Episode 15 – Walking on eggshells: When does anger become problematic?

MIND BEYOND THE MISSION EPISODE 15: WALKING ON EGGSHELLS: WHEN DOES ANGER BECOME PROBLEMATIC?

Brian

So you found our podcast. We are Mind Beyond the Mission, this is a podcast about Canadian Forces Veterans and their Families and specifically mental health. What goes on in our lives, what goes on in our heads. We’re not talking to you as doctors or professionals, we’re talking to you about living with it and what it’s like. Brian McKenna, 19 years in the Canadian Forces. I’m joined by my partner Laryssa Lamrock.

Laryssa

I’m a Veteran Family member. I’m a proud military brat, my husband served in the military, proud military mom. And we’re really excited about this podcast to delve into issues that are important to the Veteran and Family community.

Brian

Join us as we talk about mental health from the perspective of Canadian Forces Veterans and their Families.

Laryssa

As a Family member, do you ever feel like you’re walking on eggshells around your loved one? Is can be difficult to be a Family member or loved one of someone with problematic anger. While anger is a normal emotion that assists us in difficult situations and helps us understand what’s important to us, anger can be a problem for Veterans if it’s expressed in harmful ways or persists for a long time.

Brian

I think we all get angry. In fact, it’s something that we use, something we harness that we should have. I look at problematic anger as, if I have a problem, I’m having a lot of nightmares, for example, and now in our day-to-day interaction I come to work and I handle you in a way that’s inappropriate. Now I’ve got the same nightmares and I’ve got to deal with the aftermath of what I’ve just done to people. You almost give yourself this whole new problem set to go along with the thing that you had all along.

You burn bridges, you take your safety net of people and you thin it out. The extreme of problematic anger is now it’s just you on your couch because you’ve driven everyone away. That’s what I think of when I see problematic anger.

Laryssa

We’re joined by a return guest, I think probably the only return guest that we’ve had on Mind Beyond the Mission. Polly Maher is the Lived Expertise Lead for Families at Atlas, she is one of the five [members] of our amazing lived experience team. Polly, we’re happy you can join us today to chat about problematic anger. I know it’s something that you have experienced. I know you are an advocate for creating more awareness around it. Maybe we’ll toss it over to you. What do you see is the difference between problematic anger and “regular” anger?

Polly

Great question. Thanks for having me back, first and foremost. I feel privileged. What’s the difference? I’m going to give you a couple of scenarios that happened in my home when I realized that anger was a problem. In my words, anger was my husband’s only emotion for many years. If he was sad, he was angry. If he was mad, he was angry. If he was having anxiety, he was angry. That’s how it would come out, I guess, anger. For us, when the kids were little — and to give you context, my kids are 31 and 28 now, so we’ve been at this for a while — when they were younger, one of the first things that I noticed was noises and that sort of hypervigilance. Depending on what mood he was in, we would sit down for dinner and if the kid’s fork hit the plate the wrong way, he would be up and not eat with us. So there was many years where he just didn’t eat with us because of the noise or the kid’s doing something wrong. To me that’s not “normal anger,” right? That’s a little bit extreme.

Brian

That’s that secondary effect we’re talking about, right? Not only do you have this incident at a dinner, but now it affects further meals down the road. Now you’re eating at different tables and so on and so forth.

Polly

Yes, exactly. For us, for many years we just problem-solved by ourselves as best as we could. I remember one of his first psychologists, when we talked about anger, of course, it was me bringing it up because for him, he felt like it was a normal response to that heightened hypervigilance or whatever he was feeling. He felt like it was appropriate, whereas I knew it was not appropriate. It definitely wasn’t appropriate with the kids. At that time, the therapist was like, “Well, let’s use a code word.”

Okay, great, in theory. In the office we both agree to it so when he gets angry, I’m to say the word, and I don’t remember what the word is, so I’m going to use ‘spaghetti.’ The word is ‘spaghetti.’ That’s supposed to calm him down or to give us that pause or to break. No, that ‘spaghetti’ escalated things for us, that word. It really was a long time coming. I’m going to say that was 2001.

