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Sue Parker Hall is a Certified Transactional Analyst, a UKCP registered psychotherapist, and a BACP senior accredited practitioner.
Sue is author of Anger, Rage and Relationship: An Empathic Approach to Anger Management specialising in trauma processes in general and anger, rage and shame in particular.
Sue’s unique contribution to psychotherapy is to have identified that anger and rage are completely different phenomena with different origins, purposes and therapy needs.
Sue teaches her theories and methodology to psychological practitioners nationally and internationally, offers free support workshops for ‘differently aware’ psychological therapists (⬅ Friday 14th April workshop), and provides personal supervision to clients via her website Empathic Anger Management.
Sue is also the creator of the podcast series ManMaid which explores men’s issues and experiences in a positive light to help men’s self-esteem.
Each episode discusses a particular issue and then presents a ‘good guy of the week’ with an example scenario.
Sue starts our conversation by talking about how her ‘waking up’ began when she went to university in the late 80s, and “was indoctrinated with critical theory - radical feminism in particular” which only served to spoil her early relationships.
She explains how this education taught her not to like men, find fault with them, and left her thinking men “were lesser beings in need of massive improvement.”
She points out that men are in fact disadvantaged in society, despite what we are taught, and points to the “very high suicide rate for men.”
“If 4 times as many women as men were committing suicide, that would be a national emergency .. It’s almost as if men are disposable - whether that’s sending them to war or dirty, dangerous jobs, or suicide, it feels like there isn’t the same respect for men, so that’s a really important cause for me to be involved in.”
Sue then explains how she began her work in the domestic abuse field and how the Duluth Model to domestic abuse is actually a radical feminist model which says “the only cause of domestic abuse is men’s sexism and men’s wanting to control; it ignores about 12 other possible causes of why people would get rageful and hit each other or emotionally abuse each other.”
Those that did not fair well on that model would work with Sue, and what Sue discovered was that both parties in the abusive relationship had the same early developmental traumas.
“People don’t get into domestically abusive relationships and they don’t domestically abuse unless they’re really traumatised,” she explains. The eyeopener for Sue was the discovery that men and women are equally abusers, and it is not gender specific.
The reason for writing her book, Sue explains, was to demonstrate anger and rage in relationships is a human issue - not a gender issue.
“I would go as far as to say,” expands Sue, “that people don’t abuse who haven’t been abused or neglected themselves.”
Sue then moves on to talk about the system as an abuser: “the system is our ultimate container in a way, and if it’s hostile - if it doesn’t hold us safely, securely, and doesn't nurture us - that is a trauma.”
“But the bigger container still,” she continues, “our planet has been turned into something hostile - through the climate change ideology - has been turned into something that’s punishing, and that makes us scared.”
“It’s a massive existential anxiety,” she explains, and “I think it’s utterly wicked.” “Nature,” she says, “has been contaminated by this ideology.”
Sue then talks about how humans are fundamentally good, and that she tends to take a more humanistic view “that it is just environments that are bad.”
Sue says that anger comes from a very regulated place, but “it’s rage which is completely unregulated that is harmful; you know, I need my anger for my assertiveness if you like” whereas rage “that’s a trauma symptom.”
“We all want to stay in this middle bit,” Sue continues, “feeling our sadness and letting it go, feeling our fear and doing what we need to do to look after ourselves, and feeling our anger - what do I need to do to protect myself - and once we’ve done that we can return to joy, and peace and calm.”
Sue then dives into one of her main contributions to her profession, which is to point out anger is a processing emotion like sadness and fear, whereas rage is a trauma symptom and overwhelm when the organism cannot process. “In traditional psychology,” she explains, “you have anger and rage on a continuum.”
“If people haven’t processed enough of their archaic trauma, they are very likely to be bringing old wounds to the situation.”
“So what we don’t want is people being activists from a rage dynamic,” she continues. “We don’t want them coming from the Karpman drama triangle.”
We then dive into the Karpman drama triangle which consists of the persecutor, victim and rescuer.
People who are still traumatised are “likely to rescue rather than be adult ego state activists.” Rescuers do “not really have any boundaries really, or clear goals.”
