T.S. Eliot: Listener Questions (Part Two)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome everyone to season 10 of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to TS. Eliot and his poetry in four quartets. Today is part two of our listener questions. I'm here with Jim, and we have a lot of questions to get through, so let's dive in. The first question is from Brian. In the first stanza of The Dry Salvagers, TS. Eliot begins by describing the river, sullen and tamed, intractable, patient to some degree. When you read out the line, the river is within us, in session three, I could not help but think of my anger as the strong brown god. I am someone who struggles with anger, and similar to a river, I can see the ways in which it causes destruction and devastation to the people around me, usually the people that I love the most. When things are going my way, and I have some semblance of control over my life, my anger is forgotten. But never goes away. It is simply waiting, watching and waiting. When I start to lose control is when my anger rises and starts to come to life. Do you have any guidance from your years as practicing clinical psychology on how I might learn to deal with my anger?

James Finley (1:37)

Yes, this is similar to the previous thing about anger, but you're adding a new nuance to it, I think too. First of all, here's my thought. I'm gonna speak as a therapist.

See, it's one thing to be quick to anger, it's another to have poor impulse control where it comes out. Just beneath the anger is the pain, and just beneath the pain is the powerlessness. And so really it's a therapeutic issue of impulse control over the anger. What's that about? Where are the resources within yourself that's qualitatively richer than what you're angry about? You know, it's like all of a sudden in a twinkling of an eye, that's what anger is like, by the way, in the anger of an eye, it's like God's not real, you're not real, nothing's real, there's only how few. And the thing about it is, it makes you momentarily feel empowered, like this incredible hawk. But really, when you think about it, because of poor impulse control, it's actually a fragility. Not just hurts them, it hurts you, too. So I would encourage you, we all have things to work on, but I would encourage you, based on what's up to you, kind of where you are and what's possible, is to get help with that. Because there's a certain way of, it's important to honor the anger. But there's a certain part in you that it isn't as if I'm angry on a scale of one to ten to three, you know, this is irritating, where you hit a tripwire, you instantly to ten plus. And that's what you really ought to modulate, the anger that's proportionate to the stimulus, to put it into a context, to have more, to kind of sort all that out what that's about. And a lot of times, not always, but again, just underneath the anger is the pain, is the bereavement of something. That's why often after sometimes people will express anger in therapy, sometimes tears will come, because the tears are underneath the anger this way, and the tears are more real. And beneath the tears is feeling powerless. So how are you unexplainably empowered by God who's infinitely in love with you and your powerlessness, and how could you strengthen that as a base to work on this? Those are the things to possibly consider. It might apply, I don't know, because I don't know you. I'd have to talk with you further. But those are some thoughts that come to mind.

Kirsten Oates (3:50)

Yeah. It reminds me, Jim, how you were saying, when we're traumatized, one of the responses is that we can go numb and somaticize the anger and not let it out. But the opposite can happen too, I guess, is that if you're a traumatized person, you could be very reactive as a way of protecting yourself.

James Finley (4:10)

Yeah. This is a virtualistic reenactment. So the person say anger, so because I was angry, I lived. And even though we've long since outgrown it, the person says, because I am angry, I still live. And you're stuck in a time warp of things that are long, like you've outgrown it. But to that primitive place, when it gets triggered, likewise, the opposite is true. Another response, to give external compliance, to avoid being attacked or abandoned. You passively go along with it, you go along with it. And it made sense when you were a child, this way, because you knew the price you have to pay if you challenged it. But you get stuck there, and you find yourself giving external compliance to avoid being attacked or abandoned. Really, there's survival strategies formed in trauma and abandonment.