Many years ago, when I was a heavy drinker, a member of my family bought me a little plaque with a sign on it to hang on the wall. The sign stated that there are two sides to every argument: ‘Mine and the wrong one’. The message to me was clear: I always had to be seen to be in the right, no matter what.
It was an amusing catchphrase, but it actually contained a very important clue about what it’s like to live with someone who has an addictive nature. Most alcoholics and addicts hate to lose an argument, and they absolutely detest it if people perceive them to be in the wrong about something. It makes them grumpy, riled or very, very angry.
In my house, whenever a politician opened his or her mouth to speak in a TV studio debate, my family would run for cover. They knew that, sooner or later, I’d be ranting and raving about the state of the world, because I disagreed with almost everything that I heard on TV. It was very simple: I was in the right and the rest of the world was wrong.
Thankfully, now that I’m a bit older and hopefully a tiny bit wiser, I know that the reason I was like this was because, deep down, I was insecure. I just didn’t feel good enough about life in general, but I was too weak to accept that I could ever be in the wrong.
I had no inner confidence to tackle the emotional ups and downs that life threw at me, and so the only way I could rectify this was to convince myself I was always in the right. It didn’t matter whether it was a dispute in a relationship or an argument about something as trivial as the price of fish: I always knew best (or so I thought).
I see this sort of character trait in others all the time in my work as an addiction therapist.
Often when I talk to somebody who’s in treatment they’ll acknowledge that their life is in a mess, but they still think they’re right about almost everything they do. They simply can’t bear the idea of being wrong.
In a situation like that, I sometimes go to a whiteboard and draw a gravestone. I put ‘RIP’ on it, above the person’s name, with an epitaph that says: ‘This person was always right!’ I do this to demonstrate how preposterous the idea is that anyone can always be perfect… but it doesn’t stop addicts getting very angry whenever they’re challenged.
Most addictive processes are driven by an inability to deal with our feelings – and one of the most powerful emotions that we can experience is anger. It can be overwhelming in its intensity. Anger can make us rant and rave; it can make us behave in ways towards other people that are simply insane, and it can end in outbursts of uncontrolled violence.
But what exactly is anger, and why does it exist as an emotion? Well, if you look at it from a physiological perspective, anger is a defence mechanism that’s triggered by fear.
If something makes you angry, it’s nearly always because it has the potential to make you feel afraid, or at the very least, very insecure. It might not always be immediately obvious, but anger is a coping mechanism for dealing with fear.
Here’s an example that proves this point. Let’s say you’re out in your car when another motorist cuts in front of you. You react angrily and before you know it you’re involved in a road rage incident. What actually happens is that, deep down, your behaviour is triggered by fear. Of course, you don’t consciously think of it like that. The red mist simply descends and you go into a rant. But on an emotional level your limbic system has kicked in because you perceived a threat to your wellbeing, and this triggers fear.
It may be that you were afraid that the other road user’s driving could have harmed you. Or maybe the fear was just triggered by the disrespect the other person showed you (after all, if they get away with treating you like shit then others will too). Either way, it unleashes your anger. Often there’s a clue to what’s going on in the language that you choose to express your anger:
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You could have killed me…’ or ‘Who the hell do you think you are, treating me like that?’
What you’re really saying is: ‘I was afraid I was going to get hurt’, or ‘I’m fearful that by treating me like that, you think that you’re better than me.’
As we saw earlier, our limbic system reacts to threats through fight, flight or freeze. If you’re going to fight, you need to be fired up, with adrenaline pumping and your senses heightened. A very effective mechanism to achieve this state is anger. But it doesn’t matter whether the anger you feel is righteous or imagined – it’s still driven by fear.
When I was ranting and raving at the TV, it was because I was secretly afraid that the rest of the world was better than me, so I reacted in the only way I knew how to at the time, which was through anger. But my anger wasn’t the enemy: it was fear. If you have an addictive personality then fear is likely to be your constant companion… and fear is the No. 1 driver of anger.
Fear can be triggered by lots of different things, but at its heart is usually a deep-rooted insecurity about one’s own self-worth. If you’re frightened about life in general, anger works so well as a coping mechanism that you can actually experience the equivalent of a high from it.
When you’re full of fury you don’t feel frightened and you don’t care about your insecurities – all you care about is expressing your rage. The feelings of strength and invincibility that anger can create within us are a welcome release from all the insecurity and anxiety. Suddenly, you feel powerful, whereas normally there’s only fear.
In some scenarios, anger can become a permanent part of your nature, so that you become irritable and borderline aggressive all of the time. We’ve probably all had colleagues like this in the workplace. People tend to walk on eggshells whenever they’re around this person, because they seem to be spoiling for an argument the whole time.
If you add alcohol to a mix like that it can be like tossing a match into a box of fireworks. If somebody has anger issues then the booze is likely to aggravate things. I’ve been in plenty of bars and stood drinking with guys who are constantly on the lookout for any slight, either real or perceived, which they can use as an excuse to explode. They might be big burly men who give the impression of relishing violence, but in my experience their actions are always driven by insecurity.
I can recall being in pubs in my hometown where anybody overheard speaking in a middle-class accent risked being punched. The reason for this would invariably be that the attacker was reacting to feelings of being ‘Less Than’ – in other words, they were afraid of being perceived as inferior to someone.
Often it’s the people with the most aggression who carry the most fear – and woe betide anyone who gets in their way. The anger becomes a compulsive behaviour in its own right – one that forms a very active part of the addictive process.
