Rage, rage, against just about everything

We can be a superstitious people. Also a suspicious people. And sometimes just people who are resourceful. We will look for cures wherever we can find them.

There are many forms of mental illness that, at a glance, even a lingering one, we think to be spirit possession, obeah or some other form of otherworldly interference. Or we believe it is fated, something unavoidable, a part of someone’s karma. But still, it is loathsome unto us.

Western medicine is not unaware that different cultures may see mental health issues as something else. Are your loved ones seeing things? Hearing voices? Are there signs of delusion? Inexplicable terrors? Do they believe they have special powers?

There are significant studies done on the way this plays out with different kinds of patients.

If you bring an unstable person to the hospital, they doctors may certainly listen to you, but they are not treating you for the shraap you think your villainous cousin put on you. They are not diagnosing candles lit against you.

But there is a manifestation that happens likely every day and twice on a Sunday that I feel is responsible for so many instances of the questioning of a person’s sanity: rage.

We harbour, hold and hug up rage. Yes, I do think we can be volatile. But – feeling and observation, not offering hard evidence – so many of us let the anger eat us alive. It’s a feeling. But I also know it. I know it of myself.

There is very little that rests easy with me. And so, in the well-tested takes-one-to-know-one school of thought, I see what’s out there.

We drive the way we drive because there are too many cars, it’s hot, the potholes plot against us. And that last person who overtook us, that was that one person too many and so we cussed everyone from their great-grandmother to their unborn children.

We hold grudges for generations. We remember slights that can never be set to rights because they were so unintentional, the slighter does not know an apology is necessary.

At the core of this is the guiding principal that we must not talk about anything. We shall press firmly to our hearts that thorny, spiky, hurtful thing. We will not share our pain, our small hurts or shames or disappointments or heartbreaks.

Because.

That’s all I got. Just because. Of all the people I’ve asked about this, none of them could tell me why they must make of themselves a mausoleum to wrath. They will not go to therapy. They will not share with their partners, friends, families or religious communities.

And one day, one by one, we’ve seen the rage seep or erupt from these people. These are the unhappy days on which we say, “But like something trip she off.” Or, “Like he gone off.”

Well, yes. But also no. Because it had been happening for such a long time. Rage, anger, wrath, bad-mind – they fester, they brew. These are killing things. Ourselves or others in extreme cases.

In the scenarios here discussed, we’re not talking about intermittent explosive disorder (IED), which is a distinct condition classified in the DSM5. IED is an impulse-control disorder, and one of its characteristics is an expression of anger vastly disproportionate to the situation that seems to have triggered it.

Here’s another thing that marks these episodes: they tend to last about 30 minutes. There can be a whole column (indeed, there be whole books) about what IED is and how it differs from other things we confuse it with.

Let’s not be confused here. I did want to acknowledge it though, to show it the respect it deserves. Because it’s easy to confuse real and diagnosable conditions – problems over which people have but limited control – with our inability to, well, frankly, talk.

Now, I’m not saying that talking is everything. If you hurt one of my babies, there is no talking that will save you from the fury I will visit upon you like a nightmare conjured from your darkest fears. (Deep breath. Sorry about that. Slipped into my demon skin for a second there.)

But we stifle things. We bottle things up. We don’t say what’s wrong when it’s wrong. And we’re back to the poison-tree situation again. I know, again with the poison tree. But the reason someone went to the trouble of writing it down was specifically so many years later I could repeat it relentlessly.

So, if you’re angry with your foe, tell him, so, you know, he doesn’t end up dead under a tree.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.