Helping a Family at Church

Hardy & Laszloffy: Chapter 5

Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Interventions to Break the Cycle of Adolescent Violence

Hardy, Kenneth V.; Laszloffy, Tracey A.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2013).  Teens Who Hurt. Guilford Publications, Inc..  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781462512423

CHAPTER 5

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Rage

“I hate him! I wish the mothafucker was dead!”

The emotion that radiated from Timothy was pure, undiluted rage.

“Why do you hate him?”

“He’s a sissy. He can never defend himself. He always needs Mom or Dad to stick up for him. He is such a little baby. If he wants to mess with me, he’s got to face the consequences. All I ever hear is how I have to face the consequences of my actions, so why shouldn’t he? If he’s too much of a coward to face me, I guess he had better stay out of my way.”

Timothy’s eyes burned with fury, and he gritted his teeth. His face was contorted by the intense hostility that oozed from him like beads of sweat spilling from open pores on a blistering hot summer day.

According to Timothy’s parents, Shaun and Kate, his explosions of rage were increasingly common. The smallest catalyst could set him off. His rage was unpredictable, unstable, and explosive. It was like a live electrical wire thrashing around, hissing, snapping, and whipping through the air, threatening to zap anyone who did not keep his or her distance.

Timothy’s latest explosion occurred when his brother, Robert, borrowed one of his CDs without permission. After finding the CD in Robert’s player, he went berserk, according to his parents. Timothy’s rage turned to violence as he physically assaulted his brother. He pushed him to the ground and kicked him in the stomach. He punched Robert furiously while berating him for taking his CD without permission. When Robert was unable to control his hysterical sobs and cries for help, Timothy began to choke him. Fortunately, their father, Shaun, entered the house from the yard, where he had been working, and heard Timothy screaming, “I’ll teach you to shut your fuckin’ face and stop whining like a little bitch.”

While Timothy’s rage appeared entirely dangerous and dysfunctional, it was not the emotion itself that was problematic. Rage is a natural and healthy response to pain and injustice. For adolescents who have experienced devaluation, disruption of community, and unacknowledged loss, rage is inevitable. It is a normal emotional reaction to the pain and suffering that occurs in relation to the other aggravating factors. Rage, in and of itself, is not the problem, but rather the nature of the relationship that adolescents have with it is what is crucial. Adolescents, who are taught to subvert and deny their rage, are deprived of opportunities to learn how to acknowledge and channel it constructively. They also make up the largest group of youth who are most at risk for violence. It is the suppression and denial of rage, as well as the absence of mechanisms for expressing it in positive ways, that increases the probability of violence.

ANGER, RAGE, AND VIOLENCE

When a perceived offense occurs, anger is a common emotional response. Anger arises quickly. It is spontaneous, and if appropriate opportunities exist for the expression and validation of anger, it passes. It has a short life cycle. However, when feelings of anger are suppressed and denied expression or affirmation, they become buried within, eventually taking root and beginning to grow. Suppressed anger is the seed of rage. Over time, suppressed anger grows and intensifies until eventually it is transformed into rage, a far more intense, sustained, and consuming emotion.

When rage is suppressed and limited opportunities exist for healthy expression, it, like anger, grows and intensifies. Over time, the likelihood that suppressed rage will be transformed into violence increases. An essential aspect of preventing violence begins with recognizing rage, finding ways to acknowledge and validate its existence, and encouraging functional opportunities for its expression and release. However, to address rage before it mutates into all-out violence, one must first be able to identify it. At times this can be a challenging endeavor, because rage sometimes manifests itself in ways that make it hard to detect.

DIMENSIONS OF RAGE

Timothy wore the face of explosive, externally directed rage. At the slightest provocation he burst into fits of yelling. His eyes would glare, his speech would accelerate, and his muscles would appear tightened as if poised for battle. He was the personification of popular notions of what rage looks like. The manifestation of his rage left little to the imagination in terms of how his rage could be transformed into violence. Those who were witness to the face of Timothy’s rage often found it difficult to appreciate the line that divides emotion (rage) from action (violence).

Like Timothy, Daquon carried rage that was prone toward externalization, but, unlike Timothy, Daquon’s wasn’t the red-faced, burning eyes, loud voice, thrashing fists type of rage. His was a silent, externally directed rage. It was a quiet rage that smoldered just beneath the surface of a cold, steely gaze, much like a searing molten lava that burns and bubbles beneath the hardened crust of the earth’s surface. The target of Daquon’s fury existed outside of himself, but he held his emotion closely in check. The silent nature of his rage often made it difficult for others to realize that Daquon carried an abundance of this emotion within him.

To causal observers, it would almost seem bizarre to characterize Carmen as enraged. Her outward presentation and demeanor didn’t match popular notions of “what rage looks like.” She never raised her voice or expressed a cruel, cutting word toward anyone. Overall, her affect appeared flat and withdrawn. Clinically speaking, she could have easily been diagnosed as depressed. It is our view that depression is often rage that has been turned inwardly, on the self. Hence, from the perspective of the outside world, the face of Carmen’s rage was manifest through what seemed to be pervasive sullenness or depression. She was a textbook example of what we refer to in our work as internally directed rage.

THE THREAT OF RAGE

Suppressed rage is the final aggravating factor in our model. It is a precursor to violence. Consequently, we believe that working effectively with violent adolescents requires a proficiency in recognizing and validating rage. This helps to pave the way for helping adolescents develop constructive ways of expressing and channeling their rage. And yet, before any of this is possible, it is necessary to understand some of the obstacles that make it difficult for adults to interact with rage in open, direct, nonreactive ways.

Rage threatens us—or, rather, our anticipation of where rage will lead to threatens us. Our sense of threat is twofold. One aspect involves the threat that rage will expose other strong and more vulnerable emotions like grief, shame, and fear. The other threat is that rage will erupt into violence. Both of these threats make it exceedingly difficult to develop a healthy relationship with rage. Unfortunately, when one has an unhealthy relationship with rage, it makes it almost impossible to deal effectively with the crisis of adolescent violence. Therefore, it is essential to understand the nature of rage, its effects, and how the threats associated with it can be minimized.

RAGE AS A DEFENSE AGAINST MORE VULNERABLE EMOTIONS

Rage can often serve a very sophisticated defensive function for violent and aggressive adolescents. It can operate as a kind of circuit breaker that shuts down one’s emotional system before other more vulnerable emotions can be fully experienced. For many youth, the very presence of rage can at times be used to block the expression of more vulnerable emotions such as grief, shame, or fear. To express any emotions of vulnerability, particularly under the “wrong” set of circumstances, can be quite costly within youth culture. After all, to cry or feel lonely, sad, or afraid is to be “soft” in a world that only values being tough. Anger and rage are symbols of toughness—they earn respect. The two personal values that violent and aggressive adolescents hold above all others are to be tough and respected. These are the dynamics that make working effectively with rage and adolescents a major challenge.

