This is an interesting question, but to me it is only the tip of the iceberg. Because even if I DO effectively dissipate the anger through safe ways of expressing it such as writing, walking, swimming, and yelling in the car? I am still left with the same problem that I originally started out with. I have been mistreated, and I know I must DO something. But what? What am I supposed to do? After the anger is gone, I still have the same problem I started out with. I have been mistreated.
I am spending about $50 a week on books trying to find an answer. I have books on how to deal with dealing with controlling people, anger, boundaries, emotional healing, CPTSD, Narcissism, Dealing with Narcissism, MANY books. No answers. My library of no answers is getting frightening large.
How do I learn when to stop trying with these PD people? How do I learn when I am giving too much and getting too little? How do I learn how to effectively deal with this if I must live with a Narcissist, which I do? How do I ask for and get respect if it is not being given? How do I learn when to stop asking for respect and walk away? For good.
One thing that came to me this morning, and this came to me through reading my many books with no real direct solutions, is that in my family, the way I was raised was that there were NO boundaries. None. Everything, anything was his for the taking and we were to be merged completely into WE. All of us. He owned us. So basically I was trained to believe that I had no right to a separate self. That I was to merge myself with his self on demand.
And I also figured out that the reason I have few problems today getting along with Non PD's, is because they have good boundaries. And their boundaries protected both of us. I did not have to have any because they did. That was enough to protect both of us. I was not a boundary violator, and so it rarely came up. But when I run into people who have no boundaries? Then I have problems. Because I didn't have any either. Now we have a problem. They think they have the right to everything that is me, and I have no idea of where they end and I begin. No boundaries. I know I'm supposed to stop them, but I have no clue of how to do so. And anger is not the solution to the problem.
It is the warning that a solution is needed, but it is not the answer.
And most of the books I read are so mild mannered, and seem so far removed from the type of injustice I am talking about, it's just hard to relate, to these boundary books. And I understand why they are written that way - they will appeal to more people. But I need some emergency triage, first aid, and then a rehab program after I stop bleeding.
I have a title picked out for my book if I ever learn enough to write it. Boundaries For Victims.
Because I have come to believe that this is a serious problem for people raised with no boundaries. They don't have any idea that they are supposed to have them. They don't know that it is okay to have them. They don't know that most that people have them. And they have NO experience in setting them. They are just completely lost. Just like me. They are perpetual victims of the PD's in the world, because they know NOTHING about boundaries, or how to set them, or why to set them, or when to set them, and that they have the right to set them. They get run over because they get involved with someone who feels they have the right to more than you do.
I am dimly, dimly seeing how to set them, and seeing a positive experience as the outcome. But it is so HARD to do something you know nothing about, have never been trained in, and didn't even know existed until a few months ago. If you don't believe you have the right to something it is VERY hard to enforce it.
So maybe I got off topic, but this is where I am at. Anger is good. It tells you to do something for yourself. Don't use the anger to hurt someone or to hurt yourself. Dissipate the anger, but then get up and do something! Learn new ways to change what you are doing. To learn how to see the boundary violations that are hurting you, and do something (that part is a mystery) and do something EFFECTIVE for yourself. And boundaries seem to be the key for me. It's like learning to speak a foreign language. Difficult, but not impossible.
