Anger

Dreams. The Heart. White/Human Hubris

In my last post I shed some light on my thoughts and the scraps of strategy I had ghjhgmanaged to develop for navigating the world, post-election. What I didn’t specifically write about (but implied) was the state of my feelings. Yet there is a story about my feelings which I think is worth telling.

This is a post about processing. Some, who are conscientious processors themselves, will read it with interest. Others may wonder what the point is. As always, I record my journey to encourage others to explore similar things in new and creative ways. It is also a post about dreams and the ways they guide us. Perhaps there are readers who’ve wondered about dreams but have never really given them much attention. There may also be readers who’ve become aware that they habitually suppress their feelings, but don’t know how to coax them out of the dungeon to be met in the light of day. If so, it is my hope that this post and others like it will inspire you to carry out your own inquiries.

Anger

I was devastated by the first Trump election. I went into a kind of shock when they declared him the winner. I couldn’t go to work. I cried all day. There was something terribly wrong with my country, something I hadn’t realized before, something I didn’t want to believe or reckon with.

But there is no way out but through, so reckon with it I did. I took a long look beneath the hood of our current culture, entailing deep explorations into issues of social justice and human hubris, woven through with the greed at the root of capitalism, the oppressive pall of patriarchy, and the lust for power corrupting organized religions. However, that exploration is a story for another time.

Fast forwarding to the Biden election, you might recall that no winner was declared for a very long time. While it looked likely that Biden would win, I could not come to terms with the fact that even after four, long, disastrous years of chaos the electorate was STILL not sure they didn’t want Trump to keep on creating it. Therefore, I could not call his re-election a shock, this time, though it was certainly a wretchedness— lasting long beyond the moment Biden became President-elect. Soon, though, by coordinating an insurrection, Trump revealed his true colors, such that by the time Biden’s inauguration drew near, I was able to breathe again. Now people knew who Trump actually was. The long grift was over. Or so I thought.

Obviously, but very distressingly, things didn’t work out that way. From my perspective in the blue Northwest, as the last election approached, the enthusiasm just didn’t seem to be there for Trump. Harris was packing in huge crowds while attendance at Trump’s rallies was reported as dwindling. She appeared to have the momentum. Despite all that, though, I had to admit that it was entirely possible that Trump would win. As a result, I was determined not to let it bring me to my knees like it did the time before. Last time it had caught me unawares. This time was different.

The election came and went. They didn’t even need a few extra days to sort it out. Everyone agreed that Trump had won. So how did I weather it? What were my tactics? Firstly, I reminded myself that I didn’t HAVE to think about it all the time. I was allowed to focus on other things. And secondly, I tried my hand at open-mindedness. If over half of the people in the country believed that Trump’s policies would serve us better, maybe I should wait and see how it all shook out. Maybe I don’t know everything. (That, of course, discounted everything I’d ever witnessed or learned about Trump. Even on the rare occasions when he does somehow manage to make himself sound reasonable, his actions, far from rational, are driven by baser motives: revenge, power, hatred, megalomania, political favors, fear of loss, birth family issues, the list goes on and on.) But I tied my camel to these two techniques, such that for awhile. at least, I was able to function normally. I went about my business. I checked in with others. I offered empathy.

I knew I wasn’t feeling my feelings—not feeling them was the point!—but maybe the deferral was for the best. Perhaps the passing of time would take the edge off when I finally came face to face with them. In the meantime, I felt FINE. But why was I having those heart palpitations? All day, every day for three or four days there was a constant fluttering in my chest. To add to the misery, they even woke me at night so that the next day, I was tired AND still palpitating. They even woke me from the naps I took to make up for lost sleep. They had something to say and they were not giving up!

In my life, palpitations happen from time to time but it’s usually a short-term event—a day at most. A little infusion of electrolytes is my normal fix—but that didn’t work this time. By the fourth day I was thoroughly sick of it and starting to become concerned. Should I visit a doctor? FINALLY, I remembered … this has happened to me before; I already know what it means: I am suppressing my feelings.

Aha! The time has arrived to confront—no, to welcome!—them.

(Or, as Trash Jones says, “Well, well well, if it isn’t the bridge I said I’d cross when I came to it!”)

Well, it’s one thing to let feelings know that they’d be welcomed and another thing to coax them out. First, in fact, you have to find them. So thoroughly had I hidden them that I couldn’t find even one. All day (a fun day with friends!), I couldn’t tune in to my heart, to my inner sensations. I went to bed early that night (out of exhaustion derived, no doubt, from lack of sleep!).