The trepidation of having to confront other strong, more vulnerable emotions that tend to underlie rage often contributes to a phenomenon we call “getting stuck in rage.” This involves using rage defensively, as a guard against having to feel other feelings. We have heard clients say on countless occasions some variation of the following: “I want to stay mad so I don’t have to feel my sadness or hurt.” This is why it is so easy and perhaps preferable for abandoned children, for instance, to remain angry with their parents than it is for them to embrace their more difficult and vulnerable emotions such as hurt and shame.

The tendency to avoid dealing with vulnerable emotions is not limited to abandoned or violent youth. It is common for virtually all children to absorb and internalize these ways of being. In spite of the verbal messages they receive, they learn through modeling how to become proficient at resorting to rage when they feel hurt, afraid, or ashamed. Boys in particular are socialized to call upon rage whenever other more vulnerable emotions begin to surface. Despite overt warnings against expressions of rage, most boys implicitly learn that because rage is the least vulnerable of strong emotions (and hence the most “manly”), it is one they should call upon when they are at risk of feeling anything else. And, it is precisely because rage is associated with masculinity that girls are strongly discouraged from outward expressions of this emotion.

In the classic film The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard appeared to his subjects as a huge, disembodied head immersed in fire that grimaced and frowned, with a voice that roared like thunder. So intimidating was the Wizard that no one had the courage to approach or challenge him. All of the subjects of Oz simply kept their distance, which effectively prevented them from discovering the truth behind the booming voice and the ferocious head. At the end of the film, thanks to the actions of Dorothy’s little dog Toto, the curtain is literally pulled back, and the Wizard is exposed for the mere mortal man that he is. In the end, the Wizard was just a person with all the frailties of an ordinary human who simply was doing his best to hide these from the world by projecting a terrifying image. Like the Wizard, many of us use rage as a way of keeping the world at bay. It intimidates others and discourages them from moving close enough to see all that lies beneath the furious front. This is how rage can be used as a defense, as a form of “protection” against the threat of having other, more vulnerable, emotions exposed.

The extreme version of using rage to hide from other emotions can be found in people who are rage-aholics. They are addicted to rage in the same way that an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol. A common denominator unifying all types of addictions is that ultimately, they serve the purpose of helping people to hide from pain, shame, and grief. An addiction numbs a person to her or his emotional agony. Addictions are a form of anesthesia. In the case of a rage-aholic, rage is the poison of choice and the function it serves is to prevent the person from feeling pain.

When rage is used defensively, it is a reaction against a sort of “inner knowing” that, somewhere nearby, a torrent of other strong emotions is lurking. Even when rage is used defensively to try to block these other emotions, there is always the risk that at some point it will burn itself out and all that lies beneath will be exposed. In a society that is as wary of emotion as is ours, is it any wonder than that we respond to rage with trepidation, mistrust, wariness, and even dread?

FROM RAGE TO VIOLENCE

The “threat” that rage poses is not always that it may lead to the release of other more vulnerable emotions. Sometimes it’s just the opposite—it’s the threat that rage will erupt into violence. The image of rage that lurks in the shadows of our popular imagination is of a person, usually a man, whose entire appearance and demeanor have been distorted by the intensity of this powerful emotion. His temples have become inflated by the protrusion of throbbing veins, his eyes are wide-eyed and burning, the muscles in his face are clenched and contorted, his heartbeat and breathing have accelerated to a frenetic pace, and he’s yelling in a voice that blasts the surrounding air like a jackhammer. The threat this man’s rage inspires is not so much about the moment itself, but rather of where it will lead. The threat is that expressions of rage will seamlessly mutate into acts of violence. Because of the many times when expressions of rage are indeed a precursor to violence, the two phenomena have become melded in the minds of many.

It is not unreasonable to associate rage with violence. It is in fact one of the reasons why rage occupies such a prominent role in our model of adolescent violence. An indisputable positive correlation exists between the two. Particularly for any one who grew up with a parent or another adult who was prone to fits of rage that crossed over into violence, it is very difficult to appreciate the fine line that separates the two. From the perspectives of those who, as children, were terrorized by raging adults who could also become violent adults, it probably seems like a matter of pointless semantics to draw this distinction. And yet, the distinction is critical.

While rage is often a prelude to violence, this outcome is not inevitable. The two may be closely linked, but they are still two different phenomena. Rage is an emotion. Violence is an action, and the emotion does not always result in the action. In fact, under the right set of circumstances, rage can actually serve as a deterrent to violence.

Whenever we propose the idea that rage can function as a deterrent to violence, we often encounter skepticism from others. Rage and violence are so fused in the minds of many people, that this suggestion defies logic. And yet, we have found repeatedly that whether rage leads to or away from violence is determined largely by the way in which rage is handled.

If the response to rage involves a sustained and systematic effort to suppress and/or deny it, this greatly increases the probability that rage will lead to an explosion of violence. The process of suppressing and/or denying rage may create the appearance on the surface that all is calm and secure. But this calm is merely the calm before the storm: it represents anything but security. Suppressing and/or denying rage is like blowing air into a balloon. Like a balloon, rage will expand. Eventually, if rage is suppressed and/or denied long enough, it reaches a bursting point—that fine line where rage, like a balloon that has been inflated beyond its holding capacity, can no longer be contained and will explode. It is this type of explosion that presents the greatest risk of rage being transformed into violence. It is ironic that the motivation for suppressing and/or denying rage arises from a desire to avoid violence. In point of fact, this response has the opposite effect: it intensifies rage and the potential for violence.

On the other hand, if the roots of rage are validated and constructive opportunities for channeling and expressing rage are utilized, the likelihood of violence is greatly diminished. For example, youth who find constructive outlets for their rage (athletics, drama, writing, music, sociopolitical activism) are far less likely to become violent because their rage has a channel, and it’s a channel that brings them social affirmation, validation, and pride.

Rage is often characterized as irrational, out of control, and destructive, but in fact it is a natural and inevitable response to pain and injustice. It is the emotional culmination of the synergistic interplay between devaluation, disruption of community, and the dehumanization of loss. Individuals who have had experiences with each of these will inevitably experience rage.

