Advice for an Empath Recovering From Narcissistic Abuse: The Necessity of Rage

I’d venture to say that over half the human population has felt or currently has something that triggers rage from within them. And, for many of us, we have never been taught how to deal with this complex affectual experience. In fact, most of us don’t understand what rage is, or are terrified when trying to deal with it, when it appears. This way of relating to rage, unfortunately becomes the Achilles heal for most, and especially Empaths.

Rage is an expression of despair, fear, disgust, shame, and deep (and often overwhelming) anger. Rage is a visceral experience just as much as an emotional experience. It is a feeling that often gets “triggered” by a perceived or real boundary violation, threat of abandonment or neglect, or threat of something traumatic occurring, for the self, or to someone or something we care about.

Often, those who have experienced several traumatic experiences in their life, usually based in the context of relationships, carry and experience rage. It may take actually very little, if not just the right “trigger”, to ignite rage. And, these people may feel overwhelmed and not know how to manage it. There are internalizing and externalizing expressions of this rage, when one feels overwhelmed and incapable of dealing with it in the self. Those who externalize, who are often Narcissistic, compulsively act out on others (in a physical, relational, and/or emotional way), primarily using projection and blame, in order to dispel the visceral experience of their rage. Those who internalize, who are often more empathetic or actual Empaths, may act out their rage, on their self, in the form of co-dependent over- accountability to others, with self-directed perfectionism, self-denial, self-hatred and self- dismissal, which often leads to depression and suicidal behavior.

Even the most empathetic and non-violent of us have rage, even though we may not acknowledge it. In fact, us empathetic folk have a lot of bottled up rage, because we often deny and suppress it, and become perfectionistic with our self about our integrity and “goodness”, and therefore it isn’t obvious to those around us that we are just as rage-ful as a Narcissist…