Recently, a woman sought therapy because she was feeling overwhelmed in her relationship with her husband. As she sat tearfully recounting her experience of a seven-year marriage, an emerging pattern of predatory rage began to take shape. She spoke about the charming sophisticated man, capable of tremendous generosity and a keen intellect who has acted increasingly hostile with hurtful and degrading comments and behavior. Social psychologists, such as Harm Veling, suggest that predatory or instrumental anger is used to gain power, control, and manage interactions on behalf of the person expressing the anger. Clinically, most counselors who have dealt with couples or family therapy have had many opportunities to see firsthand the mechanism of predatory anger.

The question of what is the origin of such aggressive and hostile control strategies can be found most frequently in the developmental history of the individual who acts in a predatory manner. The developmental history most often illustrates a family dynamic that could be considered traumatic in nature. Anger is ubiquitous in trauma family dynamics, and many raised in these highly disruptive environments assume that it is a reasonable and meaningful way to bring predictability to chaos and order to human relationships.

Before examining the trauma family attributes that contribute to predatory rage or rage, it is vital to reveal that not all anger and rage are equal or equal in terms of danger and lethality. Some anger is the result of repeated or long-term frustrations, habitual interference with acquiring needs, disinhibition of substance use, and serious mental illness. There is no absolute answer to what generates anger with any predictability, because many attributes that contribute to the expression of anger are going to be in a constant state of adaptation and fluctuation. Many of these trauma families possess behavior patterns that interfere with the normal social, emotional, psychological and physical development of individual family members, which means that there are patterns of functioning that disrupt the appropriate and proper use of power, creativity , spontaneity, problem solving, etc. and connect in genuine relationships of shared and equal affection. Many times adults who have matured in this family dynamic will experience an incomplete sense of themselves; low self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem), relational stress and anxiety, an illusion of connection, a psychological defensive attitude towards genuine attempts at emotional attachment, an avoidance of actual emotional closeness and affection with a simultaneous urge to possess the same, such as as well as a great need to exercise control and power to create internal states that are free or have reduced tension.

This dynamic creates relationships that absence a self-sustaining quality, which would be essential for developing long-lasting and satisfying relationships and a healthy development of the normal maturation process. When observing trauma family dynamics related to the generation of rage or predatory rage, one would notice a continuum of family dynamics. Perhaps the simplest or least magnitude would be the behaviors that a caregiver or parent can demonstrate with a young child, for example:

– A baby cries and no one responds or offers comfort.
– A baby is hungry or wet and is not cared for for hours.
– No one looks, talks, or smiles at the baby or toddler for long periods of time.
– A young child receives attention only by acting or displaying other extreme behaviors.
– A young child or a baby is mistreated or abused.
– Sometimes the child’s needs are met and sometimes not. The child never knows what to expect and has little predictability.
– The baby or young child is separated from their parents.
– An infant or toddler is transferred from one caregiver to another (may be the result of adoption, foster care, or the loss of a parent).
– The father is emotionally unavailable due to depression, illness, or substance abuse problem.

These behaviors on the part of the caregiver instruct the child to control the environment for safety, security, and predictability. These attributes are also considered related to other problems, such as attachment disorders. Attachment is about the degree to which one feels emotionally connected to others and the predictable nature of that connection. When the attachment is inconsistent or poor, the predictable nature of the emotional connection is vague and poorly formed. This significantly reduces the confidence and quiet expectation of support that human beings depend on to feel part of a community or family. This triggers an urge to control, manipulate, and act aggressively to have a safe expectation that leads to predatory behaviors.

While expectations or desire for security, stability, caring, empathy, acceptance, and respect may not be predictably met, this is just one of the contributing causes of predatory rage and rage. When the family environment creates feelings of neglect and repeated instability, low levels of trust and confidence, emotional deprivation accompanied by feelings of inadequacy and individual shame, then predatory rage and anger are more likely to emerge and as an instrument to achieve those elements. missing. . Some of the strategies that become evident in predatory anger are:

1. Losing control to get away with it
2. Train others to avoid them when they are angry or not.
3. Using threats to harm yourself or others
4. Using threats to property or pets
5. Actively control interactions through sarcasm, name calling, put-downs, rude comments, criticism, and harsh judgment and anger when others try to make connections.
6. Claiming that they “lost control” after an aggressive, destructive, or abusive incident.
7. Use anger to gain power in a situation.
8. Others become shy and “walk on eggshells” when they have to discuss problems or responsibilities.
9. Evaluate people by the amount of power they have and respond differently based on your view of that power.
10. Reacts negatively to or dominates those who seem to have less power.
11. Be charming to those with the most power.
12. Resist developing relationships with those who might be more powerful than them or threaten their power.
13. Use omission and vagueness to confuse or avoid
14. Pretend to have misunderstood
15. Put others on the defensive when they are clearly wrong.
16. Put others in a bind so they end up explaining themselves instead of focusing on solving a problem.
17. Use phrases like “you don’t love me”, “you don’t trust me”, “you don’t appreciate me” to avoid dealing with a problem and deviating

Dr. Bruce Perry and other professionals suggest that if other factors are added to the trauma family dynamics described above, there will be an escalation of expressed violence associated with predatory anger and rage. Some of these factors are:

1. By becoming more detached from each other and from the common unifying beliefs of a community, then there is more expressed violence.
2. By becoming desensitized to the emotional needs of others, empathic ability loose or strange, then there is more expressed violence.
3. Promote hate ideologies within the family dynamics that make groups or classes of people be seen as different, bad or even less human, then there is more expressed violence.
4. When alcohol or drugs are used regularly or at addictive levels, there is more expressed violence.

Predatory rage and rage can be seen as a motivated strategy to obtain or possess some perceived end. Since the patterns tend to be long-standing and have impacted the normal developmental process of the individual, these stratagems are considered normal and part of the ordinary world of the individual, and are not considered aggressive or hostile, but are more easily characterized by organic factors. meaning that this is “the way things are”. These patterns contribute to unsatisfactory interpersonal interactions and exchanges, with accompanying frustration and perhaps even the recognition that behaviors are not producing the desired results. However, the recognition of the impossibility of achieving the end goal is generally not self-correcting mainly due to the rigidity of the ploy. Instead of acting differently, they increase their use of the strategy, further increasing dissatisfaction and failure. Perpetual and repeated attempts to use strategy create a cycle of ever-increasing attempts to satisfy needs for control, connection, and emotional security through predatory acts, and those failures drive more of the same.