It is very true I get triggered by rages. My response is usually panic and fear. I get flooded. It feels awful—like I want to run, to hide. My therapist says basically my body thinks I am going to die.
And anytime somebody rages at you, you have to deal with both the rage and what is happening in your body.
In your shoes, I would have to deal with the rage, but my mind/body has a reaction that is 1~10% of what yours does to you.
However, even if I wasn't triggered I am not sure that we can always control or choose appropriate actions when someone rages out of control. A two year old who is having a temper tantrum you can gently pick up and take to their room. A fifty-six year old man you cannot.
I agree on that limit--you cannot do that with a fifty-six year old man... .or it takes a 911 call and a couple beefy cops to "take him to his room."
My ex has an explosive temper. I often didn't know when he would rage. There were many times he raged at me in the car. He raged at me on trips we took together. He raged at me when we were in a hotel room out of town, late at night. They were not situations I predicted, and they were not situations I could just exit. I remember once him raging at me in a hotel room out of town. I got horribly triggered, and insisted he drive me home. I spent hours in a car listening to him rage at me while I cried and was so triggered I got sick to my stomach.
I think what people here would suggest is not putting yourself in a spot where you are trapped with someone who rages. But when you don't know when the rage will occur, then that is not possible, unless you reduce your relationship to... well, nothing.
At any time you have some choice in your actions. In some cases, none of your choices will protect you (or your children) the way you want to be protected. That said, some choices will do better than others.
Reducing your relationship with your ex nothing is your choice if I remember correctly. This is your choice, you don't need my input or validation... .but I concur that it sounds like the best choice for you anyway.
I've recommended to members here with raging/abusive partners that they do avoid ever getting in a car, especially with their partner driving, for that exact reason.
The hotel room out of town has more choices--you can walk out, pay for another room in that hotel or one nearby, or pay for independent transportation home, assuming you have access to money to make this happen. This *might* have been a better choice than demanding he drive you home. Another choice might have been spending the night in a local (to to the hotel) domestic violence shelter. Or taking the car and driving yourself home, leaving him to sort out his transportation issues.
Please be gentle with yourself looking back at that situation; you did the best you knew at the time, and were obviously traumatized badly... .beating yourself up more for letting it happen isn't helpful today.
I do think there is a difference between an expression of anger ("I am so mad right now!" and an abusive rage ("You b-word! You are a worthless piece of **!" especially when it crosses into physical and menacing behavior.
Agree 100% on the difference. I cannot think of situations where staying in the presence of somebody raging sounds like a good choice, unless you are the parent of a two-year-old or a professional in something like mental health or law enforcement on the job.
One thing I see on these boards that concerns me is people perhaps inadvertently enabling the abuse by trying to work through it.
I agree--that is concerning. And worth watching for and trying to correct, or offer other perspectives / options at least.
Most of us arrive here on these boards doing a heck of a lot of enabling in a whole bunch of ways, and recognizing and stopping that behavior is quite a journey. This is one more piece of it... .
I think we may also have gender differences at work here. I am a small woman. I think sometimes men have an easier time handling rage in other men because they can fight back. As a woman I can and have been hurt physically by men. It comes with a different sense of vulnerability.
Yes, men and women have differences in how they relate to anger, rage, and violence, and how they are expressed, and how it is perceived when it is expressed.
I'm going to step out on a limb, and say that healthy (or unhealthy) ways to express anger ... .and healthy (or unhealthy) ways to respond to anger are pretty similar between men and women. I don't count physical differences in this, because as soon as it gets to a level of physical violence or threatening/menacing, it is already unhealthy!
Studies on whether men or women are more violent/abusive seem to be kinda unclear--while conventional wisdom seems to be that men are more violent, there are quite a few studies showing that it is more balanced.
Conventional wisdom would also say that women tend to be more fearful of anger/rage than men are... .but I'm unaware of any studies of the matter.
Back on topic--Will gender differences impact cleaning up your side of the street and dealing with your issues?