Let’s fast forward to 2013. We did an equine program and that’s where my husband really got the tools because they used the horses to show him what he was doing with his anger. The horses were the Family members. He was driving us away, like Brian was saying, right? Then you’re by yourself. His thing was if he said sorry, he thought we should come back right away. Everything should be good because he said sorry. But like you said, Brian, the hurt is there, the damage is done and for the Family members, it’s hard for us to put into words and to just come back. We have that unconditional love. We want to come back, but it’s hard.

Brian

I think with that disengagement word that you’ve got there, that was a technique that I was walked through before as well. I think what we realized over time was we were using it as a new weapon. We were using it as a word to basically say, you just did something wrong and I’m highlighting that by saying ‘spaghetti.’ It was almost a one-upmanship of “Ha, I’ve caught you” as opposed to probably the more healthy way of, “I’m recognizing I’m at the space where we’re about to have a very unintelligent conversation and I need to not do this.”

Laryssa

Brian, from the Veteran experience, what does it feel like for you when you’re hitting that problematic anger? Is it a switch and before you know it you’re overwhelmed with this? Because what Polly has talked about and what I’ve observed and experienced is then when the switch turns off, the Veteran is regulated or not feeling that overwhelming emotion but the Family is left trying to process it and feel like the horses that it’s time to come back again. That’s the Family side of things. It takes a little bit of time, but for the Veteran, what’s that experience like for you? Is it so instantaneous?

Brian

The home is not your platoon, right? something that we have to remind ourselves routinely. What I mean by that is there are certain traits of me that I know probably aren’t the easiest for everyone to get along with. Hypervigilance being one of them, but also anger responses being another, but again, I look at those things as things that kept me alive at other times and I’m very reticent to let them go. One of the ways we do things in the Forces is to get you a little ticked off. It doesn’t hurt over the course of six-year wars to get a little mad at the enemy every now and then. It actually motivates people.

Well, this isn’t your enemy, this is your five-year-old, right? Different form of motivation to get five-year-olds ready for school than it is to get platoons ready to cross the line of departure. But when this other way of doing business worked, and I mean flawlessly in a lot of circumstances, it’s so hard to drop this thing that you see as a tool that you used to use. In some ways, when people say “Don’t be so angry” or something to that effect, that one phrase can tick me off probably about as much as you would feel if I said, “Hey, how about you just calm down?”

Those are things that actually pick us up. I feel sometimes like the world’s trying to make a softer, cushier, Brian. It feels sometimes like people are saying, “Don’t be you.” But that’s not what they’re saying.

Laryssa

It sounds like some of it for you is training, it’s part of maybe personality, it’s part of your approaches. I don’t want to use the word ‘habit’ or ‘behaviours’ or whatever. That might be one component. Polly, I know that you’ve been supporting the Veteran community, particularly in mental health for a long time. What are some other things that you might’ve observed that makes or contributes to Veterans being angry?

Polly

I think if I had to look at it on a wider lens, there are the Veterans that are more explosive like my spouse was, so more outward, but then there’s also the Veterans that really hone it in. They isolate and they’re so afraid of losing it because like Brian said, that anger helped them when they were in a situation of danger or wherever they were, what they were doing, it helped them, but they’re scared about unleashing that on their Family.

So instead, they keep it inside and then it’s like a pressure cooker, because what is that straw that’s going to — that pressure cooker is going to pop off. We used to have a saying, it’s like zero to 60 because you don’t know. That’s really hard for Families to navigate. It’s definitely hard for the Veteran to navigate. But I think what I’ve observed is that when Veterans go for treatment, they’re always looking at the traumas in regards to the PTSD and that, but anger is a layer of that onion.

Brian

Yeah and I think the anger in its extreme, at its high end, you’re going to end up in handcuffs or lose your Family. That’s where we’re going to get to. But what’s the mild or medium version and how much damage can that do over the course of 20 years, just being put on simmer, but always there?

