CHAPTER FOUR

Punching Bag

You know that emotions in and of themselves are not toxic. But when negative emotions aren’t dealt with, they can bypass awareness and be acted out in behavior, or enacted as relationship patterns, in highly destructive ways. You might say our relationships with others reflect our past experience and ongoing understanding of ourselves vis-à-vis the world. This starts with our initial primary caretakers, and it’s imperative to understand this dynamic.

Unresolved dickery leads to failed relationships, trouble at work, and emotional difficulties for which the source is often difficult to trace. Dickery balks at investigation. It manifests in a myriad of expressions that include deep-seated self-doubt, self-pity, and self-contempt. So, if we are to achieve anything like harmony, we might need a heads-up on what John and Julie Gottman, the world’s premier relationship experts, call relationship killers par excellence. These also happen to be the ways that being a dick comes across to others:

1.  Criticism, an attack on another’s character or personality. Here are examples to note the difference between a complaint and criticism; Complaint: “There’s no gas in the car and I’m annoyed you didn’t fill it up like you said you would.” Criticism: “You never remember anything! You’re completely unreliable. I can’t count on your word at all!”

2.  Contempt, a behavior that communicates disgust, including but not limited to sneering, sarcasm, name-calling, eye rolling, mockery, mean humor, and condescension. Contempt is primarily delivered through nonverbal behaviors. It prevents two people from reconciling, inevitably increases conflict, and is always disrespectful. The Gottmans’ research shows that couples who display contempt for each other suffer more instances of illness and disease than respectful couples.

3.  Defensiveness. These behaviors convey the message, “The problem isn’t me. It’s you.” This implies that because your partner threw the first stone, they’re responsible for the ensuing conflict. You avoid taking responsibility for your behavior by pointing to something they did prior to the complaint about you. You don’t acknowledge the truth in what they say about your attitude and your behavior.

4.  Stonewalling. In relationships where intense arguments break out and criticism and contempt lead to defensiveness, one partner eventually tunes out. This is stonewalling. The stonewaller acts as if he (the Gottmans’ research indicates that 85 percent of stonewallers in marriages are husbands) couldn’t care less what his partner says or does, and turns away from conflict and the relationship. Any form of disengagement is stonewalling.

These relationship killers are equally effective at excusing one’s own bad behavior. We regularly use them against ourselves, believing things like resentment and revenge are defensive measures against others when in fact they hurt, stifle, and isolate us.

When we’re hurt, we tend to be unable to leave the scene of the crime. Over and over again, through obsessions and compulsions that allow our emotions to slide right under the tripwire of consciousness, we return to our pain during interactions with the world, subjecting others to our messy bog of unresolved conflict.

When we’re stressed out and feel out of control, our response can lead to actions that don’t allow others to help remedy the situation. That’s when we feel lonely, even though supportive people are right there with us. Instead of turning to them, we use our out-of-control feelings to justify protecting ourselves from them; after all, they’re as likely to be responsible for the problem as for its solution. We act out like dicks.

A crisis is often a window into how our defenses come out, isolate us, and reinforce dissociation of what we want and need from others.

I have a client named Sam whose mother said repeatedly throughout his childhood that she loved him, but he had a difficult time believing it, and ultimately couldn’t accept that she cared for him. Because Sam’s father worked feverishly hard to make ends meet, his mother said she felt like a single mom. She had two other kids to take care of, and so the attention and direct care that she could offer didn’t feel to Sam like enough. Intellectually, he understood his mother’s dilemma, but deep down he felt withheld from and believed, “If she really loved me, she would find a way to be more present.” He did all he could throughout his early years and adolescence to attract her attention in positive ways, but at some point he gave up and began punishing her and everyone else for his sense of helplessness.

Since Sam felt underappreciated when he tried to be a “good kid,” he came to believe that nothing he did could result in a positive response. He turned to dickery, which felt like something he had more control over. You act like a dick and the world responds in consistent, albeit painful and negative, ways.28

Dickery, as I’ve said, often begins as a reaction to an early childhood environment (usually a parent) that feels out of control. That is why assessing our current responses to stress and feeling a lack of control is important. It helps us understand how our past comes out in our present relationships.

