How to handle my rage?

I regularly loose it and write long angry emails to my last narc. I feel really guilty and bad about it afterwards. It's not how I want to conduct myself. I don't recognise myself, and I feel stupid because it is totally meaningless to express how I feel to a Narc.

I just can't seem to cope with my rage in any other way. Does anyone here have any tips for how to sit with the rage without acting out on it in any way?

It's not that I call him names or anything like that, I do express myself fairly appropriately considering the circumstances, but I shouldn't have any contact with him at all and I shouldn't let him know how angry I am since that will only be Narc supply for him and I don't want to enable his NPD, and my experience won't make any sense to him anyways. I just make myself look overly emotional and "hysterical", which I am of course....I really want to conduct myself better than to lash out in anger towards anyone, Narc or not.

It's the first time in my life that I'm lashing out like this. I hate how changed I've become from being in a relationship with a Narc. I have never been this aggressive before and I don't like to be out of control. I feel like a threatened animal that is cornered and I lash out in self defence but the only thing I achieve is to harm myself more....I have never before had to handle feelings that are this strong and in many ways I'm coping very well considering how incredibly rageful I feel towards him.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Hi.

As a writer, I can relate. Some people work out or meditate to release tension, but writing is my therapy and my way to make sense of my own thoughts. It was honestly TORTUROUS for me to resist writing to Sir. Narczilla. I found myself in the midst of long, scathing letters and I did hit the send button on a few of them.

The thing is–the more you bother trying to get your point across to a narcissist, the more you will come to cringe about it later. The thing with narcs is that you could write a poem, sing a love song, yell, shout, kick, scream, cry, beg, plead, rationalise, have a team of prestigious Swedish scientists fly in to prove your point, punch down walls, turn into a unicorn, flutter around the room and shit purple glitter from the sky and they STILL won't give you a crumb of validation. I know how frustrating and angry it can make you to try and rationalise with someone who has the emotional capacity of a desert cactus, but that's what you're dealing with.

My advice is to still write (without sending) and to write uncensored. Be real. You don't have to sugarcoat anything and I don't think you should suppress your anger either. After a cluster B, you have earned the right to be angry. There truly is so much learning that comes with this period of rage. In my opinion, it's what helps you set boundaries and learn to value and protect yourself.

Write to get it off your chest–but then step away or sleep on it. This is how I used to control myself. By the time I came back to read what I had written, the rage had subsided enough to understand that sending something I had poured so much emotion in to a desert cactus was pointless.

Most importantly, don't not send something because you don't want to give narcissistic supply or want him to think you're bitter or hysterical. I think too many of us make the mistake early on of avoiding doing X or Y so we don't look bad to the narc or give them supply.

Worrying about if you give narcissistic supply or how you come across to the narc is still making it all about them and your priority should be YOU. At the end of the day, who cares what a person who has made you feel 'like a threatened animal' thinks of YOU or how YOU come across?  Don't send letters of anger for YOU. Because YOU are worth more than waating your time and energy to be invalidated by a person of this substance.

Hey,

Thanks so so much for your response! I love it! So great to hear that I'm not alone in this. I really agree that the frustration lies in never, never getting my perspective validated from any of the Narcs in my life, my mother and ex boyfriends etc. There is no way of winning. It's like trying to convince a seriously scitzophrenic person that they in fact are not Napoleon. It won't ever work. And it's my job to lear to accept this, to heal and to never again get caught by another Cluster-B type.

I have lost everything because of my Cluster-B parents and later boyfriends. I really have nothing left. It's amazing that I still want to go on. There is so much rage in me and it's just crazymaking. I'm so grateful that at least I can sit on a floor in a rented room with my computer and listen to the SpartanLifecoach seminars over and over....and do the courses on Narc recovery. That is all I live for now. There is now a small glimmer of the potential to perhaps in the future experience some level of basic hope again....