Rage meltdowns are not moral failures.
I have always believed that anger and rage was the most destructive emotions there were on this planet. Growing up in a household where the example of rage and anger was always dangerous and destructive and two weeks of silence after the eruption. It was not an example of how I wanted to be. Turns out that my relationship with anger turned out exactly like that.
I learnt that keeping quiet and trying to keep the peace by being the ‘good’ girl, helped soothe the monster in the house. So that adaptation became part of my personality. Swallowing my feelings, tolerating discomfort and pushing through exhaustion. I held it as a badge of honour that I it took so long in-between rages.
I learnt to suppress rage and anger, it would take months, sometimes years for a massive blowout. Red haze rage, that made it even more terrifying. Well, no one ever got hurt, but you know, things got broken. Racquets smashed, cupboard doors slammed. Words I couldn’t take back. And then the shame and self-hatred came. How could I let it out like that? I never wanted to be like my stepdad. Yet, there it was after every meltdown. I am a bad person, that was the evidence.
Since the beginning of last year, it seems like the valve was letting off steam more frequently and it is still scary. The noticing coincides with the start of my TRE® journey and especially since after the official AuDHD diagnosis. Pre-diagnosis, I was chasing healing and finding what was ‘wrong’ with me. Post-diagnosis, I feel like I am slowly becoming unstuck from the ‘old’ story.
Yes, I know I keep mentioning the diagnosis. But it was a defining moment for me, and in fact, it’s an ongoing defining process that is still unfolding daily. As I learn to accommodate myself in this very late journey of self-discovery, through trying to ‘raise myself’ again through the redefined parameters of childhood, adolescence, early adulthood and middle age from a new perspective. One that sounds limiting, but is actually the foundation of my liberation.
Relearning myself is not something that I ever thought I would have to do again at the ripe age of 48. With life-coaching, identity collapse, psychological excavation, a few psychotic breaks along the way. TRE®, breathwork, EFT and some actual reality this time, I have been given a new lens to reframe it all. I am not a fan of labels, but the AuDHD ‘label’ has given me more insight to the split and irreconcilable aspects in my life and personality.
I feel an inexplicable gratitude for all who share so openly about their challenges and experiences as AuDHDers. They have given me the ‘language’ to make sense of my own inner world and experiences that I could never fully articulate or understand. My TRE® training and personal journey has helped me understand my AuDHD experience as though different nervous system states are operating simultaneously. The great divide, the great split, the fracture that has been running my entire life from the depths of the unconscious and autonomic nervous system. The parts I am so desperately trying to unify.
Sooooo, about that rage…
What you all see on the surface is the explosion, but what you don’t see, is that it starts long before the actual rage explosion. What you don’t see is the hundreds of moments that came before it.
The bright lights I tolerated, the incessant noise in the brain, the leaf-blower, vacuum cleaner, the pounding of construction hammers, the hum of the aircon that’s just slightly out of its usual rhythm. That unresolved conversation that’s still running in the background, the rejection I pretended didn’t hurt. The phone call from someone asking to help them with some money. The hunger I forgot to notice until I was so hungry I wanted to vomit. The realisation that I had to get up and make something to eat and nothing in the house or fridge is quick enough or appetising or emotionally soothing. The shame when I think of the judgement I will hear from others about wasting the food that is in the fridge. There are starving children all over the world, how dare you not eat what is there. How dare you be such a consumer, buying new food every day when there’s still some in the house. The internal battle of worry about other’s judgements vs what my brain needs to feel regulated, soothed and calmed. Even when it’s not ‘good’ for my body. Food, specific food regulates my nervous system, and calms specific types of meltdowns.
The emotions I buried because there was no time to feel them, that urgent deadline, another email ding, a message or the 17th spam call for the day. The emotions I buried because there was no space to feel it, in the office, in the middle of the checkout queue, fixing the tyres for the third time in 18 months because of G-damn potholes and rushing to the shops because I forgot the milk, or pick up mom’s boyfriend. The emotions I buried because there is nowhere I feel safe enough to allow it. Because I know what it’s gonna look like when it all comes out. It’s horrifying, it’s ugly, it’s unstable, frightening and frankly, like it’s a demon that had been caged for too long that is expelled in that moment. Sometimes it’s a naked demon. Sometimes the meltdown happens so completely that I end up standing naked in front of a mirror, looking at myself and barely recognising the person staring back. And no, that's not a joke.
How can I possibly allow anyone to see that, because it will alienate me from others even more. I think that maybe they should see it… but then again people would still only see the lunacy of the moment of the explosion, not the build-up, the invisible monsters that keep chipping away in my mind, at my ability and capacity to cope. For me, by the time anger appears, my body has been signalling distress for hours, days or weeks without conscious awareness. That is what TRE® is helping me build, interoception and awareness of my body’s cues.
On another side-quest, I just want to mention, I like the term melt down, because that’s what it feels like. Like a blow-torch has been turned onto each of my nerve-endings and that everything goes up in flames and it feels like all sanity melts away in that instant and all that is left is the stench of a rotten human.
From what I am learning, many autistic and ADHD adults, rage is not the beginning of the problem. It is the final symptom. One which I find almost impossible to have self-compassion for.
So no, my final deduction = my rage meltdowns are not moral failures. They are the final expression of a series of accumulated nervous system overload, sensory burdens that I cannot fully articulate, emotional suppression and unmet needs. Things I am learning to navigate without self-judgement and self-annihilation.