Catharsis and the Punching Bag²⁹

The term catharsis was used by Aristotle to describe the emotional release experienced while watching Greek tragedies. It derived from kathairein, meaning cleansing. And we use catharsis as a rationale for venting our feelings; it’s purifying for goodness’ sake! Sigmund Freud helped push this idea into common practice. Mental wellness, he reasoned, could be achieved by purging impurities into the wastebasket that is a therapist.

Freud believed repressed fears and desires, unresolved conflicts, and unhealed wounds poison the psyche. The mind reacts by forming phobias and obsessions around these bits of mental flotsam, and what’s needed is to rummage around in there, open up some vents, and let the pressure out. The hydraulic model of anger is just what it sounds like—anger builds up inside the mind until you let off some steam. If you don’t, the boiler will burst. So, according to this theory, without catharsis you’re likely to explode.

People in the helping professions have been attempting to dispel the effectiveness of this method for years. Harville Hendrix, for example, courageously revised his amazing 1988 book Getting the Love You Want in 2008 with a correction. The cathartic “getting it out” approach to conflict had been shown to backfire and be destructive in the long run.

According to David McRaney,30 author of the blog You Are Not So Smart, which this section is based on, the notion that venting anger verbally is an effective way to reduce stress and avoid physically lashing out at a loved one is a misconception. In truth, venting increases aggressive behavior over time.

Hard to imagine, I know. Catharsis seems to make sense. And that meme about how “releasing sexual tension feels good,” did so well.

McRaney says, “Throwing up when you are sick feels good. Finally getting to a restroom feels good.” But using catharsis to justify hostility, despite its momentary relief, does not justify the consequence of living at odds with the world and with yourself.

Take Julie. Anyone could be her personal punching bag. Her anger toward the world was a telltale sign of unhappiness. She felt surprised, though—“shocked”—when her therapist said the point of their sessions was “not mere catharsis,” and that no good would come from letting Julie treat her like a punching bag.

How well has it ever worked to treat people in your life like crap? Dr. Michael Bennett and his daughter Sarah Bennett, the renowned provocateurs of self-help, have this to say in their wildly popular book F*ck Feelings: “The sort of venting that goes on in couple’s therapy is a lot like the venting of intestinal gas; it provides immediate relief for the venter, but soon poisons the air for everyone in the fallout zone.”

To be fair, Julie had good reason to be angry. Much of what she wanted to address in therapy was pain that until then she had expressed as rage to keep others away. When Julie was seven years old her mother died, effectively pulling her family life apart. The experience created a deep fear of investing in relationships with people she might come to rely on emotionally. Like Julie’s mother, that person could suddenly be taken away and deprive her of a sense of safety in the world. Julie transformed these fears into an anger she telegraphed unconsciously to others, who would respond by protecting themselves from her punching bag treatment. They avoided her. Unfortunately, these were the very others she needed to meet her goals: friendship, romance, and family. The more steam Julie let off in her self-styled “catharsis,” the more people around her turned away, usually smarting from their attempts to befriend her.

Julie was an expert at rationalizing anger. In therapy she called it “catharsis.” And while it’s true that releasing anger feels good in the moment, it accomplishes little more than that brief jolt of relief. Shortterm catharsis comes at the expense of a long-term solution, which includes not only articulating feelings, but having them responded to in a way that lets us feel heard.

Common sense says venting is a smart way to ease tension, but common sense is wrong. Upchucking our insides fans the flames. Catharsis runs interference between us and a world that may offer better ways to express emotions to people who care, rather than act them out in manners that result in others protecting themselves from us.

You may even look back now at times when you lost it, punched a wall, or threw something at someone’s head and seemed to feel better. Maybe you thought it was worth being considered a dick by the person who barely dodged that plate you flung at them. The truth is, cathartically expressing your inner dick can snowball into destructive habits. Research shows that belief in catharsis makes one more likely to seek it out.31 If you’re convinced catharsis is healthy, you’re obviously keen to indulge it. But anger begins to seem inconsequential. You vent, stay angry, and keep doing aggressive things to continue venting.