When misfortune assaults us, when life lashes out and cruelly taunts and torments us like a schoolyard bully, we encounter pain and a profound, inner sense of injustice. Rage is the fire that gives us the energy, ambition, and determination to survive in spite of our agony. It has weathered millions of years of evolutionary fine-tuning because of the essential role it plays in the survival of our species. When poet Dylan Thomas wrote, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” he was saying that we must not surrender to injustice, pain, loss, despair, or hopelessness. Instead, we must see the death of hope as a travesty—as life’s cruelest injustice—and even against this most despairing and seemingly insurmountable of circumstances, we must resist. Through rage, we must find the inspiration, the will, the raw determination to resist, to never give up, to create hope through never surrendering to hopelessness. Rage is essential to our survival.

In systems that deal in the warehousing of enraged and violent youth (e.g., juvenile detention centers), it can be especially difficult to sell the idea that rage does not automatically equal violence, and in fact, if validated and appropriately channeled, it can actually deter violence. On more than one occasion, we have been told that we “just don’t understand.” These kids are dangerous. You don’t deal with dangerous, violent, criminally inclined kids by allowing them to express rage. Rage is their problem. That’s what we’re trying to get them to lose. They need to lose the attitudes and check their rage.”

Juvenile detention centers and other institutions designed to contain and punish youthful offenders are largely guided by a philosophy that is in opposition to the underlying premise of this book. Systems of this type are not concerned with healing young people. Rather, the primary objective is to detain, punish, and protect society through rehabilitation. Ironically, many of these systems resort to the very tactics they wish to discourage in young people—fear, dominance, and violence as a form of control. As a result, most workers in settings like these are encouraged to use domination and aggression to control youth. Many workers even believe that their own physical survival demands that they respond to enraged youth aggressively, using tactics of domination to suppress expressions of emotion. The unfortunate consequences of such responses to adolescent rage are twofold. First, the rage that so many youth feel is natural and healthy. When systems fail to recognize this and are ill-equipped to deal with rage in constructive ways, they deprive young people of much needed channels for working through and releasing it. This process, unfortunately, intensifies rage rather than diminishing it. Second, the methods that many such institutions employ to suppress rage often are invasive and can intensify devaluation, which ultimately deepens rage.

The way in which these systems are organized makes it very difficult to shift how one thinks about the psychological and social needs of adolescents. It makes it difficult to contemplate the notion that rage does not necessarily equal violence and, in fact, with appropriate guidance and nurturance, it may serve a healing purpose. Those who work in these types of settings and who dare to engage in this type of thinking, by and large, stand alone against the tide. And yet, if those who are the agents of the system can’t begin to entertain another vision, let alone another way of doing, what hope does this leave for young people who have even less power and opportunity to transform their conditions? Despite the potentially radical nature of our assertions regarding the anatomy of rage and how to respond to it, we have seen numerous examples of the positive change that is possible when even a single adult is able to relate to an adolescent’s rage in ways that move beyond censorship, punishment, repression, and disapproval.

The worry that rage will erupt into violence prevents most of us from appreciating its life-saving power. Consequently, many of us never learn to appreciate that it is not inevitably destructive. A great deal depends on how we interact with rage, how we negotiate it. If we respond to rage by denying and/or suppressing it, or if we channel rage in destructive ways, violence is an almost inevitable conclusion.If however, we are able to acknowledge rage and find constructive channels of expression, the energy that might have otherwise been transformed into violence instead will be converted into a source of healing energy.

UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WITH RAGE

There is always a history that underpins rage. While anger emerges in the immediacy of a moment, rage builds over time. It is the product of numerous experiences with devaluation, erosion/disruption of community, and the dehumanization of loss that accumulate over time. These are the experiences that sow the seeds of rage. In the following section we pull together the stories of Timothy, Daquon, and Carmen and detail how each of their respective life experiences contributed to their rage and, more specifically, to their unhealthy relationships with their rage. We demonstrate their common experience of never having their rage acknowledged and of never learning how to relate to it positively, while also showing their differences in terms of how they each developed unique ways of manifesting their rage. Ultimately, we illustrate how the synergistic interplay of devaluation, erosion/disruption of community, the dehumanization of loss, and suppressed rage contributed to acts of violence in the lives of each of these young people. In Chapter 10, we outline specific strategies that we employed in each case to assist these teens in constructively rechanneling their rage.

PROFILES OF RAGE

Timothy

“I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of my own son.”

Timothy’s mother, Kate, was visibly shaken as she uttered these words. “For years we’ve had a hard time with him. He’s just a difficult kid. I always hoped that one day he’d grow out of it. But this last year or so, he’s gotton so much worse. He’s always in a bad mood, he lies to us, skips school, he’s stolen money out of my wallet, he’s started smoking cigarettes. And then, of course, there’s the experience with that girl and beating that boy, and now he’s hurt his brother, his own brother very badly, all because he used his CD player! I can’t even believe he’s my son.”

Timothy’s father, Shaun, interjected: “This is the last straw for us! We have a monster on our hands, and we don’t know what to do with him. What he needs is one of those military boot camps where he can learn real discipline and a healthy dose of respect for authority.”

Kate added: “We’re at our wits’ end. Something needs to be done. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with him. He’s so angry all the time. He’s filled with hate, and I don’t understand why! He hates his brother, I think he hates us; he even hates people he doesn’t even know. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if he were in jail where he couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. I just don’t trust him, and I have to tell you . . . this is killing me. What kind of mother ever says something like this? It’s insane!”

The Ryans were filled with a sense of desperation and confusion. They were convinced that their son was a sociopath, and they felt powerless to reach him and bring him back from the edge of madness on which they saw him teetering.

Timothy sat quietly while his parents spoke. He had heard them rant and rave about him before. There was nothing new here. For years they criticized him for almost everything that he did. He was accustomed to hearing how bad he was, accustomed to being punished for misdeeds that he may or may not have committed. He already knew that his parents thought he was monstrous and that they wanted to get rid of him. And yet, even after hearing it countless times, it still filled him with a deep sense of rage and resentment. It was so unfair that his father had never loved him but that he loved his brother. And it was so unfair the way his mother always blamed him for the problems in the family. These days she often said things like “You’re driving us all crazy—you’re the reason we’re all falling apart!” Years ago, she was less direct about it, but he knew she blamed him for the time his father had left just by the way she touched him or looked at him. The way she wiped his face after dinner with just enough roughness that he knew she resented him. The way she sometimes got angry when he accidentally spilled milk or splashed too much water during his bath. She was always just a bit on edge, and he knew that in part it was because she couldn’t help but think “None of this would be happening if you weren’t here.”