At 11:30 that night, barely an hour after I fell asleep, I woke up from a horrible dream, heart pounding every which way. The dream, itself, was objectively awful. Even worse, however, was the feeling of violation it generated in me through some unremembered yet vicious, brutal—even evil!—act. I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon so I moved to my study and wrote down the dream, as follows:

I’m gearing up for round two of an epic battle with a villain. In the last episode I bested him. I took something he wanted. He is returning to take his revenge. He plans to take something precious from me.

I am not alone. There is a woman accompanying me who is kind of a-bundle-of-women-all-in-one. There is also a man with me who, at times, I think is [my husband]. His main interest seems to be to prevent me from doing anything rash (that tracks!) like intentionally provoking this monster.

We are in a car trying to get to my house before the villain arrives. Everything is in a color palette of black and red. As we pull up I say to them, “I am terrified! You can’t leave me!” They assure me they will not leave me.

We are in the house. We can both feel and hear that he has arrived outside. He is pacing around outside the house. He knows I will have to come out to initiate engagement but I make him wait, knowing it provokes him. (See what I mean?) He has energy like a whip, violently swatting the ground. Thwap! Thwap! He is whipping himself into a rage.

I come to the doorway to speak to him. “What do you want?” I ask him, innocently. He snarls that I know what he wants. (I think that in the dream I DO know, but as I write down the dream I do not know. It’s something implicit between us—an old contract from before that I want to break or have already broken.)

He wants to make me pay a price. He is standing in the driveway near my car. In my car are my cat and a little girl. As soon as I realize they are there—and potentially in danger—I feel his interest move toward the cat. “Leave the cat alone!” I shout at him. Somehow, instinctively, I know he won’t harm the girl, yet she is related to me—my granddaughter or my daughter, maybe—or maybe me as a child. I am right—he isn’t interested in the child. He leaves the cat alone, but since he can’t have the cat he decides he will bash in the front end of the car. I shout to him to leave the car alone and he puts down his sledgehammer.

He is accompanied by another man who is his henchman/lackey/fixer—a more reasonable-sounding person who defines the terms of surrender when the victim finally admits defeat.

I know that our inevitable confrontation must be carried out inside the house. I am going to have to let them in. Once again I say to my guardians that I’m terrified—that they can’t leave me! Once again they reassure me that they won’t leave my side.

He is in the house. There is something both familiar and threatening about this. An intimacy. He wants to be respected, even loved, but he only knows how to get respect via force. I treat him as a familiar friend, with the kind of intimacy he wants, and he softens. But I am unyielding about whatever it is he wants.

There is a final reckoning by an antique wall phone. I tell him firmly, “No!” and I see the shadow cross his face and the violence fill him. We are very near each other—only a couple of feet between us. His hand rests on a small shelf beneath the wall phone. I reach out and touch it. “Why are you so angry?” I ask him, quietly. Again, I see him soften slightly as he wonders about that. It’s like I caught him.

During this portion of the dream I see an image of myself using a blade to cut slices or layers through some kind of substance—a dense loaf of something. Slice after slice (or layer after layer) I cut. The crispiness on the outside makes it feel very satisfying. Somehow it gives me the upper hand. The problem, for both of us, is that I know what he has done and he knows I know what he has done. But I am not alone and I am in control so he decides to concede.

He leaves, but he gets in my car with the intention of ramming it into the fence of the neighbor across the street. Now I’m next to him in the car where, again, I ask, “Why are you so angry?” He screeches to a halt, just before hitting the fence, and leaves angrily with his henchman.

I’ve won another round but I know he will return.

After recording the dream I lit a candle and brought in several ancestors: Quan Yin, Murshid Samuel Lewis, Grandmother Lucretia, Daskalos, Aslan, and Ouapiti. (The last four comprise my healing team.) After some time in communion with them, I was able to climb into bed and fall asleep.

As chance would have it, my bi-weekly dream group met the next morning (on Zoom). While I did mention the dream to them, it felt too fresh and sprawling to address at that time. Since others brought dreams they wanted to share, my urge to demur felt justified. At about about fifteen minutes before close of meeting, our facilitator, an experienced dream psychologist, inquired about my dream. When I expressed my certainty that the time remaining would not be nearly enough to do it justice, he instead asked how the dream was resonating in me at that moment. In response, I began to cry.

