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David McElroy

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For all my life, I’ve hidden anger in order to be ‘perfect’ to others

By David McElroy · May 11, 2019

When I was going through some serious therapy about 10 years ago, I noticed something that alarmed me. At random times — maybe driving down the road — I would suddenly feel flashes of extreme anger which left me shaking and confused.

When this happened, I never seemed to have anything specific to feel angry about. It just felt as though something had slightly opened a lid on something which was normally locked up tightly.

This anger scared me, because I had never felt anything like it. For my entire life, I have rarely allowed myself to feel anger of any kind. I’ve always had my feelings completely under control. Even when something was going on that would elicit rage from others, I was always under control and focused on a rational reaction. Under pressure, I was a lot like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

The feelings which were washing over me randomly at the time — and which I still feel every now and then — made me seem to be feeling just the tiniest bit of the anger I had been repressing for my entire life. I had never even known it was there.

Although I understand more about it now than I did when it started — and I even wrote about my hidden anger not long ago — I’m still discovering more about the patterns which led to that. This weekend has been another of those times of discovery for me — and it came from an unexpected direction.

About six months ago, I started a confusing re-examination of my personality and identity. I had thought I knew who I was, but I suddenly discovered a way to view what I thought I understood as a subset of something which I hadn’t noticed before.

It wasn’t that I was wrong about what I had seen in myself. It was simply that I suddenly started understanding that what I had thought was the real me was only a part of myself. Another part — something which had been dominant up until I was about 30 years old — was still there. I didn’t realize that I had a lot of work to do in order to integrate two entirely different parts of myself. (Here’s what I wrote at the time when I tried to explain a part of it.)

The process I started about six months ago led me to reinterpret my personality on the Enneagram typing system. I had been certain that I was a Type 4, but I came to understand that my natural personality is a Type 1.

It turns out that a Type 1 can appear to be a Type 4 at certain unhealthy times and the Type 1 can also develop some of the Type 4’s positive traits as he grows in positive ways. I had experienced both sides of that, but I had concluded I was a Type 4. I didn’t realize it, but there was something deeper waiting for me to learn.

On Saturday, I listened to a chapter in an audiobook about the Enneagram that opened my eyes to a lot of how anger — repressed anger, not experienced anger — has affected my life. What’s interesting is that I’m not sure I could have allowed myself to see some of the truth I needed to see if my father had still been alive. So maybe it was finally the right time to learn what has been in front of me for years.

(If you have any interest in the subject, here’s an audio copy of the chapter which has taken me on this journey today.)

Beatrice Chestnut is considered one of the most influential Enneagram teachers today. I have her book, “The Complete Enneagram,” and I also have the audio version. I had read part of it, but I’d never finished it. I happened to hear her being interviewed on a podcast Friday, so that prompted me to pull out the book Saturday to listen to what she wrote about the Type 1.

She says that a Type 1 has always repressed anger because these people were terrified of making errors as children. They were afraid of their own environment and their parent figures, so they compensated by becoming “perfect” — and striving for perfection at all times. They repressed anger and repressed all negative emotions.

She says that these sorts of children were obsessed with self-control and with being flawless in behavior in order to escape the punishment which they were afraid of. As the result of this fear they learned as children, they devoted their minds to always doing the right thing in all circumstances.

When I was younger, I assumed that everyone had a harsh inner voice telling them what was wrong with them and directing them about how to become perfect. Even today — when I intellectually know this isn’t the case — I still want to assume that others are driven at their core by the ultimate desire to do whatever is the right thing.

It’s impossible for me to imagine not feeling that way. Chestnut’s explanations about the Type 1 made that all finally make sense. (There are three sub-types of each basic type, and I am the “self-preservation” variant of Type 1 that she discusses in the book.)

It’s hard for me to imagine that I could have come this far in life and still be learning such basic things about myself. Maybe you’re the same way.

As I learn more about myself, I feel a desperate need to share this with everybody I know. I especially have a strong desire to share it with whoever might eventually love me and want to marry me, whenever I find her. I need someone to understand what made me the ways I am — for both good and bad — and this is another building block of that understanding I want to offer.

I’m not sure anyone can successfully be my partner — in romance or business or deep friendship — without understanding these sorts of things. So there’s a part of me which feels evangelical about sharing. I want to take copies of all I’ve learned — some of which applies to me and some of which will apply to others in my life — and beg those people to learn, too.

For instance, I’m going to have my real estate broker’s license by November. (I currently have a salesperson license and you can’t get a broker’s license until you’ve had the salesperson license for two years.) The plan at the company where I work is for me to be promoted to become the “broker of record” for our company at that time. That’s a big deal and it will put me in the position of managing the salespeople.

I’ve known the owner of our company for something like 30 years, so he knows me pretty well. He knows he can trust me. But I need him to understand more about what I do — and what I think and feel — in order to understand why I will manage in some of the ways that I will. So I feel like taking this chapter to him and saying, “Sit down; we’re going to listen to this together.”

Those who quit learning and growing are doomed to keep making the same mistakes in their lives. I believe pretty passionately that the only way people can along with each other — and even live with themselves in a healthy way — is to keep growing.

I understand now that I was an efficient and rational machine in the early parts of my career. That’s why I did so well with some of the things I did. I was driven and I didn’t let my feelings get in the way, mostly because I didn’t always feel them.

But then when I was about 30, I discovered this hidden side of myself. I started exploring my emotions — in fits and starts, bits and pieces — and I became convinced that’s who I really was. The truth is more complicated. I was — and am — both of those people.

I’m just striving to integrate parts of myself which seem radically different from one another.

I understand now that I was terrified to feel anger as a child. If I had ever allowed myself to express the anger (or fear) which I felt about my father, he would have crushed me. My only defense mechanism was to repress my negative emotions and focus exclusively on always being correct and perfect.

That defense mechanism let me survive my father, but it left me very emotionally unbalanced. I’m still feeling the effects of that today.

Now I just have to finish integrating these two seemingly opposite parts of myself. That will lead to a more healthy place, but I have no idea what might lie beyond that.

There’s always something else to learn about ourselves. We always have more growing to do.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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