HELPLESSNESS / RAGE

I often work with people who have had to end a relationship with a person after they have been treated very badly. Sometimes that person will leave them … but in either case a strange situation seems to develop. The relationship in some horrible way seems to go on as before, with the person who has left or been left continuing to look on while their former partner carries on as they did before, and continues to be a part of their life.

This is largely a RAGE problem, of someone not being able to communicate how angry they feel in a way that makes a difference.

If this is you try thinking of your ongoing experiences of your ex as like watching a film. A film does not have feelings or intelligence, it inspires them and your emotional experience is what keeps the film being shown, just like a film in a cinema will keep being screened as long as there’s a good audience for it.

Your ex is in fact like a producer. The person who gets the film made in order to profit from it … and as long as you keep ‘watching the film’ your ex will be getting something from you doing so.

Look away. In every situation try to take your attention away from your ex. Use your angry energy to stop looking, to fire you off in another direction like a rocket to the moon. If you are, for example, talking to one of your children and your ex surfaces in a conversation (as they inevitably will) step away as though you have just seen a land mine lurking where you were about to tread.

And turn off Instagram, Twitter, your WhatsApp ‘family chat’ and whatever else keeps you stuck to them. Anger can serve like a magnet when it finds the wrong form. As Leo Bersani wrote: ‘contempt cements the couple’.