None of Timothy’s fears were true, but through the eyes of a child it all made sense. As a child, he inappropriately personalized his mother’s frustration and pain. Her irritability was often unrelated to him, but as a little boy he could not see this, and this is what he remembered. It was what he remembered about his father as well. The routine beatings that Timothy endured at the hands of his father were proof that he was a bad boy who was unworthy of love. Each time a fist landed on his back, his arm, or his chest, he knew it meant his father didn’t care about him. Then, during the months that his father was gone, this was the ultimate proof that he was unloved and unwanted. Yet, back then, it didn’t stop Timothy from loving and wanting his father in spite of this.

As a little boy, Timothy used to believe in God. He used to pray for his dad to come home. Day after day, he peered out his bedroom window hoping beyond hope that he would see his father coming up the driveway. One day, he heard his mother talking on the phone in the kitchen. She was trying to speak quietly, but Timothy was sitting behind the chair near the doorway. She couldn’t see him there. He knew she was talking to his father. He tried to breathe softly so he could hear everything. His mother was saying something about knowing they could work it out and she was trying to give him space. And then she took a big breath and said, “I’m pregnant.” According to Timothy, that was the first time he had ever heard that word. He didn’t know what it was and was afraid to ask, but he hoped it would bring his dad home.

Timothy prayed again that night. And the next day, he thought it must have worked because his mother seemed happy for the first time in a long time. That’s when he found out what the strange word meant. Timothy recalled his mother saying the following: “Timothy, I have something wonderful to tell you. I’m pregnant, honey. That means I’m going to have a baby. You’re going to have a little brother or sister. And the best part is, I talked to your dad last night, and I really think things may work out. I don’t want to get your hopes up yet, but I really have a good feeling.”

Timothy couldn’t remember another time in his life when his mother seemed so happy. “Her face lit up like a full moon . . . I mean, she was beaming!” he stated. But Timothy was feeling something altogether different. The hope he’d felt when he first saw his mother that morning was washed over by a cloud of confusion and doubt. What did that mean he was “going to have little brother or sister”? And why was this the one thing that was going to bring his dad home? Why was his dad willing to come back for the little brother or sister that no one even knew yet, but he hadn’t come back for Timothy? The more he thought about it, the more saddened and then angry he became. “It wasn’t fair.” Timothy uttered angrily: “The bastard didn’t love me enough to come back for me, but he was willing to come home for a son he had never even met before.”

What Timothy never realized, of course, was that the timing between his father’s return and his soon-to-arrive new baby brother was not nearly as related as he thought. According to Shaun, the timing of his return was more a matter of economics than a preference for one child over another. He had finally gotten a secure job, and, as a result, for the first time in a long time he felt prepared to assume his role as provider, husband, and father. In therapy sessions, he repeatedly tried to assure us, as well as his family, that “it was never the way Timothy had imagined it in his head.” But it didn’t matter, because Timothy believed it happened the way he remembers it. And as a result, both Shaun and his relationship with his son have suffered in the same way it would have if it had been exactly the way Timothy remembers it. Unfortunately, Shaun has been unable to see how or why Timothy could see it the way he does. Timothy, on the other hand, is enraged with his father because “he won’t be man enough to just admit things.”

After his dad came home, Timothy hoped he would see some sign of his father’s love. He didn’t. During the first few months of his dad’s return home, Timothy was still subjected to routine beatings. He could still recall the feeling of utter powerlessness whenever his father pushed him down or twisted his arm. He felt intense fear and pain, but, somewhere even deeper down, he felt rage. He was furious with his father for hurting him, but he was even more furious with himself for not being big enough and strong enough to protect himself. He resented his own helplessness.

Shortly after Robert’s birth, Shaun became less and less physically aggressive with Timothy until eventually this behavior was all but a thing of the past. But for Timothy, his memories of those experiences never faded. They remained as vivid as if they had happened just yesterday.

From the time he was a little boy, Timothy had lived with the pain of feeling unloved and unwanted, the ultimate form of devaluation. In response to the pain of his loss (of love, nurturance, affirmation), he felt deep rage. Robert never had to do much of anything to incite Timothy’s rage; his existence was a form of incitement. In Timothy’s eyes, his brother symbolized his devastating loss, the loss of the father and the love he so desperately craved. Timothy was full of rage. He was furious with his father and brother; he was furious with his father for rejecting him and his brother for having “stolen the love” that he so desperately wanted and felt entitled to as the first-born son. Of course, most of Timothy’s rage was directed at his brother rather than his father, because Robert was younger, smaller, and weakeran easier target. But also Timothy understood on some level that by “getting” his brother, he was indirectly “getting at” his father and punishing him for the rejection he had felt since he was a small boy.

The fact that Timothy’s parents were mystified by his behavior was symptomatic of the issues with which he was struggling. Kate and Shaun were both committed parents, and they were doing the very best job they could with their children. They had overcome major obstacles in their marriage and had worked hard to hold their family together. Unfortunately, however, they never noticed the effects that their problems had on little Timothy. He was only a small boy when they were struggling through the most difficult years of their marriage. Certainly it doesn’t make them bad parents; in fact, we would say they were good parents in many important ways. But the stress in their lives was so overwhelming that it made it hard for them to see just how deeply their son was being affected by the chaos, uncertainty, and disruption around him. Moreover, they made the same mistake that many parents make. They assumed that, once they were on steadier ground, their children would naturally follow suit.

For Timothy, however, who had lived through a period of great turmoil and had suffered damaging blows to his self-esteem, he was carrying around unhealed trauma wounds that had never even been acknowledged by his family. The abuse he was subjected to as a young child had deeply wounded him emotionally. Moreover, the day Shaun moved out, Timothy felt as if he had lost his father, and hence his sense of family, of community at the primary level, was irrevocability shaken. The blow to his self-esteem was devastating. Timothy incurred a deep, profound sense of devaluation. These wounds were exacerbated by Robert’s birth, because in Timothy’s mind Robert became the symbol for the love he believed he had lost. Every time Timothy looked at Robert, he felt the pain of what he perceived as the loss of his father’s love, the loss of the sense of family he yearned for, for the validation of his essential worth and loveableness. In response to all of this, Timothy experienced a deep sense of rage.

Because his parents did not see or understand the nature of Timothy’s suffering, they were never able to validate his pain and help him heal his wounds. This lack of validation for Timothy’s pain exacerbated his sense of devaluation, reinforced his feeling of being alienated from the secure bosom of a family, intensified his sense of loss, and magnified his sense of rage. With each passing day, he became more and more agitated, snappy, and embittered. Unfortunately, rather than recognizing his rage as a signal of underlying pain, and helping him to address it and the underlying wounds, he was simply punished further, intensifying the entire vicious cycle. It was only now that Timothy’s explosive rage was reaching a crisis point and rapidly mutating into full-fledged acts of violence that, at last, he and his family would begin the process of saving both Timothy and themselves.