Crying in a group always makes people uncomfortable. It’s especially awkward in a Zoom environment, with no opportunity for physical contact. The group members looked stunned, not knowing what to do. I, on the other hand, was overjoyed. At last the dam had broken. The dream had catapulted me back into the world of feelings! After apologizing for making anyone uncomfortable, I assured them that in this case (perhaps, in fact, in all cases, but ESPECIALLY in this case) crying was a very good thing. I told them about how I’d been trying unsuccessfully to unbottle my emotions and how the tears they were witnessing in this very moment were exactly the breakthrough I needed!

After that day, my palpitations went away.

Afterwards, as you might imagine, I tried to explore the dream more deeply on my own. Apart from the set and setting, which seemed rather obviously to refer to the re-election of Trump, I didn’t get very far. My intuition was solidly blocked. I became stupid, making notes which only repeated the story in different words—new words which were no more helpful than the old words had been. In exasperation, I put it away. A month or so later I tried again, adding equally unhelpful notes, then once more giving up in disgust.

Our dream group typically meets for a few months, then goes on hiatus, so it happened that a few weeks later we were ready to wrap it up. It wasn’t until this final session that I brought the dream to the group.

It’s amazing how group work can help—or rather, how blind we can be when working alone. Even though I actually know a few things about dream analysis, my intuition had been so thoroughly blocked that I couldn’t remember any of them. However, as soon as I began reading the dream to the group, connections began to appear, symbols and metaphors suddenly seemed to present themselves. For instance, generally speaking, when a question comes up in a dream—especially if it comes up more than once!—no matter who asks the question or whom they ask it of, the question is actually being directed to the dreamer. As I read the dream, I realized I’d completely forgotten to really ASK MYSELF the two questions posed by the dream: “What do you want?” and then, twice, “Why are you so angry?”

In the group, we explored some of my anger around the election. I generally have a very weak and broken voice but there are times, such as when I am shouting my truth, that it really comes through for me. When asked to express my anger (and I’m not sure at whom—was it Trump? MAGA? the people who voted for him? or all of the above?), I exploded with my own irate question: “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!” After this eruption the facilitator inquired, once again, about my feelings. In truth, simply sharing the dream, had already resulted in a great flood of relief—a kind of “getting it off my chest.” But after my bellowing outburst, I had to admit I felt even better.

Allowing myself to express my rage was empowering and freeing—the antithesis of my ordinary tendency to defer to maturity, reason, efficiency, order. I think what the election taught me once and for all is that civility—something that we, the losers, have internalized, and that we joyfully showcased in our candidate—civility has been banished, accompanied by compassion, restraint, empathy, and ethics, and we must put away all hope of reclaiming any of it. Without civility, though, who will we become? The mindless and frenzied grasping and posturing initiated by Trump’s most recent inauguration illustrates clearly what kind of nation the governing party envisions. But I digress—back to my dream!

Besides having forgotten to ask the very obvious questions presented to me in my dream, I’d also forgotten to apply to the dream one of my most useful dream symbols. In my dreams, “my house” almost always represents myself. Given the details leading up to the dream (the way I first protected myself from my feelings, later developed palpitations, then, realizing my error, tried in vain to even find my feelings), all references to my house should have been viewed as keenly relevant: I wanted to beat the villain to my house. (I wanted control over my feelings, my anger.) I wanted to keep the villain out of my house, therefore I stood in the doorway, speaking to and shouting at him from a distance. (I acknowledged Anger, but kept it at bay.) I knew that the ultimate confrontation had to take place inside. (Having rediscovered that suppressing feelings did not work, I needed to invite them in—even overwhelming ones like Anger.)

Additionally, my car shows up in the dream three times, perhaps representing various stages or ways to navigate anger. In my car the first time, while going to meet Anger, I gird myself by bringing my inner support team—my guardians. In the car the second time I protect from anger what is precious to me—my cat (my comfort animal) and my inner child (who I need to keep safe), in so doing creating some boundaries. In the car the third time I am with Anger. Anger wants to destroy boundaries (the fence) but I want to protect boundaries. This time I don’t shout about boundaries from a distant doorway. Instead, I question—from within the sort of liminal space represented by the interior of a car—Anger’s validity, its right to exist. My anger cannot question its existence while at the same time expressing its nature. It puts its expression on pause for a moment in order to look within for its origin. This self-inquiry causes it to stay within boundaries.

(Further inquiry could certainly and beneficially also be conducted relevant to the rich symbology of the doorways, themselves.)