Polly and I have been doing some work with our Australian counterparts on exactly this issue. We were having a chat one day about it — “put some meat on the bones, give us a scenario.” One thing I put in front of them on the spot was being left out of parent-teacher interviews. Polly and I have mentioned this before. “Well, why did that happen?” “Well, that’s the aftermath of how the other ones went.” And the fact that I probably heard one or two things that I didn’t like at that meeting and then it’s not only hard to hear and you’ve got a problem to deal with and the kids got some learning things that need to be addressed, that’s not the result we got to. The result we got to was the next parent-teacher meeting happened and I didn’t know about it. So why am I in the isolation booth? Why am I in the penalty box? Well, that’s why.

Another one that came up for me was getting so ticked off with the government that I didn’t want to open any correspondence from them. One was a cheque, it was a reimbursement. Free money sitting on my desk for months and months and months because I was so ticked off that I didn’t want to open the brown envelope. That’s one of the things we want to bring to the table is obviously in the extreme case, you’re going to do damage and it’s going to hurt you long-term. You’re going to suffer. But what’s the medium to mild effect of having this thing constantly brewing in the background? It does a lot of sustained damage over time.

Polly

Yes, I think so. I think for Families, what it might look like for us observing our Family members is that they have a shorter fuse. They might go silent, seem numb to those around us. Really that piece of having anger, but it’s unproportioned to what happens. For instance, right now my husband’s done a lot of therapy, he’s doing fantastic. I’m super proud of him continuing his wellness journey. However, right now he’s doing a lot of fairly intense therapy that’s bringing out a lot of stuff that he thought he dealt with. So you never know, right?

And what we’re able to communicate now, which is different than say 10, 15 years ago, is that like you said, Brian, he can tell me “My fuse is short.” He knows that the dog’s barking and stuff, they’re elevating his reaction time. So that communication piece was huge for us to be able to communicate so that I’m not taking it that I’ve done something wrong and thinking that he’s like the worst person on earth.

Laryssa

You mentioning that, Polly brought something to mind for me. My spouse describes a holding line. It sounds like Sean has been able to identify when things are coming up for him so he can communicate it with you because once the train has left the station, it might be harder to do that. So Steve has been able to work with his clinician to identify the holding line because I was asking you about the switch, Brian.

I think for some Veterans, once that anger comes, it’s instantaneous and it’s hard to manage after the fact. He’s been able to look back and go, “Okay, the last time I blew my fuse or whatever, beforehand I started feeling heat coming up the back of my neck or my hands being clenched or my tone of voice changing.” That awareness on the side of the Veteran might be able to help give themselves a timeout or do what they need to do and let their Families know it’s not you. They need some time to get things in check.

Brian

Yeah, I think there’s a training aspect to this. There’s also a stigma one that a lot of people in the Veteran community are tired of, which is that a lot of people will look at a relationship and if someone says problematic anger, the assumption is that it’s us. You guys get angry too, right? That’s some of it. I have seen many Veterans who go home and they’re the ones dealing with it because it’s out there in society.

It was part of my wrestling team, which I was on way before I signed on the dotted line. There’s all these other aspects, it’s not a military only thing by any stretch. It is out there in society. It comes from everybody at the table in the house, but I will say this: The military mindset, a lot of people think when you go away and you do something on behalf of the Forces that you’re constantly in this on edge, on threat frame of mind. You’re not. You actually have a lot of fun. You have downtime. You can breathe.

What you’re supposed to do is every time the indicators of the world show you that there’s a threat, even if they don’t show you what it is, you start to ramp up with it. That over there might be more people around me right now have cell phones and they’re all on than is normal, my sense of awareness goes up. Someone around here is making people nervous, my sense of awareness goes up. When someone in my house sits me down and says “We need to talk,” I’m not entering a calm space now. That is like that first bell of threat zone. Whereas what I think you’re trying to say is, “No, this is the first bell of ‘We need to talk.’”

Laryssa

I think where I was going to before is anger can come about for a number of different reasons. I think one thing we want to make sure of here is we’re not painting all Veterans as angry Veterans. We want to make sure that we’re coming across very clear, but for some it can be part of symptomology for PTSD as an example. Some Veterans with mental health issues experience anger. You alluded to the fact, Brian, that Family members, we experience anger as well.