Anger is usually the result of experiences in childhood, and someone may have been carrying it around for many years. If, for example, somebody spent most of their childhood being picked on by their siblings, or in the presence of a violent parent, then they’re likely to have developed an angry fight response just to exist. The resentments and negative feelings will have become part of their core being.
The result is that they’re always on the lookout for slights, or excuses to react with aggression and anger. Alcohol can quickly unleash these resentments, which in extreme cases results in an urge to batter the hell out of anyone who comes within range.
I’ve counselled many individuals for anger management and when you look underneath their anger you’ll always find fear. They suffer from a form of codependency whereby their own feelings of self-worth are dictated by the actions of others. They have low self-worth – and they cannot stand the idea of anybody thinking ill of them.
The only way they can feel better and gain self-esteem is through the affirmation of others. But if anybody acts towards them in a way that they perceive as disrespectful, that’s when the fireworks start. None of this is necessarily a conscious process: they just go through life with a temper that’s resting on a hair-trigger.
The fear and anxiety that people with an addictive nature feel so acutely can sometimes have a very interesting flipside. Instead of reacting with anger towards others, it can make us overbearing in our need to help others. The goal is still the same: to increase our own self-worth by gaining approval from other people.
If you have a low opinion of yourself because your childhood experiences left you convinced that you’re a piece of shit, then it’s only through affirmation from other people that you can change this. The result can be a behaviour known as compulsive helping, which I alluded to in earlier chapters.
This occurs when you become super-attuned to the needs of others as a way of fixing yourself. The only way you feel okay is if they’re okay – so you end up getting your buzz by putting right the problems of everybody around you, while ignoring your own needs. Compulsive helping occurs when you carry out actions to help or control the lives of other people to the point where it becomes an obsession and results in harm to either yourself or them.
There are two types of compulsive helpers: dominant and submissive. The dominant ones tend to be very controlling of others, and this typically manifests itself in the workplace. They’re the people who, like me, truly believe that their side of an argument is always the right one. In this respect, they come across as a bit of a control freak.
A friend of mine is a recovering addict who once worked in the technology industry. He’d typically chair meetings where there were 15 or 20 people working together on a project, but, instead of delegating, he would insist that everything was done his way, right down to the last minor detail. Not only did he nearly work himself to death, but he also irritated almost everybody around him, because nobody was allowed to do their own job without his interference.
I’ve come across lots of people like this who work in high-pressure industries such as banking or the media. They need to be in charge of others in order to feel okay about themselves. What they’re actually seeking is affirmation and approval from their peers. These positive reactions from others give them a buzz, and it helps alleviate their own inner feelings of fear and anxiety.
A dominant compulsive helper always wants to get everybody to do things their way, so unsurprisingly it often ends in confrontation – which only adds to their problems. They risk becoming burned out as they take the responsibilities of others onto their own shoulders. They can be very cunning and manipulative, but unfortunately it results in a meltdown because they take on too much. Their actions also make them highly unpopular, which aggravates their secret feelings of low self-worth and fear.
Submissive compulsive helpers behave in a slightly different way, but just like their dominant counterparts they start out by seeking approval and affirmation. Their actions towards other people, such as family members, friends, neighbours and workmates, can be very caring and helpful. They’ll often be the first to offer help to a friend in need and can show great kindness.
For example, they might offer to do the shopping, help with the cleaning and run errands. The approval and thanks they receive in return make them feel good about themselves. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being thoughtful of others – but in compulsive helpers it runs completely out of control. They end up doomed to a life of running round after everyone else, to the point where their own needs and the needs of their loved ones may be neglected.
I’ve encountered people who spend their whole life shopping or running errands for others – and they love nothing more than listening while a friend pours out all their troubles to them. They end up with the weight of the world on their shoulders, unable to function on an emotional level in their own right.
Unfortunately, even the people they’re seeking to help may end up being harmed if they come to rely too heavily on the compulsive helper. They can no longer fight their own battles because someone has always done it for them.
Compulsive helping may start out with positive intentions, but the helper ends up becoming a hopeless ‘do-gooder’ who can no longer see the wood for the trees while their own life collapses and resentments start to build up.
It may well be that some people can display both forms of compulsive helping, dominant and submissive, depending on the circumstances they find themselves in. Someone who works in a bank or in the media may be very submissive towards their own boss, but then be a completely controlling ogre towards the people below them. A compulsive helper may also lean towards a role in a Human Resources team, or take a highly paid career as a personal assistant. If you love organizing the lives of others, then where better to work than HR? Similarly, if you want to run around after someone important, becoming a PA may appeal.
In my own case, while I was quite happy to be dominant of others, I was not beyond also dabbling in submissive compulsive helping. I’d start off by offering to help somebody but it soon became a chore that I resented. I remember on one occasion offering to drive a neighbour to the airport. I refused to accept any money from them for petrol: I was doing them a favour (wasn’t I great!)
At first they made a big fuss about what a nice person I was, and I felt good about it. But the next time they asked they weren’t quite so flattering, and there was no offer to contribute towards the petrol. On the third occasion I did it, I was beginning to feel like an unpaid taxi driver and I drove to the airport simmering with resentment.
I vowed to tell my neighbour to go and fuck himself if he ever had the cheek to ask me again. My actions were typical compulsive helping, because they involved an imaginary profit and loss account. I was happy to help – but I wanted my pound of flesh in return, in the form of adulation and affirmation.
Of course, getting angry from time to time doesn’t mean you’re an addict. Neither does being helpful towards others. But if either becomes a coping mechanism for fear, you might find it’s time to ask yourself what it is that’s causing that fear…