Daquon

“I wanted him to hurt for what he did. What he did was wrong, and he needed to pay for what he did.” Daquon’s words were intense, but his emotion was flat. He was talking about revenge for a horrible crime. He was speaking about retribution and retaliation against a heinous act, the murder of a friend. The death of Big G was a travesty. He’d been shot to death in front of his mother’s house. Big G had just returned from the store and was dropping off the items his mother had requested. According to Daquon, “Big G never saw this coming . . . he never even had a chance.” His death came spinning around the corner in a car from which the deadly shots were fired into his back. The groceries he carried only moments earlier were now splattered on the pavement, the cold milk mixing with his warm blood in a puddle of madness. The police determined that the crime was unsolvable and recorded it as another Southside homicide. There were more of those in a week than anyone cared to count.

“He was my homeboy. We had each other’s backs. Been that way since we were 10. No one smokes my blood that doesn’t have to face me. Big G would have done the same for me.” Daquon was talking about friendship, brotherhood, and loyalty. He and Big G shared a deep bond, and when Big G was murdered, the loss ripped through Daquon’s soul the same as if G had been his biological brother. Daquon had been through his once before, when his father was fatally shot before his very eyes when he was only 5. And, of course, he was reminded of it every time he heard about another brother from the hood—someone like him, like G, like his dad—who’d been killed. But, no, he had not grown used to it. No matter how many times Daquon had lived the terrors of life in a war zone, he had never grown accustomed to the sight of a loved one lying lifeless and mutilated on a sidewalk. He had not grown used to seeing their blood gush from their bodies, taking with it the love he wanted and needed.

Looking at Daquon as he made his veiled reference to his intended retribution, it was frightening how calm and cool he appeared. There were no signs of the irrational, out-of-control rage that one might have expected. His face was as expressionless as a stone, and his eyes seemed cold and impenetrable, but there was an intensity that immersed him that seemed to suck up all the air in the room. In contrast to Timothy’s explosive, volatile rage, Daquon exuded a hushed, silent rage that was deceptively quiet but undeniably present.

Just looking at Daquon, without any prior knowledge of him, it would be easy to fear him. Despite his outward appearance of composure, one immediately felt “on guard” in his presence. He never had to say a word; he didn’t need to shout, raise a fist, or show any other outward sign of aggression. His very presence carried an unspoken threat. Sitting in the confines of the eight-foot-by-eight-foot cube known as a “therapy room,” it was impossible not to feel this threat, not to feel his rage and the lethality that its intensity implied. It was difficult not to be distracted by it. His presence was so discomforting that instinctively one wanted to distance oneself from him, to move away from the energy he emitted. And most people did move away from him—or they tried to control him, to contain his energy field, to suppress or better yet, extinguish it.

Daquon had spent the past 4 months in a “youth center,” which was merely a euphemistic phrase for a juvenile penitentiary. The official charge was stealing, which resulted in the revocation of his probation associated with a prior conviction for stealing. More accurately, however, the “crime” leading to his latest incarceration was his rage. Daquon seemed to make Mrs. Fleishman, the teacher who had filed the charge, uncomfortable. She was afraid of him. His very presence appeared to make her jittery. As far as Daquon was concerned, when she had the opportunity to get rid of him, she grabbed it. Daquon knew that any one of the 28 students in the class could easily have taken her wallet. Everyone knew where she kept it, and it would have taken only a second or two to ease the drawer open and slip the wallet out. In this instance, the wallet was lying on her desk, making its theft all the easier.

When Mrs. Fleishman realized the wallet was gone, it seemed that each little bit of circumstantial evidence melded in her mind to convince her that Daquon was the guilty party. As she had reported, “I know the wallet was on my desk before the class entered the room. I only stepped away from my desk briefly to consult with another student. I saw Daquon near my desk during that time, and he has been known to do this type of thing.” Of course, it is very likely that the most convincing evidence of all—the piece of evidence that Mrs. Fleishman seemed most oblivious to—was her evident discomfort with and possible disliking of Daquon. She may very well have been unnerved by Daquon’s unsmiling demeanor, his steely gaze, his looming stature, and of course the fact that he was a young black male.

Daquon had been passing through the halls on his way to English class, the only class he actually liked in school. He was looking forward to class that day because his teacher, Mrs. Green, was returning the latest composition, on which he had worked hard. He was excited about the topic, “The Significance of Richard Wright’s Native Son for Young Black Males in the 1990s.” He just knew he would get an “A.” But he never it made it to class that day. He saw the two officers, escorted by the principal, approaching from the other end of the hallway. At first he didn’t know it was him they were coming for, but nonetheless his gut tightened. He always felt a moment of anxiety when he saw the police.

When he saw the principal point in his direction, he realized soon enough that it was him they were coming to get. He couldn’t imagine what the problem was; after all, he had been keeping to his own business. It wasn’t like he was hanging out on a street corner or walking through a store—places where he might expect to be identified as a menace. But in his heart he knew better. As a young black male, it didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing. Yet, Daquon never gave them the satisfaction of losing his cool. He never let them see it get to him. They cuffed him in the middle of the hall and “escorted” him out to the squad car, with half the student body looking on in amusement.

Within days after his arrest his probation was revoked, and Daquon was back in the youth center completing the remainder of his 6-month sentence for a prior conviction for stealing. Returning to the center 8 months after he had left was like watching a rerun of a bad movie. He just hoped the time would go quickly. While he would never let anyone know it, he hated small, confined spaces.

Daquon had been in the youth center for 2 months when Big G was shot and killed. His grandmother came the very next day to tell him. “I felt like someone had slammed a steel pipe into my ribs,” Daquon recalled. He said that his first thought was of the last time he had seen Big G. It was the day before he had been arrested at school. They had made plans to get together over the weekend and watch the Raiders/Cowboys game. Daquon was a diehard Raiders fan, and Big G had been devoted to the Cowboys since he was a little boy. “Man, you know the Cowboys will whup the Raiders’ asses. You just hanging onto a pipe dream thinking your boys is gonna come through for you . . . finally.” Big G laughed, delighted with himself for his teasing jab.

Daquon laughed, too. “Okay, Money, we’ll see who’s laughing come Sunday when the Raiders dog your little Cowgirls.” Daquon was pleased with his jab back. The two boys were well versed in this back-and-forth game of verbal combat—they’d been engaged in it for years. It was a sign of deep affection.