Though Julie might not mind being contradicted or rejected by her therapist, her therapist’s insistence on humane treatment did set a new standard for acceptable behavior and a way of tolerating and expressing emotion that would no longer lead Julie to be abandoned by others. Julie’s therapist’s refusal to be a punching bag represented a significant step forward for her to be realistic about how her behavior was actually hurting her. Julie also found that dickery begets dickery! People prone to cathartic outbursts tend to find others who use that method, or find it intolerable when people are dicks to them and cathart right back when catharted upon.

“The yelling never worked,” admitted Julie. “What’s amazing is I couldn’t see that until I started yelling at you. For once, rather than ducking or trying to calm me down, I was told to ‘knock it off.’ You shared how it made you feel, like a real person, not just a shrink. Your take on catharsis made me realize the things that actually relieve my pain in therapy—the compassion, care, openness—were stifled by the ways I sometimes act out my pain. Ways that, as you said, make me hard to tolerate.”

The most effective approach to catharsis is just to stop pursuing it. Yet I don’t mean an abstinence-only, “just say no” model. I’m suggesting we mindfully and thoughtfully take our anger off the burner, let it cool down from a boil to a simmer to a lukewarm state, during which we’ll no longer want to scald someone. The trick is to express anger, and especially the hurt and fear underneath it, in ways that allow us to hear ourselves and recognize what we feel.

Johnny Rotten’s immortal words “anger is an energy” notwithstanding, if you get into an argument, someone cuts you off in traffic, or you get called a cruel name, venting will not energize you, nor will it dissipate the negative energy. It will feel great, yes. Being a dick can be a blast! However, you must recognize that you’ll be having fun at someone else’s emotional expense. As McRaney says, “While catharsis will make you feel good, it’s an emotional hamster wheel. The emotion that led you to catharsis will still be there afterward, and if it made you feel good, you’ll seek it out again in the future.”

This goes back to the earlier explanation of psychological defense in general. Psychological defenses protect us against awareness, but not from the effects, consequences, and influence of whatever emotional experience we are attempting to repress.

Not reacting is a big deal in dickery recovery. Scientists have even gone as far as to debunk the benefits of redirecting anger into activities like exercise. Doing this only maintains the state of increased arousal. You may even be more aggressive afterward than if you had just cooled off.32

It may help to think of not reacting as an action unto itself. By pausing, we withhold behavior driven by anger, hurt, and fear so we can express those emotions later in ways that are actually heard. It’s important to note that cooling off is not the same as not dealing with the anger at all. I’m only asking that you take a time out. When you hit pause, you delay your response. Then you can relax or distract yourself with an activity that’s incompatible with aggression.

Whoever Said “Misery Loves Company” Was a Dick

“Help me!” yells Valerie in the middle of the night. Her plea is intended for anyone and everyone who will listen.

To the casual observer it may seem as if this is what her therapist, yours truly, suggested she do: find and utilize her support network. No harm in that, right? But if anything, I tried to divert her and get her off my back to establish boundaries. Valerie’s misery seemed to flourish the more anyone responded to her chronic state of crisis.

There are people who use the “woe is me” routine as a weapon against those who come close enough to care.³³ They are the ones who scream, “Help me. Fix me. SOS!” Streaming tears of indignation, Valerie believes no one cares enough to “actually do something!” It’s true that her cries for help are often ignored. But that’s because her pleas for assistance are often overwhelming and difficult to respond to in a legitimately helpful way.

Valerie has a good reason to feel hurt and angry. She was abused throughout her childhood and adolescence by her father while her mother turned a blind eye. Only when she was fourteen, when things got so bad the police were called, did Valerie’s mother seek help, and only then because the courts required it. Ultimately, her parents divorced, mercifully separating Valerie from her abuser. But this was too little, too late.

