Are You Afraid of Your Violent Thoughts?

Source: OpenClipart-Vectors (Pixabay)

I’m generally a peaceable sort of person, but when the car pulled out in front of me without looking, nearly knocking me off my bike, I had a powerful impulse to put a brick through the back windshield. Now, as it happens, I don’t carry a brick with me for this purpose, but the impulse in the moment was powerful.

This was a retaliatory impulse, a fear-arousal response that expresses what we very badly want to do to someone else in response to a threat, a scare, an attack, or a humiliation.¹

Many people are alarmed by the violence of their retaliatory impulses. They think that having violent thoughts makes them a psychopath or an evil person and sometimes even hide this from their therapist. However, everyone has these impulses as a normal part of their fear system, and being able to accept them and understand their purpose can be a pathway to restoring normal vitality after a long period of depressive paralysis. Here’s an example:

Working with Retaliatory Impulses

My client Christine was a young woman who had been driven from her job by a bully and abandoned by her husband. She had been forced to move to a different part of the country and accept a lower-grade job. She wanted to get a job at her original grade, but whenever she applied for a new job, she failed the interview because she went into a fear-collapse. Her legs went weak, and her mind went blank. Another bully dominated the new team she worked with, and she felt powerless to voice her opinions.

I gradually helped Christine to get in touch with her retaliatory impulses towards those who had mistreated her and to feel okay about having these impulses. Shortly afterwards, in a team meeting at work, frustrated by the bully’s dominating behaviour, she found herself imagining slamming this person’s head into the ground repeatedly with real force. The next moment, she found herself speaking out; she challenged the bully, survived the counterattack, and ended up with most of the team supporting her viewpoint.

Further work on her retaliatory impulses helped her to focus on sensations in her arms; we reflected on what her arms wanted to do. They wanted to violently shake the first bully who had driven her out of her better-paid job, and I encouraged her to imagine doing this. She reported she was much calmer after that session and soon managed two interviews without collapse and got a job at her original grade.

What Happened?

After a long period in fear-collapse, Christine reconnected with her body’s physical impulses in response to past mistreatment and was able to complete these impulses in her imagination.

The important point is that the completion of defensive impulses such as running, hitting, biting, or warding off is the main way our fear system resets (deactivates) after a threat. If we can’t complete these impulses when they have been interrupted by fear collapse, our fear system doesn’t reset, and there is a danger of getting stuck in a chronic state of depressive paralysis.

But the ‘imagination’ bit is also important; from a therapeutic point of view, completing these impulses in the imagination has the same effect as completing them with physical action, because there is such a close overlap between the parts of the brain governing imagination and those controlling our physical movements.²

‘But That’s So Violent!’

When we have been collapsed in the past, particularly in childhood, by frightening, angry, violent, bullying or shaming behaviour from others, the fear-arousal responses that we may need to reactivate and complete often take the form of fairly violent retaliatory impulses. I know from sharing this story with many groups that slamming the bully’s head into the ground makes many people feel really uncomfortable; however, it elicits a joyous “yes!” from others.

The key point is, retaliatory impulses are normal and morally neutral, neither good nor bad. They are information, and we all have these impulses because we all have a fear system as part of our biological make-up. We have absolutely no control over the thoughts and imaginings that arise from our fear responses. We try to exercise control in not acting out these impulses on others; that’s the vital distinction between psychopaths and the rest of us.

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A Source of Information and Healing

However, if, along with Christine, we can accept the violent imaginings our fear responses generate without fear, and as being useful information about something that needs to be rectified in our lives, they can become a pathway to recovery from depressive collapse.

You may not need therapy for this. Perhaps the next time you imagine pushing your partner under a bus, don’t get into a guilty flap about it; accept that something has made you furious with them. Own your anger and use its energy for sorting out the problem. Consider what you want to be different about the relationship and start talking about it with your partner. This, of course, assumes you are not in a coercive or violent relationship; if you are, use the energy of your anger to reach out to others who can offer practical help to get you to safety.

And safety is the key point. A safe environment enables our fear system to deactivate, and we need a safe place for our retaliatory impulses to be expressed without harming ourselves or others. The therapy room, the company of good friends, and our own minds in less fearful states provide the safety needed for this healing process. And that’s why I don’t carry a brick with me when out cycling.