That could be a number of things. It could be anger at the system because we felt that our loved ones weren’t looked after the way we’d like to. It could be built up frustrations, could be a number of different things. Polly, for you, what Brian was talking about with Family members experiencing their own anger, and sometimes it could be you’re just matching anger with anger. It’s the tone of the home. When Brian was talking about, “Now we’re going to sit down and we need to talk,” what’s your experience been like on how it might show up in Family members and what that dynamic is like when there might be almost misinterpretation from either side?

Polly

Yes, great question. I think you’re right, Brian. I think a lot of Family members are just not prepared for any of this. There’s the dynamic of the couple and the Family of origin stuff, where they come from, how anger was portrayed in their homes prior to, all of those different things are contributing factors. I want to make sure that everybody knows that because we all come to the table with our own baggage. I think for me personally, what happened when the anger started was, Brian, I did meet that anger with anger at the beginning, and that wasn’t taken very well.

Then I met the anger with shutdown. I would just totally shut down, which would actually in my case, for my spouse, make him more angry because I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t whatever. Then it became this disconnect and he would, in his words, make stuff up in his head that I was thinking because I wasn’t talking. So that was a problem. It really was about, again, us finding that happy medium that worked for us and I think it’s different for everybody.

But I think as a Family member, I have to be aware of what’s upsetting me today, or what am I carrying today? Because, I’m middle-aged [laughs]. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on with my own body and stuff right now. That’s a switch, right? Now what I have to be aware of is I have to tell my kids, my husband to say, “I’m not in a very good head space today. If I’m bitey or I’m abrasive or whatever, I don’t really know what’s going on, but I’m just trying to give you a heads-up” and vice versa.

For instance, just last night I made dinner, I was a little bit later coming home and my husband called me and he said, “Can you pick me something up to eat?” and I was like, “Oh, you didn’t like what we made for dinner?” and he’s like, “No, it’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that right now I’m angry, I’m in an angry mode and I don’t want it because it reminds me of something. And so, can you pick me up this?” That’s the first time he’s ever been able to make that connection because he does have issues with food and smells and things like that. For me, it was great to know because I was like, “Well, what do you mean you don’t like what I cooked? You’ve eaten it 20 times before. What’s the problem today?”

Brian

Yeah, that’s interesting you bring up the food. I’m nervous of this conversation — twenty minutes from now we could be talking about this — because I used to play a game with my kids in the grocery store. I could not go to the butcher aisle for a long time. Even now, there are days where I change meal plans based on what I think I can smell. We’d go to the grocery store with this list. You got 12 things to get and I’d make my kids go get half of them. They were always the stuff that was over there.

You can imagine how that went at home when I was sent out to go get chicken thighs and I come back with pork loins. It’s like, “Well, but guess what? We’re going to have to make whatever work out of what’s here on the table and what’s in those grocery bags, because that’s all I can do right now.” And I think if you can find ways to communicate that, like we always use communication, “Oh, solve it with more communication.”

Communicate what exactly? What message do I need to get across that’s not going to tick the other person off, but is going to convey that I’m already starting with a short fuse here today? That’s one of the things that I actually think we do a fairly good job of. When we hop on meetings together, we’ll probably do it good because we’ve learned the hard way by doing it bad, but we’ve learned like, “Hey, this weekend stunk, just letting you know so today’s probably not going to be the best.” As blunt as that can be, I think that does level-set us to get the most out of the day we can with the space that we have.

Polly

I totally agree, Brian, and I think that’s where we talk about this communication and there’s lots of different programs to go out there. There’s couples therapy, there’s Family counseling, and really I know it can be daunting, but the more resources you keep on the table, the better the communication and things are going to be. It doesn’t have to be long drawn out. Just the fact that my husband was able to articulate and be honest with me last night, just gave me a sense of like, “Okay, I understand this now. Thank you.” Then we were done. It wasn’t this big, drawn out anything.

Brian

I think as well, Polly, again, back to communicate what exactly? Like the last couple of days I haven’t slept well. I told the people I’m working with that because it’s probably not a great day to bring up a new project or harass me about something that’s late. Today is a better day. That’s one of the things I think that I’ve learned, definitely the hard way, is what exactly do I need to get across? It’s like, guys, I’m not playing with a full deck this morning.