Valerie had already internalized the message that no matter how loud you scream, how bad you ache, how much you writhe and cry for help, no one will care. She developed an obsessive-compulsive routine that caused her great misery. And she used that pain to punish anyone who tried to fool her into believing they could provide the sort of help that always eluded her. Oftentimes, these attacks were peremptory. She was especially hard on those whose role was to protect her, such as her shrink. In short, she used her misery to behave like a dick.

This behavior sabotages Valerie’s career as well. She is a brilliant woman with exceptional fundraising skills, yet has lost two high-paying jobs in the past year alone. Her employment history demonstrates success, which allows her to keep finding work. But time and again she has used this destructive pattern against colleagues, bosses, top administrators, and even potential donors.

Her M.O. is this: she wields such powerful misery that all those around her offer aid. For months if not years, they bang their heads and hearts against the impenetrable wall of her gloom, quitting finally when they realize that each rescue attempt gets chewed up and spit out. It’s her weapon, a version of dickery that leaves those around her wondering how, when, and where they were hit. When she feels that the jig is up, her misery having once again exhausted the resources of a support system like, say, a workplace, she’ll then perceive that a boss is harassing and hurting her, making it impossible to do her work. She’ll feed this fear any way she can. Constantly calling for attention, she’ll tell everyone who will listen, complaining, gossiping, and attacking. In full-on obsession, she’ll compulsively notify human resources, try to enlist new supporters, go to her boss’s supervisor, and beyond. A momentary relief from her anxiety comes with the attention, but at a cost of having her concerns increasingly ignored or, worse, backfiring. The cycle sustains rather than diminishes her underlying anxiety.

And while Valerie may seem willing to get help, she is unable to adopt suggestions that may indeed lead to a happy mindset. Instead, she spends endless hours obsessing over everyone she believes has a better life, adhering to the maxim that, “There’s no better recipe for misery than comparing my insides with your outsides.”

Misery is exactly what sustains the anxiety of fear from Valerie’s childhood. Coming out as dickish behavior, it protects her against “falling for it”—as in the hope that her SOS will be heard—and entitles her to lash out. Sadly, Valerie’s misery also backfires by trapping her in a repetitive cycle of traumatic feelings. Remember that when the self is a weapon against the world, the self is also a weapon against the self.

But because her shrink was willing to challenge her attempts at catharsis, Valerie was able, through diligent hard work, to drop her attitude and express that small flicker of hopefulness hidden underneath her howling misery. Starting with expressions of sadness, hurt, and fear, Valerie loosened her conviction that the therapist would dismiss her feelings of abandonment and terror, “just like everyone else.” Valerie let go of her so-called cathartic behavior and allowed herself to be cared for as a survivor of trauma, which helped heal her wounded relationship with the world.

EXERCISE: JUSTIFYING OUR DICKERY EVENT CHART Let’s look at the relationship patterns and behaviors you likely learned from your family history, focusing on experiences you recall as negative or hurtful. It will help you link past feelings of being out of control to current ones.

Event that made you feel entitled to be a dick	What you did about it (with special attention to family roles and routines)	The outcomes of your dickish reaction
Example A: My partner lost his job.	Fell into a caregiving routine where I begrudgingly took on the full burden of financial responsibility.	I felt resentful, hurt, and unappreciated. Then I seriously lessened my investment in the relationship.
Example B: Financial difficulties	When I had money problems I didn’t let anyone else know about it or help. I stewed in resentment	I’ve left relationships because I felt responsible for our poor finances.

Now, using the above examples as a reference, describe two or three of your own stressful life events that justified treating others like a punching bag. Alongside these responses, write down what you did while feeling out of control, and what the outcomes have been.

Then think about the following:

•  Is there a “usual outcome” when you pursue catharsis?

•  How do you react to it?

•  How strong are your and others’ reactions?

•  Can you now see ways that these default cathartic ways of relating to others have set you up to be hurt?

•  Are you able to identify the role models of these ways of expressing yourself?

•  Can you imagine alternative ways of expressing rather than catharting when you feel hurt, scared, angry, or out of control?

•  Might that inspire different responses from the people affected by your behavior?

•  Can you imagine that expressing rather than acting out catharsis allows you to feel heard, accepted, and cared about?