Daquon could still see Big G smiling as he scooped up his jacket and headed for the door to leave. If only Daquon had known it was the last time he would ever see his friend. He would have said the one thing that both boys were only able to say to each other once, while under the influence of several beers (meaning it didn’t really count because liquor made folks do crazy things they couldn’t be held responsible for): “I love you, man.” If only it hadn’t been so hard to say. They both knew it was true, but each had been bound by the code of male honor that said “real men” didn’t identify with the type of open affection and sweet emotion more characteristic of the “weaker” sex—females. But while neither dared break with the code, they both felt their mutual affection to be as strong and as deep as if they had been born brothers. They loved each other, and although they both knew it, Daquon wished he had been able to say it to G directly.

Day after day, sitting alone, feeling as if the walls were closing in on him, Daquon thought about G, and he thought about the way he died. The more he thought, the more intensely furious he felt. He saw his friend walking down the street, imagined the car with the hit man in it spinning around the block. He could see the bullets, as if in slow motion, slicing through the air and landing in Big G’s back. He saw them rip through his flesh and lodge themselves in the cavity of his body, the blood gushing out of his wounds as his body crumbled to the ground, never again to rise. He saw the car with G’s executioner in it disappearing down the street, never to be called to justice. Daquon felt his insides burn with rage. The heat of his rage was so intense that many nights it kept him awake. He lay in his bed staring at the ceiling, and all he could do to comfort himself was imagine how, when he was out, he would somehow track down those who were responsible and do to them what the law would not do: make them pay.

Daquon spent his daytime hours in the center keeping busy with whatever he was required to do. He had a reason to get out of the center as soon as possible, so it was critical that he kept himself together. But that was easy enough; he had lots of practice with looking low-key. He’d learned long ago how to never let his thoughts or feelings show outwardly. As a black male, his survival depended upon his learning this lesson. Daquon, like many young black males, had learned what Majors and Mancini-Billson (1992) have referred to as the art of “cool posing,” which is a form of posturing that enables black males to project an air of poise under pressure. No matter how challenging, unsettling, or threatening external conditions may be, one assumes an almost aloof “nothing-can-faze-me” stance. Cool posing is a way of looking adversity or possible humiliation in the eye and mocking it. It is a way of “never letting them see you sweat.”

While speculations abound regarding the roots of cool posing, there is little doubt that it plays an essential role in the lives of contemporary black males. At the very least, it allows black males to “save face” when confronted with the almost daily indignities that assault them in a racist society. More importantly, cool posing plays a crucial role in the politics of survival. As in Daquon’s case, when one must live with his back almost always pressed up against a wall, it is critical to learn how to maintain one’s cool—to never let the aggressor taste the scent of blood, so to speak. Almost all people who live their lives on the margin develop strategies for shielding their inner life and emotions from their oppressors’ direct gaze. Daquon was a master of the cool pose. The world around him could be completely up in arms, but he never flinched. To the naked eye, his flawless air of cool, his unfettered calm, the perfect sense of masculine bravado that was implied in his almost defiant physical posture, made him seem impenetrable. There was something decidedly intimidating about his demeanor. It was unnerving to observe his unflappable front—it was hard not to believe all that it implied, hard to keep in mind that somewhere underneath it all there was an ordinary human being, a kid who had been hurt in ways that were unimaginable, a boy who felt rage, pain, grief, and even fear. We tried to bear this in mind as we sat across from him during our first session following his release from the youth center only days before.

Daquon had been a model of good behavior in the center (undoubtedly a direct benefit of his cool posing skills), so he was released early. One of the terms of his release was that he had to attend therapy. Given our prior relationship, we were a natural choice as the therapists who were to work with him during his probationary period. It was helpful that we were already well acquainted with him, and we sensed that Daquon trusted us. We had gained his respect when we first worked with him during the 3 months prior to his second stint at the youth center. It also seemed to have been important to him that we remained in contact with him during his lockup time.

He came to the session in his usual street duds: baggy jeans, unlaced Timberland boots, and hooded red sweatshirt. Because we had already earned his trust, he freely discussed the events that had led up to his return to the youth center, and he described without hesitation the circumstances surrounding Big G’s untimely death. He even went so far as to admit that he would see justice done by his friend, whatever it took. Looking into his unflinching gaze, we believed that he meant what he said. He possessed a sense of chilling resolve about what he would have to do. And while there were no obvious external clues to alert us to the fact that Daquon was consumed with rage, it was there in the room, just beneath his cool facade, burning his insides and silently sucking up the air in the small therapy room. While Daquon was no less enraged than Timothy, the silent nature of his rage created the illusion that he was less distressed. Those less attuned to Daquon’s life story and psychology, on observing his demeanor, might be shocked by the moment when, without warning and with deadly precision, he would suddenly lash out. Because we were observing him not only with our eyes but also with our hearts and intuition, we saw what lay beneath Daquon’s steely gaze and stony expression. We saw the rage beneath the front and the pain behind the rage, and we knew we needed to move quickly to deal with both before they erupted into an episode of violence. It was a race against time.

Carmen

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I just had too much to drink and I passed out.” The “too much” that Carmen was referring to culminated with her being rushed to the hospital emergency room, where she was diagnosed with alcohol poisoning. She had consumed so much vodka that her entire system was on the verge of shutting down permanently.

A resident advisor found her passed out in the bathroom of her dormitory. The bottle of vodka she had nearly finished—probably not her first of the night—was still clenched tightly in her fist. After she arrived at the emergency room, a trauma team worked on her for several hours, miraculously pulling her back from the brink of death.

She sat before us looking frail and small. Her shiny black hair was hanging listlessly around her face. She had dark, purplish-black circles under her eyes, and her normally honey-brown complexion looked deadened and sallow.

“How do you feel about the fact that you might have died, even though, as you say, that was not your goal?”

There was a long silence. She twisted slowly, almost painfully, in her chair. Her gaze shifted inward, as if she were trying to disappear from view.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “It probably wouldn’t make that much difference.”

“Why is that?” we asked.

“Nothing seems to matter too much these days.”

To the casual observer, it would almost seem bizarre to characterize Carmen as enraged, because her outward presentation didn’t match popular notions regarding “what rage looks like.” Overall, her affect appeared flat and withdrawn. Clinically speaking, she could easily have been diagnosed as depressed. Hence, from the perspective of the outside world, the face of Carmen’s rage was manifest through what seemed to be pervasive sullenness or depression.