Laryssa

You’ve asked the question, “What do I need to communicate?” and I think that can be overwhelming for a lot of us because we feel like we have to go into this long, drawn out explanation as you were saying, Polly. You don’t have to go into the nitty gritty and the how and everything else. It’s just that superficial thing. “Hey, just flagging today’s not a good day. It’s me, it’s not you.” That kind of thing, I think. Just what you explained, saying to your spouse, “I couldn’t make it to the butcher aisle today. It’s not that I wasn’t listening to you or didn’t care, or, you might have had a plan for the week, but this was my capacity.

I think we tend to internalize things. If we don’t have the answers, it must be me. There must be something that I did that upset the other person. I remember at one point in time I used to tiptoe across the kitchen because I thought that by walking too heavily or missing something that I was going to upset my spouse. A lot of the times the anger wasn’t even about me. As awesome as I am, not everything is about me. Polly, I wanted to ask you touched on a couple little things, but is there anything that you’ve used within your Family to learn to cope with problematic anger, or maybe you’ve observed in Families that you’ve supported, from the Veteran side or the Family side, some things that people have used to cope with problematic anger?

Polly

Yes, I think for us was going to the equine program together because even though it was him and I that went, our kids benefited when he got home because he understood more. Even though the kids maybe couldn’t articulate or didn’t articulate what they were feeling, he could articulate things better and he could take things less personally. When we speak about personally, we also did Family counseling at one point and that was more related to me.

I think that anger piece, I don’t know whether it was anger that I was feeling, but I was feeling a lot of overwhelm when I would come home and everybody would be at me. It was like this 20-minute rule that you couldn’t talk to mom for 20 minutes when she got home from work. We still do that today in that they’ll look at me and say, “You’re having a day or whatever, we’ll give you your 20 minutes.” Really those tools as well as the Veteran or the other partner taking a time out. It’s okay to say, “Time out, I need a pause,” and then be able to come back to it a little bit later.

Again, it’s not about having a long, drawn-out conversation and solving all the world problems in a day. It’s just about being able to validate each other’s feelings. “I’m not having a great day. This is why.” Again, the more that the Veteran understands about themselves, the more that the Family starts understanding about themselves, they’re better able to communicate these things together.

Brian

One thing my doctor walked me through many years ago was almost like a grade school matching lesson. When you’re trying to learn the colours in French, they write them in English on one side, the French ones, and you draw the line. We literally did that but one side was emotions and the other side was events. His point to me was that what he wanted me to do was not try to drop anger or drop guilt. He wanted me to feel guilty about the appropriate things, guilty about things I actually control, but not guilty about things that I was part of and had no control.

We did the same with each emotion and kind of mapped it all out. Whether it was the visual aspect of it or physically doing something for whatever reason, that sank in. The point that I was supposed to learn from that was just make sure that if you’re angry because the thing you tabled at work yesterday got turned down, that the kid’s not handling that at breakfast the next day. You can be angry. What exactly are you angry about? We used that and we’re talking years ago, but I remember that whole discussion was because I told him, “Yeah, you keep saying ‘communicate.’ I was literally trying to communicate and she got pissed off.”

We feel we’re doing what you told us to do and then you got mad. And then I got mad, and then we’re in separate rooms pretending to do something on our phones. That’s how that path walked down while we thought we were doing exactly what we’re supposed to do. That was his answer to that was, “Okay, let’s do this emotional mapping thing. Now try going back to that conversation the next time with just feeling angry about the things that anger is rightful to be felt for.” What I appreciated about that was I didn’t have some lovey huggy guy trying to tell me to squish that and “Brian, anger’s bad at all times.” He was like, “It’s a factor in your life. It’s been a motivator. You’re going to need it, but here’s where.”

Polly

I think the one other thing that I’ve observed personally and Family members have said is when a Veteran does hold anger in and stuff, a lot of times the Family members can feel it. Really hard to describe, hard to describe to a therapist, hard to understand maybe but my oldest son especially, he reacts thinking that in a situation in the past his father might have been a little bit more extreme or the anger might have been a little out of context, and now he’s not having that reaction but my son is still feeling it. So I guess I just want to say that for Family members, again it’s really important that we get the help as well because this residual can sit with us for many years and that it impacts our life moving forward.

