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| "We do not have to accept the problems we create within our souls." - D. Santiago, April 2017 |
Passive anger is the cancer of humanity. It saps our
relationships to the point that love becomes exasperating, desperate and
confused. It drives us to think irrationally questioning truth and engaging in
actions the test our limits pushing on walls inside our minds. It’s like being
a caged animal. We become pains in the ass as we search for why this is happening?
We engage in self-doubt asking, “What did I do wrong? I believe I am a good
person. I’m generally happy with who I am.
What am I missing? What’s not
good enough about me?” Worst of all, being
social creatures down to our genetics, we feel angst as we notice the loneliness
that comes from the human connections surrounding us breaking down.
Here’s the thing, it’s probably not you. If you read up on these feelings, you
eventually run into a discussion about the phenomenon of human
withholding. That’s the behavior where
people shutdown and recede into a safe space inside their minds. For whatever reason, and by an infinite
number of possible triggers, a person feels unheard, disrespected, unrecognized
and they retaliate passively. They cut
you out because they are unable or unwilling to face you and fight you for
their space. So instead they carry on
with the normal pleasantries but you, if you’re perceptive, will feel that
there’s a boundary there, a wall preventing connection. You may not see it right away but sure as the
sun will rise, that person doing the withholding is sheltering inside a tenuous
safe space trying to protect and nurse a soft and hurting inner being.
What triggers it in some people can be as simple as
disagreeing with them on a seemingly minor point. In others, it’s caused by a disappointment
upon discovering a difference expectations about life outlook; often something
to do with very deep presumptions in a person’s cultural upbringing and the
assumptions one carries into more complex life because of it. Regardless, the perceived slight causes
resentment. If it goes passive, it
becomes a grudge that can go on for decades stewing like magma deep inside a
volcano powering ever worsening resentment.
And the pleasantries go on. Over
time, witnessing the dissonance of a person driven by two tidal forces in
conflict becomes loud and confusing. The
cancer grows. You feel the volcano hidden beneath a ever thinning covering of
top soil. If you are a good person with
a good heart, it’s deafening. It hurts your very soul to sense it.
Now step back for a moment and keep your perspective. There are billions of people on this planet
and no one has a connection with everyone.
Of the limited number of personal connections we have, most are casual
connections where we have no need to invest in the deeper interplay of
positives and negatives that are part of a deep connection with them. They’re what we called “hi friends” in high
school. Wave, smile, say hi, move on. Only a few people graduate to deeper meaning
in our lives where maintaining connections matters.
This being said, the meaningful human connections we maintain
are quite complex. There are such things
as hostile connections where we feel bilateral animosity as the defining basis
of an interpersonal connection. These
are honest distastes and deserve recognition as a legitimate form of human
pairing. The noun for this is enemy.
Not to despair, there are also such things as friendly connections. These are the positives in our lives where
two people find nurturing energy in each other.
These are the beginning points from which friendship blossoms. It is where love begins. This is also where passive anger and withholding
can happen all too easily. If we are
honest with ourselves, we’ll recognize that all nurturing friendships have
degrees of passive withholding in them.
Where our relationships get into trouble is when we lose our balance at
the built up passive anger comes to dominate the connection.
What next? Make no
mistake about it; it’s work to repair broken connections. Furthermore, the repair can take many forms;
some of them painful. If you are a good person, the most important thing one
must discipline yourself about is that, having recognized the flaw, the quest
is to find the right answer, the good answer. It is not about forcing a desired
one.
It may, make that will, get noisy. When it does, trust in this. Even as the angst and confusion rages, it’s
important to remember that it’s unlikely that a broken connection with a friend
means you should have been enemies. That
just does not happen unless the other person was purposefully deceiving you
from the outset in which case you were manipulated and played. If that’s the case, transitioning them to
enemy is justified. But most of our
relationships are not enemy ones and you have to have faith in yourself that
your gut would have warned you early on if it was. You are not an idiot. Don’t waste too much energy dwelling there. The same goes for casual acquaintances. You know you haven't made a deep love
commitment there either. Do admit to
yourself that we humans do love with our best friends. That bond is a deliberate act we know we’ve
done or not done. Trust the truth of it. Honor the meaning of it.
What is far more likely is that your valued friend is
withholding because they are stuck about something internal to them, something
they don’t want to share. Whatever it is it’s an unhealthy state for them, a
weak state. They are expending precious energy walling that part of themselves
off from the the rest of the world. The
withholding takes many forms. Between
lovers, the most common artifact is one partner shying away from intimacy
because not only is your body naked there, so is your soul. The unwitting partner becomes the trigger to
remind them of whatever it is that’s bothering them. It tests the very limits of the love bond
when it happens. Between friends, it manifests as avoidance. Good friends, best friends, share deep trust
and this too is a path to the nakedness of one’s soul. The friend becomes the trigger that ignites
the inner dialog of issues. Either way,
triggers cause us to reinforce our walls.
We become trapped inside the powerful gravity of our self-made black
holes, unable to break free. And on the other
side of that wall is a trusted lover or friend thrown into confusion by the
opacity of what’s being hidden behind the emotional wall.
And this is where true love, true friendship comes in. This is where you must decide that to thrive
with those whom you want in your life you must do something risky and brave. You have to start a fight to break down the
wall. You have to do it out of
love. You have to do it seeking only the
best interest of the person in need. You
have to do it asking for nothing in return. You have to be willing to lose them
if that’s what’s right for them.
Starting a fight is an act of love. The bravery of that love is in bracing for
the anger as it changes from a passive form to an active hostility. It’s ground hog day except you’re waking up a
honey badger. They’ll likely fight you
and hate you as their passive anger turns to active anger. But that’s the healing process in action. That’s the getting it “out of their system”
so they can live again. If your
instincts about what valuable friends to you are right, odds are they will make
it with a little help from a friend. And
they will see what true friendship meant in their hour of need.
And even with all that work, there are no guarantees. Only they can crawl out of their hole. The only capacity you have is to help them
see that they are in a hole, assure them they are still loved, and show faith that
they can rise above it. The rest is up
to them.
So what’s the self-thrive in this? If one’s aura in life is to do good, to see
the people you love able to love themselves again is food for you own soul. It’s
reaching clarity. It’s removing the
clouds of confusion from feeling the waves of passive anger and withholding
near you. It’s buying back energy to
live happily. It's creating space to
return to your own center. It’s banking
goodwill for when it’s your turn to be the one in need. We are all imperfect. We will all be frail at different points in
our lives. If we are lucky, a brave
person will be there for us. Ultimately,
to thrive is to live well with this imperfect reality as part of our lives.
If you’ve ever been confused by the passive anger of a withholder
or suffered the pain of being the withholder inside a shell yourself, I hope
this article helps you see that you really are worth the love one shares with
those who love you.
