Anger in PTSD: From 0 to 60 in seconds flat
The Jason Klinkenberg case has brought up the issues of anger in PTSD. Las Vegas police responded to a domestic violence call at Klinkenberg’s apartment after a friend of his wife, Crystal, said Crystal told her they had argued and Jason had held a gun to her head. Veterans suffering from PTSD often struggle with anger, and post traumatic stress research has found that their levels of anger and hostility are significantly higher than non-sufferers. Even PTSD sufferers who survived 9-11 had greater levels of severe anger, and researchers surmised that the popular notion that anger may sustain PTSD is backed up by that finding. 
Progression View 1 by Irum Shahid of Islamabad, Pakistan courtesy stock.Xchng
The National Center for PTSD states that anger is
usually a central feature of a survivor’s response to trauma because it is a core component of the survival response in humans. Anger helps people cope with life’s adversities by providing us with increased energy to persist in the face of obstacles.
It’s been hypothesized that anger is such an issue with veterans because soldiers are specifically conditioned to hone the increased energy of anger. Soldiers are often wired to be pissed off; a lack of adequate resources and personal suffering in their lives contributes to their heightened state of arousal. Being “wired tight” keeps them on the edge they need to be on to be soldiers. But the arousal-relaxation cycle gets whacked out in cases of post traumatic stress. Sufferers cannot adequately regulate their response to stressors in their environment. Essentially, we have no low boil setting, no simmer, no second or third gear.
We go from 0 to 60. We run hot until we run out. The only thing we can do to stop this cycle, I have come to believe, is learn anti-stress techniques like meditation. Freeing the mind by releasing its emotional connection to thoughts is the first step. Once the mind is free, “the ass will follow,” but it needs help—physical help—getting there, too. Self-medication techniques like alcohol and drugs focus on setting ourselves on 0 for as long as possible, but they are doomed to failure. We have to learn how to develop simmer, low boil, and slow burn settings. For myself, I have found meditation, peaceful music and energy tapping for trauma techniques to be of enormous significance in my own growth.
But I grieve for the Jason Klinkenbergs of the world. Who only burned.
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I’ve learned so much in the short time I’ve been reading your blog. Thank you for the service you do. Sometimes I have a problem reading your posts and have to do it in segments because I get pretty emotional. I always take away something valuable though. Thank you again. I hope you are getting settled into your new home.
Thanks Tricia. I’ve always felt that knowledge is power in any situation.
Michelle … Thanks for this. The image is especially evocative … Yes, the anger and rage are astounding in PTSD … and given the helplessness and threats to our existence we experience when we are being shocked and traumatized … the depth of rage is no surprise. Sometimes I think that the rage is simply the visceral urge to live, magnified to infinity by the collision with death’s edge … and certainly, the depth of rage is parallel to the magnitude and duration of the injuring itself … I recall the words of Dylan Thomas in his poem, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night " — "Rage, rage against the dying of the light …"Thomas writes of the natural dying at the end of a long, full life … and I see those words now as also referring to the ferocious feelings that surge forth after deep injury …"Rage, rage against that which could have snuffed you out," I think …Lately, too, I find myself raging (though not destructively — more in terms of thinking) against the "noise of the machine" –> all the aspects of modern culture that harden, jar and stupefy us … I am so tired of NOISE … and there is so much of it …Like you, Michelle, I’m learning to moderate my own extremes with simple sensory interventions … first and foremost (and the most easily lost/forgotten) with the breath … I am astounded lately at how much tension my body has stuffed into its nooks & crannies over the years … Not long ago, I realized that sometimes I feel more tension when I’m supposedly attempting to relax … !I figure that being tense has become the adapted state of my body and being … To relax is to trust, to release, to soften into …
Jason’s problem’s started long before he was sent to Iraq. He had problems with alcohol and was depressed about not being able to find what he wanted out of life. I’m sure that PTSD exists but I also know that a lot of the people diagnosed with this had emotional problems and couldn’t deal with life in general long before they were in war.
While I can’t speak directly to Jason Klinkenberg’s situation because I did not know him, I can assure you that PTSD is much more than not being able to not being able to "deal with life in general;" it is a psycho-somatic response to intense shock and trauma. It has not been proven, however, that having issues with alcohol or depression prior to trauma pre-disposes one to violent behavior, suicide or PTSD. PTSD occurs in about 3% of the population and there are still a lot of things we don’t know about it.You are correct in saying that not all people who suffer from PTSD were war veterans; that is in fact my situation, as I was molested when I was a child. Many women suffer from PTSD after rape or molestation like I do, and many people suffer from PTSD because of trauma from car accidents, witnessing other violent events, or living through events like Hurricane Katrina. I am sorry to hear that Jason had issues even before he went to Iraq, but I don’t think even those kind of problems would have made him susceptible to PTSD — at least, there doesn’t seem to be enough research yet to speak to that. I guess in the end we don’t know why Jason did what he did, and can only grieve in the aftermath. I am very sorry for Jason and Crystal’s families, and hope that discussing it on my blog does not add to their pain.