The funny thing was that before the dream, if someone had asked me to name my election-related feelings, anger would surely have been included, yet with no more emphasis than all the others—fear, sadness, anxiety, dread, etc. I would not have placed it front and center. What was clear to me though, were feelings of being violated. As we know, Trump and his team were laser-focused on manipulating—with propaganda, rhetoric, and gaslighting—all of the voters who could possibly be deceived. Tragically, it worked—in violation of the rest of us. Now that they have us cornered in our own house—civility and all—their intention to burn it down is increasingly evident.

With the rise of Trump and his adoring fans, my frustration at our complete inability to counter his ascension expresses itself in flickers of fury. (And, yes, I DO understand the power of disinformation in achieving Trump’s ends.) To see him get away with things he shouldn’t—by right or by law—be able to get away with and protected by people who had no business protecting him, to discover that eight years of his appalling antics had no dampening effect whatsoever on over half of the voting population, to see the writing on the wall and not be able to convince voters to read it, has been a hard, hard blow against everything I hold dear. So I have been aware of anger as one of the many naturally arising reactions to the circumstances. But Anger’s depiction in my dream—the raw, bitterness of my feelings—has let me to now suspect that under my thoughtful, but congenial, surface lies a super volcano of roiling, hot lava—my small vents of anger, merely the steam.

With the magma inside me in mind, I sat down with my journal and wrote the following:

“What AM I so angry about?”

(thoughtful pause … then, “Wow!”)

I’m angry about EVERYTHING!

I’m angry about my upbringing which taught me that it was always better to take the high road, the stories and movies of my childhood culture that taught me that doing the right thing would win in the end (think Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory)—that good trumps evil. I’m angry at my church, which taught me to be compassionate (think 1 Corinthians 13), that God is Love, to love one another, to help the sick and the poor and the hungry. I’m angry at the peace-loving hippies who grew up to not give a fuck—about their environment, about other people, about safety, about PEACE. I’m angry that we’re too lazy, complacent and addicted to comfort and convenience to lift a finger to avoid climate change (not to mention the people who profit off of this fatal flaw). I’m angry that we’ve trashed the planet, that wilderness spaces are growing vanishingly rare, that we’re constantly ripping the last remaining skin off the earth for more houses, malls, box stores, skyscrapers—or to extract what’s beneath it.

I don’t want those things! I WANT NATURE!!

But now there are too many of us. There’s no room for nature. Now, we’re just waiting for the end. We, as a species, have been given our diagnosis: we have a terminal illness. Now we are waiting to find out what dying will be like. I’m angry that I have to die twice—once as a species and once as a person. I’m angry that there’s no way to stop it. And that instead of doing what little we could (such as electing Kamala Harris) we are actively speeding up the process (by electing Donald Trump). I’m angry at voters who, despite everything, fell for his lies—his simplistic promise that if they elected him they wouldn’t have to make hard choices (hell, they wouldn’t even have to vote anymore!). They could just go on living their comfortable and convenient lives of unexamined white and human supremacy …

… BECAUSE GOD FORBID THEY SHOULD FEEL ANY GUILT!

I’m angry that people can look at a mob who are blatantly ignorant, rude, childish, greedy, jealous, angry, lying, cruel, unfaithful, untrustworthy, immature, and deceitful, and fail to conclude that these are the LAST people we should give our power to. I’m angry that we have no moral compass, no ethic to which we all adhere—no ethics at all.

I didn’t sign up for this. The world I was sold as a child, the world I was happy to serve and support, is not the world I was promised in return for obeyance. Neither is it a safe world for my children, my grandchildren or anyone else’s. Somebody fraudulently swapped out the world we thought we were working towards for a world filled with all the very principles (and their resultant effects) that we abhor.

So YES, I’M ANGRY! I’m swat-the-ground-with-a whip-angry.

THWAP!

THWAP!

That’s what I wrote—leaving no doubt that Anger and I are one—BUT … is being angry a problem? Not unless I don’t acknowledge it!

With that in mind, please know that posting this piece is not a plea for help (though if you happen to have dream interpretation skills, I’d welcome your input!). This is, in fact, me being healthy. There’s enormous relief in owning my anger and tremendous release in expressing it—which is why I’m exposing myself to you in this way. Feel free to reply with your screeds in return. We need to help each other process in ways like this.

When all is said and done, however, it’s important to remember that the energy of Anger, when used correctly, can and does bring positive changes to our lives. In that vein I offer this blessing to those challenged by the anger, ubiquitous in these times (revise as needed):

(outbreath) May Anger propel us out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in …

(inbreath) that we may carve a space dedicated to the wisdom of Compassion.

I extend this, both for us, personally, as well as for our nation.

Graphic credit: Carpet Crawler at Deviant Art