Then there is the persecutor - “you’re not gonna be heard if you’re just persecuting somebody,” explains Sue, “or you come from the victim, so you’re not empowered .. What we need to be in is our adult ego state having processed a lot of the old trauma, or at least recognising it if it comes in and doing something about it.”
Sue explains that when we are comfortable with our anger we can move among very diverse groups of people and our identity does not feel threatened.
Sue explains the “shadow side” of the rescuer, which is someone who desires to help others while not looking after their own needs, rather than helping in a way that “empowers and allows people to become independent in their own sovereignty.”
She then talks about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that “we need to meet people where they are” by identifying their needs, whether that’s food security, accommodation security, etc, and once that person is “safe,” they can “express their talents and gifts in the world.”
Linking the Karpman drama triangle to the Covid scenario, Sue then discusses examples of the persecutor and victim, for example demanding others should be hanged, or feeling those behind the scenes have too much power and therefore we are all doomed and there is nothing we can do about it.
Sue says “I support people’s revenge fantasies” as long as they are not carried out because “they’re stepping stones in people’s recovery” and “can restore your dignity” but are still “part of trauma recovery.”
We then discuss accountability, how “we’ve been horribly traumatised at every level of our existence,” and “the massive grieving process” that “those who have allowed this reality to dawn” must go through and sit with. If we are going to recover, we do need to acknowledge what has happened and tell the story of it.
Sue then gives examples of how to process trauma so “we can more easily deal with things in the here and now” including knowing our limits and the huge importance of finding likeminded community.
Sue explains that through therapy or friendships the organism can stop needing to defend itself and protect itself, so more tender feelings can come through.
Sue set up a support group herself for “differently aware psychological therapists” so that as a community, counsellors and coaches can process and share their stories of how Covid and other world events have affected them and their clients.
Sue then explains the optimum - the adult ego state; when we have our intuition and our emotions as two compasses to guide us, we can asses risk, reality check accurately, and make the best decisions for ourselves and others.
Moving on to her book, we discuss what Sue means by “an empathic approach to anger management.” Sue explains how the Power and Control Wheel is “brilliant” and there is also a Positive Wheel which gives you an antidote, “but the way they have been utilised has been very harmful” by using “little thought stopping mantras” like denial, minimising and blaming.
Empathy, for Sue, means understanding that someone has “an experience processing issue.” It is not that that we are doing something wrong and it is not our fault, she explains, but it is our responsibility to learn how to notice, label and process our issues as an adult.
Sue finishes by explaining more about Transactional Analysis, which is a “very speedy way to get people into their adult ego state” and help people to break out of their limiting “script” which can feel alarming at first because we identify so much with our script, but enables us ultimately to feel like a whole person again.
Feeling guilt, says Sue, can often be a sign that we are looking after ourselves by stepping out of an old pattern and old script. Shame, on the other hand, is when something bad happens but we do not identify that something bad has happened to us; instead we feel “I’m bad” and we walk around with shame.
Just like anger, it is possible to see other emotions - like guilt - traditionally considered to be negative as having a very positive role as we move towards becoming a whole person again.
Sue finishes by explaining that the adult ego state provides us with our sharpest spiritual connection, connection to intuition and connection to body, and stresses the importance, especially in these times, of “strengthening our adult ego state” and “growing ourselves up again.”
She recommends her favourite book Growing Up Again: How to Parent Yourself So You Can Parent Your Children which has “every developmental stage positive affirmation that’s needed for us to feel okay in the world - okay about ourselves and okay about others.”
Sue’s Website
https://empathic-anger-management.co.uk
Support workshops for ‘differently aware’ psychological therapists
(follow Sue on Eventbrite for upcoming workshops):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/free-a-support-workshop-for-differently-aware-psychological-therapists-tickets-571354545827
Sue’s ManMaid Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/4X1w1Dh9rC8CLxZwcpD6vk
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/manmaid/id1528776531
Sue’s WCH Mind Health Presentations
The 7 Level Model: Exploring the Assaults on Humanity of C19
https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/the-7-level-model
Undue Influence: Inoculation & Recovery
https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/undue-influence-mind-health
Conscious People's Network (CPN)
https://t.me/covidpositivenews
All my links
http://robito.info
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Sue Parker Hall & Empathic management of anger & rage in these times