To look at Carmen was to see a girl who seemed emotionally barren and devoid of all hope. It was hard to imagine what could leave someone so young-looking so defeated. Certainly there were her horrific early childhood experiences—the trauma of losing her parents and the terror and loneliness she felt during her months in the orphanage. Here also was the massive disruption and fear she felt when she was adopted by the Brodys and forced to leave behind the only life she had ever known in rural Peru. Her new life meant moving thousands of miles from home and living with a family she did not know in one of the world’s largest cities. The disruption and loss Carmen endured before she was even 8 years old would be hard for even the worldliest adult to imagine. And of course, in addition to adapting to life with a new family, there were her struggles to adjust to her new environment in terms of her national, racial, class, linguistic, and religious identification.

Even after Carmen began to trust the Brodys and ease into the security of their embrace, she continued to feel the emptiness of being an outsider in a nation that would never be her own. She lived with the constant ache of knowing that every part of the world she had left behind, and every part of who she was deep within, was unacceptable in her new world. To the “gringos” (as she sometimes called here detractors in rare uncensored moments), no matter how flawlessly she spoke English (she had lost her accent long ago) or what private prep schools or Ivy League university her parents paid her way through, she was still only half of a human being in their eyes. She was just an Indian from the primitive, savage “jungles” of South America (even if she had never seen a jungle in her life).

But while all of this was deeply painful, those who loved her most would have argued strongly that Carmen had healed her pain over the last 10 years. They would have pointed out that the most traumatic years of her life were long behind her. There was evidence to suggest she had adjusted well to her new life, and was in fact thriving. The pictures in the family photo album revealed a girl who smiled a lot and who was surrounded by people who loved her—there were so many happy-looking times. And, despite a difficult initial adjustment period, Carmen became one of the top students in her school, receiving straight A’s. Certainly she was quiet and tended to be introspective, but how could anyone doubt that she had been happy for the last 10 years? Given all she had survived, and in light of the seeming happiness and transformation during the past decade, it seemed hard to understand how Carmen had spiraled to the edge of such despair. It seemed even harder to imagine that she was feeling anything that could approximate rage.

•   •   •   •

Carmen couldn’t help staring at Kent—he was definitely beautiful in a classically Grecian sort of way. Each and every muscle rippled with statue-like perfection. Carmen would never forget the day she first laid eyes on him. He was wearing a sky-blue tank top that showcased his Adonis-like torso, and his flaxen hair glistened in the noonday sun. He was standing on the marble steps leading up to the library, and while sitting on a bench under a tree across the lawn from him, she was able to watch him inconspicuously.

It never occurred to Carmen that Kent would ever notice her or have any interest in her, so when he started pursuing her for a date, she was overcome with giddy delight. Their first date was magical to Carmen, and happily it led to many more. Kent seemed to adore her. He told her she was like an exotic flower. He had never dated an Indian before, and he seemed to find her dark beauty mysterious and mesmerizing. Carmen wasn’t sure she was completely comfortable with the way he exoticized her. There was something about it that made her feel a bit inhuman, but it seemed to be in a good way. After all, Kent was extolling her beauty and he seemed to cherish her like a precious treasure, so what could be the problem in that?

Carmen and Kent dated seriously for 4 months. He was her first serious boyfriend, and she was delighted to finally have one, especially someone as wonderful as Kent. But then, just 1 day before returning to school for the new semester, it all came apart. Kent called her at home to break up with her. He had met someone new and professed that he was “in love.” Carmen was in shock. She could not make sense of the words she was hearing. How, after everything they had shared, could he be saying something so foreign, so cold, to her? She cried into her pillow all night long, and the next day when her mother asked her why her eyes were puffy, she lied.

Back at school Carmen was tortured every time she saw Kent with his new love, Sandy. She was everything that an all-American boy’s dreams were made of. She was tall and leggy, with an ample bosom and curvaceous hips. She had a long golden mane of hair that sashayed when she walked, and sparkled almost as much as her pale blue eyes. Even as she walked across the lawn with Kent glued to her side, men’s heads turned to stare at her. She was stunning. In fact, she was the one thing Carmen could never be—she was white. Even if Carmen dyed her hair, worked out in the gym every day, got breast implants, and wore contact lenses, she could never be as perfect as Sandy. While Sandy was striking in many ways, above all else it was her smooth white skin—even while it had been ever so slightly bronzed by the sun—that made her flawless in Carmen’s eyes. To Carmen, she had not been dumped for just another woman—she had been dumped for a beautiful white woman.

Comparing herself to Sandy, Carmen plunged into an abyss of self-hatred whose true depths she had not fully recognized until that very moment. It threw her back into Mrs. Peabody’s fifth-grade math class, where she obsessed about Christie Tyler’s strawberry-blond locks. She had so much yearned to touch Christie’s hair, to possess it, rip it out by the roots, and transplant in into her own head. And how she yearned for that snow white skin with the honey-colored freckles that looked as if they had been painted on Christie’s perfectly round little nose. Mostly she yearned not to be the only child in her class with the dark, stained complexion and the black eyes. Oh, how she hated the way she looked, the way it made her different—different in a way that she knew was ugly and shameful. She knew it because every time she opened her sister’s Seventeen magazine and YM she never saw herself reflected there. All she ever saw were girls like Christie and Sandy. And she knew it because every time her parents took her some place “good,” where smart, beautiful, elegant people were—like the ballet, the opera, the summer vacations in Pebble Beach and West Palm, and the ski trips to Vail and Aspen—in all these places, she never saw anyone who looked like her. She saw Christies and Sandys, but never anyone like herself.

The only time Carmen remembered seeing people like herself was in Taos, New Mexico. She first saw them at the roadside stands, selling woven baskets and turquoise jewelry. She recalled feeling relieved to finally see people who looked like her. In her heart, Carmen felt a connection for the first time since she had left Peru. She felt a yearning that she had buried long ago. The people she saw, although strangers, were more familiar to her than her friends back in New York. And when she looked into their eyes, she saw home, but she also saw pain and suffering. When she asked her mother for thirty dollars for the pair of sterling silver and turquoise earrings, her mother replied: “That’s too much. You can’t trust these people here, because they’ll try to rob you. I’ll get you something nice later.” When she heard these words from her mother, they were words she would never forget—and perhaps never forgive.

Her mother could have meant anything by “these people,” but Carmen knew what she meant. Her mother didn’t trust them because they were poor and Indian. They were also Carmen, her daughter, but her mother couldn’t see that now. She couldn’t see that her own daughter was the person she did not trust. Somehow, Carmen’s Indianness and the poverty she had been born into were invisible to her mother. But Carmen could see it, and in her heart she knew it meant she would never be as real a person—as real a woman—as someone like Sandy. She would never be as valuable, no one would ever love and want her as much as she needed to be loved and wanted. And if by chance someone, someday did, it could only be because they were more flawed than she.