Brian

One thing I’ve seen in the reverse that happened a lot with me and other friends of mine has been lots of things happen from the military that affect the whole Family and even in the Veteran side, you put in a claim for something and it’s struggling for 25 months. The whole Family is affected by that, but we’re the ones that brought that whole entity into the Family to begin with.

If the Family is frustrated because their Personal Married Quarters (PMQ) is falling apart, the building they live in is a nightmare, who in the Family is going to receive that? Probably the guy walking through the door wearing a Canadian Disruptive Pattern (CADPAT) uniform because he’s the embodiment of the system within the house. We often find like, yeah, the Family has every right to be pissed off at the military or at the department or at the government or at all these things. But don’t be pissed at me. I’m not doing it, I’m Brian. I just happen to represent the thing that’s doing that.

You know where this came up in another conversation Polly and I were having with our counterparts in Australia was the whole idea about retirement. Some people have this dream that when he retires, this will be behind us. We won’t have to live this life anymore. Then the reality of like, guess what? He didn’t want to be in restaurants before, he’s probably not going to want to be in them when he’s retired. There’s that resentment of the system, which we feel sometimes becomes anger to me.

Laryssa

You go home and we often hurt those that are closest to us the most because it feels like they’re a safe place and that’s unfortunately sometimes where those things come out. It might be anger, frustration related, things that are completely unrelated to the home but that’s where you let your guard down. I guess it could be things from past experiences that you’re feeling angry about. Could be things that are going on currently and such.

I think it’s probably important to work with someone at some point to pinpoint what the source of that is. Polly, through your experience, what would you suggest to someone who suspects that anger might be problematic? We’ve talked about when it starts impacting relationships, maybe workspace, the term road rage is one that’s familiar to some Veterans and Families. Or you think that your loved one might be experiencing some problems with problematic angers. What would you say to those folks?

Polly

First and foremost, hopefully your Family member that’s a Veteran is getting help and asking them to chat with their therapist about that problematic anger piece. I was a little bit of a pushy wife, and I thank my husband every day that he accepts it to some degree. I would go in and do check-ins with his therapist, like every six months or whatever, to say, this is what’s going on, or this is what I’m struggling with understanding about him.

Then for me it was really important to do that individual piece too, because Brian, you talked about resentment. I probably did resentment for a couple of years with a therapist, understanding where was that coming from, how was I portraying that to my spouse, to everybody else? The Veteran sort of having that awareness, first and foremost, the spouse or Family member having that awareness, getting help individually, getting help as a Family unit.

There’s a lot of programs out there that are self-referral that you can look at. Equine helped us. It’s not for everybody, but it was less intrusive. My husband didn’t really like couples counseling. He felt that we were pointing the finger at him. The equine program was more general. And be kind to yourself. There’s no roadmap. We’re all trying to navigate this journey, really in silos. But as a community, by having these conversations and by saying what’s really happening in our homes, by sharing it authentically, we can help each other.

Brian

There you have it. Thanks for joining us again, Polly. We’re wrapping up another episode, this one on problematic anger on Mind Beyond the Mission.

Laryssa

Thanks, Polly.

Polly

Thanks for having me.

Brian

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mind Beyond the Mission.

Laryssa

If this conversation resonated with you or helped you in any way, I encourage you to subscribe to Mind Beyond the Mission, wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you’ll be the first to know when our next episode comes out.

Brian

If you know someone who might relate to what we’ve shared or could find it helpful, please feel free to send it their way. We’re all on the same team.

Laryssa

Plus, we’d love to hear what other topics you’d be interested in us exploring in future episodes. Brian and I have a lot of ideas and subjects we plan to dive into, but you, the listener, have probably experienced or thought of topics that haven’t crossed our minds yet.

Brian

Please reach out if this is the case. We’re on social media at @atlasveteranca on most platforms, so please feel free to tweet at us, send us a message, or leave a review on this episode, and let us know what else you’d like to hear us talk about.

Laryssa

Brian, it’s always a pleasure having these important conversations with you. Looking forward to next time.

Brian

You bet, Laryssa. Take it easy.