#423 The Deceitful Allure Of Rage

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger and we're glad to have you with us. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. We're on the AFR, we're live, and it is 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840 if you want to be on the show. And this is a show for the family caregiver, for those who put themselves knowingly, voluntarily, and without pay. Between a vulnerable loved one and an even worse disaster. Now that could be involving Alzheimer's, it could involve autism, it could involve addiction, it could involve mental illness, trauma, disease, whatever the impairment, there's always a caregiver.

Always. There's always a caregiver. Now that caregiver may have been distant from that individual for various reasons. And a lot of times we weigh into that and hear on this show of family members that have been split apart because of various issues going on and then when the crisis hits of the disability or the impairment, it drives a wedge even further into those relationships. But there's still a caregiver somewhere in that orbit, struggling with the basic components that all caregivers struggle with, which is fear, obligation. And guilt.

I call it the fog of caregivers. Fear, obligation, and guilt. And if you're dealing with that right now, of any kind of level, where you think, okay, what are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about this?

What are we going to do about this? Or you feel, I got it, I got it, I got it. That's that obligation.

I must, I should, I have to, I need to. And guilt. Where for so many caregivers, that's our constant companion, is guilt. And we are, we are struggling with guilt. With trying to make sense of, of our behavior in the midst of, of often what is nonsensical.

It was just crazy. And so on this show, we unpack those things. We don't spend a lot of time teaching on how to care give. In fact, I don't know that I spent a lot of time teaching anything because I don't think a caregiver needs a lot of instruction. I can't tell you how to take care of your loved one anymore. You tell me how to take care of mine.

I can give you a couple tips. That I've learned in my 34 plus years now. But I can't tell you how to deal with that. From that perspective of, okay, here's what your day looks like today kind of thing. But I think we caregivers need a lot of reminders. We don't need a lot of instruction, but we need a lot of reminders. Where's the path to safety?

What does healthiness look like in the midst of this? Let's talk about something that we all struggle with at some point. It just manifests itself differently. And that is rage. Rage.

Anybody out there struggling with rage? And as we've watched what's happening in our country, what's going on as people are raging at us. And just burning down buildings and all that kind of stuff. Why do people do that?

What good does that serve? And people say, well, there's been a lot of injustice. Well, yeah, there's a lot of injustices everywhere.

Okay. Let's be frank about this. There's injustices all around this world. If every time we went out there and burned down to Wendy's at an injustice, what would this look like? Where's this going?

What does that particular highway lead to? And why do it in the first place? What good does that solve? And I think that as caregivers, we know a little bit about this because we've been faced with a lot of unfairness or unpleasantness things that we've had to just kind of absorb. And there's a tipping point where we lash out. Now, lashing out can come from lashing out at a loved one, barking out things, raising our voices, yelling, all that kind of stuff. It can go violent. Or sometimes we can lash out at ourselves.

You ever done that? You ever feel like you're just without mercy, just raging against yourself, just forgetting into the situation. And sometimes that can look like depression.

And sometimes that can look like just putting yourself down so hard, almost violently abusing yourself. And I've been thinking about this a lot as we watched this unfettered rage fill our airwaves as people are tearing down statues. They're burning down buildings. They want to tear down this and tear down that. And everybody just seems like it's unbridled.

And I've thought about a lot about this over the last couple of weeks. And there's a scripture that says, refrain from anger, turn from wrath and do not fret. It leads only to evil. Now, I'm going to read it in a couple of different translations.

All right. And this is Psalm 37 eight, refrain from anger, forsake wrath, fret not yourself. It tends only to evil.

That's the English standard version. New living translation says, stop being angry. Turn from your rage. Do not lose your temper. It only leads to harm.

King James Bible is very similar to that. Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself and any wise to do evil.

And we just go down the list. Okay, look, don't do this. Leave this. Don't get, don't fret. Now what does fretting mean? You know, that we're just obsessing over these things. And in one, I think it's one that says, don't give in to worry or anger. It only leads to trouble.

Don't give into it. That's what scripture is saying in this. And sometimes it helps to look at these things in multiple translations just to kind of get the picture of what the original text was saying. In the Hebrew language is such a dense language.

I mean, it's very compact. And so you have to kind of spend some time understanding it from all different, it doesn't always give the same kind of weight to it in the English language. When you translate that to the English, I mean, the translators done a great job with it, but it's not as specific as the Hebrew language. And it's, but all of these are saying basically, look, there is a temptation to rage out. And it's only going to lead to harm.

And you're seeing that on the airwaves. But do you see that in your life as a caregiver? Do you see where you are tempted to rage out at a family member that is not helping the way that you'd like them to, or a physician, or your loved one themselves, or even, like I said, at yourself? Do you see how that is a temptation for us as caregivers that we can do that? Why?

Let's unpack that little bit. Why? Why would we even want to do that? We know it's not productive. In the message, it says, brattle your anger, trash your wrath, cool your pipes. It only makes things worse. But yet we do it.

Why? What good is solved by destroying something in your wrath? For you, personally.