For the next several weeks after Kent broke up with her, Carmen tried to keep herself busy, but she was caught up in a difficult cycle of sleeping too much or not enough. At times, she was unable to sleep or calm herself, she would study for hours and hours. Then she would crash and plunge into a deep sleep, unable to wake herself or get out of bed. She missed several classes as a result, but made up for it with the marathon study sessions that always followed during her sleepless stretches. Because of her erratic lifestyle and the obvious strain on her health, and because she was never very regular with her periods, Carmen had not noticed that she hadn’t had a period since last semester. In fact, she had missed most of the obvious warning signs until a doctor finally diagnosed her one day after she had collapsed while walking to class and was taken to the health center.

She was pregnant. At first she was terrified, then excited. She thought it might mean something wonderful to Kent, but she was wrong. When she first met with him to tell him, he misinterpreted her call as an invitation to reopen their sexual relationship. Carmen was stunned, confused, and offended. Nonetheless, she held her ground and told him about the pregnancy. He was furious and he accused her of trying to trap him with a child that was not his. She insisted that it was, and finally he lunged at her, grabbing her by the throat. The following is how Carmen reported the conversation to us as she spoke in a whisper-like tone:

KENT: Listen to me, you little tramp. I’m no fool. You can’t fuck me over with this little game. I finally have everything I want, and you’re not going to destroy it all. Do you honestly believe I would have a little nigger baby with you? DO YOU?! Get real!

CARMEN: I am sorry . . . I am really sorry

After several minutes of silence and Carmen crying incessantly, she reported that he told her:

KENT: Carmen I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. And I’m sorry you’re pregnant. But you can’t keep this child. Look, I’ll pay for the abortion. Okay? I’ll even find out where you can get it done. You won’t have to worry about anything.

According to Carmen, “He said a few more things, but I was only half hearing him. His voice seemed so distant. I think at this point I just retreated into an inner world where he could not touch me. It was a place deep inside, a place I had been to once before in my life, when I was around 7.”

Days later Carmen had an abortion. Her friends tried to comfort her. They encouraged her to be angry with Kent, but Carmen excused him and blamed herself. She later felt that some of her friends became angry and frustrated with her because of her lack of anger toward Kent.

What her friends failed to realize was that Carmen was pissed. She did have rage, but it was difficult to detect. Even she, Carmen, would not have described herself as enraged. It was an emotion she would not allow herself to acknowledge, which was one of the reasons she had so much of it. There were many reasons her rage remained so deeply buried, so masked behind depression and sullenness. Her gender socialization was probably a major reason. As a girl she was inclined toward the internalization of rage. She bought into the “good girls don’t get angry” hype. She embodied the demure, slightly deferential stance of a “nice girl” who was on her way to becoming a “decent woman.” While no one had ever told her outright she should bury her own inner desires, passions, and opinions, she (like most girls) learned that, if she was to become a good woman, this was exactly what she would have to do. In a thousand ways each day of her life, she was shaped and molded by a culture that demands, as the price for its patriarchal fortification, the spirits, minds, and hearts of its female children. As Mary Pipher (1994) described in her book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, the transition from girlhood to womanhood involves the surrendering of girls’ voices, of their personal authority, and of their inner knowing, fire, and dynamism. Carmen was no exception. In fact, as a child of color lost in a sea of whiteness, she was even more prone to the conditioning process that left her feeling unentitled to her opinions or her feelings. As a girl who was becoming a woman, and as a person of color in a white world, she already had mastered how to artfully suppress, contain, constrain, and deny her own thoughts and emotions, even to the point that she became unknown to herself. She had learned the art of agreeability, passivity, compliance, and of course blankness—an expression of nothingness that connotes an absence of presence, memory, or will.

According to Carmen, “the rest of the semester was a blur.” She shifted in and out of her inner and outer worlds, and because she needed more than ever to be a good girl, she somehow managed to get through all her classes with decent grades: one A–, four B’s. For anyone who bothered to notice, she appeared sad and withdrawn. But no one noticed. No one saw the shame and humiliation, her self-loathing, her inner tears, or, for that matter, her rage. That was one thing even she herself did not see, because, above all else, good girls did not display an emotion as vile, ugly, and as boorishly masculine as rage.

Over the summer break Carmen was introduced to alcohol by several well-meaning friends who wanted to party. In time, she realized she could use alcohol to distance herself, at least temporarily, from her pain. By the time she returned to school in the fall, she was accustomed to drinking herself to sleep almost every night. Several weeks into the semester a resident advisor found her almost dead in the bathroom. After narrowly escaping death, a week later she was sitting across from us in our therapy office.

In spite of the fact that popular characterizations of rage made it difficult to detect Carmen’s, there was little doubt of the cauldron of rage that resided deep within her. The challenge in her case was not just in bringing the rage to the surface where others could bear witness to it, but in helping even Carmen to see it. She was so disconnected from her own pain, so convinced she did not have a right to her suffering or her rage, that she could not allow herself to see herself clearly. Hence, our work with her had to begin with a journey toward helping her reclaim her lost parts, including her rage, which would naturally give way to the process of helping Carmen rechannel and deal with the rage more constructively.

CONCLUSION

While Timothy, Daquon, and Carmen all “wore” their rage in different ways, each of them had an unhealthy relationship with their rage. The rage of Timothy and Daquon was externally directed. However, Timothy’s rage was much more explosive than Daquon’s, who manifested his rage quietly, with a chilling sense of control. Carmen’s rage, in contrast, was so deeply buried and inwardly focused that it was undetectable to the naked eye. But, in spite of these differences, each one was filled with rage. None of them had ever had their rage validated or had learned healthy ways of channeling it; consequently, they were each a prime candidate for the transformation of rage to violence. Already, Timothy had physically assaulted his brother and his parents feared—rightfully so—that without intervention it was only a matter of time before he did worse. Daquon was plotting revenge for the murder of his best friend, and nothing less than “an eye for an eye” would do. He had spent months fantasizing about and plotting his moment of violent retribution. Carmen had turned inwardly and was slowly poisoning herself to death. Day after day she had been pouring toxic levels of alcohol down her throat, rapidly hurling herself to the edge of self-destruction. It was only by a miracle that she had not already succeeded in killing or permanently injuring herself. Her rage, like that of Daquon and Timothy, already had mutated into violence, and without immediate intervention, destruction was inevitable. All three of them desperately needed help. All three of them were literally dying to be saved.