me even longer to figure out what to do about it, because I was afraid. Would forgiving myself bring back the anger? Let the beast out of the cage?

This fear was a sign that my work wasn’t complete yet. Something else was at play. Because if I’m worried that my behaviour could revert, then it meant my understanding was incomplete.

The epiphany that handed me the aggression key came first, and when I posted about this on Facebook, I thought the anger thing was the bottom of it all. But it wasn’t. There was still one last root cause to be dug up out of my psyche. And deep down I knew it. Somewhere in my heart I knew I wasn’t done.

Really, I should have seen it earlier, because this one thing is at the heart of everything in the universe, as far as I can understand it.

Love. The greatest power there is.

It may sound a little narcissistic, but I have an enormous capacity for love. And in that capacity, I also have an enormous need to be loved. But an early age I developed an understanding about love – for most people, is not infinite. I don’t know where this stemmed from. Perhaps it was my Christian upbringing? God loves you, sure, but if you piss him off enough, he’s quite willing to send you to an eternity of fiery torment. Even God, the supposed source of love, has his limits.

When my parents divorced, it cemented the lesson. They were concerned I might blame myself for the splitting apart of our little family. But that was not the case. I didn’t blame myself – I knew enough to understand this issue was between them, but it also taught me that human love has limits. Timelines. Expiry dates. It can be broken. It can end. “Till death do us part” was apparently not a thing. “Till we become angry at each other and stop loving each other” was more appropriate.

Therefore, any wrongdoing, any misstep, has the capability of eroding someone’s love for you. That fact terrified me, because I needed desperately to be loved. So, everything I did wrong, I beat myself up for. The wolf continued to bite herself. Punish herself. Not just out of anger, but out of fear. Fear of not being loved.

How could we be so stupid? Didn’t we know that each blunder, each error, risks driving people away from us? People were happy when we behaved. When we succeeded. When we were a ‘good girl’. When we misbehaved, they became angry. Upset. Unloving.

I have an overwhelming need for acceptance. A horrible drive to please. To fit in. To not be ‘cast out’. A crippling fear of being alone. And a burning desire to feel love and happiness.

The intensity of my emotions, the disquiet in my soul, the need to be who I thought I ought to be, the need to fit in, and the heavy weight of the social conditioning – Dabrowski probably could have seen it all in me immediately.

The fact I have stopped biting myself all the time, and have come to forgive myself for my behaviour, doesn’t negate my wolfish nature. It doesn’t stop anger. It doesn’t stop the desire to feel loved. But the truth of the matter is, that properly directed and managed by my inner psychic milieu, my inner wolf could be a source of strength.

Anger at the wrongs in the world are what drive us to make them right. Seek justice. Make the world a better place. And love? Well, that’s a power beyond compare. Limitless. Trying to love myself for who I am, trying to freeing myself from a need for external validation, and working towards trusting that I am worthy of the love of others, all leads me closer to being my authentic self. More to the point, it leads me controlling my tendencies to bite.

So now my new mission becomes this: stop biting indiscriminately and learn to hunt. Focus my feelings via my inner psychic milieu, and rather than turn it those feelings against myself, turn them outward into something productive.

Hunt – for the greater good of the pack…