All the way up to burning down buildings, like we've seen in the news. What good does that accomplish? Does it instill love? Does it instill respect from others? Does it instill a sense of endearment? Do you feel like you're ever going to, if somebody is raging out at you, do you ever feel like you just want to sit down and have a reasonable conversation with these people?

What good does it accomplish? And we see this out on the news of all these people raging out. When people are raging like that, do you want to go up there and just shake their hands? I'm watching people go up there and bow to them.

I guess they're afraid of them. They feel guilty about it. But is it building a sense of mutual trust and relationship and strength?

As caregivers, does it do that in our life? We'll be right back. This is Peter Rosenberger, Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com, 888-589-8840, 888-589-8840. Keep weighing in with your thoughts as well. We'll be right back.

888-589-8840. I love that from Keith Green. You put this love in my heart. And this is a guiding principle for everything we do on this show of understanding where that source of love comes from. And when we try to somehow overshadow that or in any way push that away and accept rage instead, what happens to us? And we as caregivers struggle with rage. If you're not struggling with rage as a caregiver, give it time.

It'll come. It'll manifest itself in different ways. It won't always look like burning down a store. Sometimes it looks like overeating. Sometimes it looks like drinking. And sometimes it'll manifest itself with severe depression. You ever seen these kids that have struggled with cutting themselves? Well, not just kids. It happens to adults as well. But these kids that struggle with cutting themselves. Why do you think they're doing that?

What's going on? The deceitful allure of rage is that it gives this sense of power. But it's deceitful.

It's an illusion. But for that moment, you feel powerful. And then when it leaves, when that adrenaline rush and all that stuff leaves, you're left with this vacuum of just guilt and, quite truthfully, a lot of shame. And then you've got to do it all over again. And it becomes a cycle, a very deadly cycle, that's hard to function. It is very difficult to function as a healthy, normal human being when you're raging out or raging in.

Is that tracking with you? Because as a caregiver, I think we are faced with this onslaught of crisis and challenges. And we deal with it, we deal with it, we deal with it, and then all of a sudden something happens.

The straw that broke the camel's back, that kind of thing. And we've got to do something that makes ourselves feel powerful. Because we feel like we're going under. We feel so outraged. We feel so this. We feel whatever. And then we unleash this pent-up stuff that's in us so that we can feel powerful again.

And it cripples us as caregivers every time. And again, go back to, think about all these people that are just putting graffiti on our nation's monuments, they're tearing down stuff, they're just going, it's like a mob. It is a mob. Do you want to sit down with these people and have a nice meal with them? Do you trust them? Would you want to extend your hand to them or do you want to stay as far away from them as you can until they can start acting like reasonable adults? And if they don't act like reasonable adults, then what do we do? Well, think about when we do it as individuals. Who wants to trust us or build that kind of bridge with us?

Who wants to engage with us when we do this? We're all guilty of this at various levels. It's not that we somehow are less prone to sin than anyone else. But see, rage is one of the most delicious sins of all. It gives that illusion of power. And that's what we crave.

And the weaker we feel in our hearts, the weaker we feel inwardly, the more that illusion of power is enticing to us and we want to rage out or rage in. And we're going to be hit with these things as caregivers throughout our journey as a caregiver and after. And you've heard me say on this show many times, the journey for a caregiver does not stop at a grave. It just doesn't.

I am convinced of this. I think that a lot of caregivers suffer from the impact of being a caregiver long after the funeral. It's like going through a divorce. Do you think that the pain of the divorce, the pain of the failed marriage ends when you sign the document?

No. And it takes a long time to process what has happened. And then all too many will end up standing at a grave with clenched fists when it comes to being a caregiver. And what's the antidote for this? What's the antidote? People say, well, love.

Well, yeah, that's a little bit generic. I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, you have a different opinion or you can weigh into it with your opinion. I don't know if you could correct me if I'm wrong because I don't know that I'm wrong, but I would certainly indulge or love to hear other thoughts on this, but I'm thinking on this and you play this out and see if this resonates with you. I'm thinking that part of the process of dealing with it so that we don't go into places of rage is that we learn to mourn better. M-O-U-R-N. We grieve. We mourn. And mourning involves a level of acceptance. And we feel weak when we mourn. We feel like, oh my gosh, we're exposing these deep feelings and they're frightful feelings and we want to run from them.

We don't particularly like them. We don't want to feel weak. But when we mourn, are we? Are we weak when we mourn?

I don't think so. I think that we, it is one of those kind of things that are counterintuitive but extremely important to us as human beings. And Jesus himself said this.

Matthew 5-4. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And ultimately I think what happens, and mental health experts and all can give better descriptions than I can, but this is just from somebody who's just walked through a lot of this crap himself. I think that what happens is that we are assaulted with so much brokenness in our journey as a caregiver. And we feel so overwhelmed by it that we lash out so hard about it.

Whether it's at ourselves or someone else. But we don't take time to grieve it out. It's kind of hard to grieve on a battlefield, isn't it? Any combat vet will tell you that.

You're going to have to put grief aside and deal with the battle at hand. And so think about it in terms of a combat vet. When you have an individual who's been dealing with this on the battlefield and they lost a loved one or somebody was wounded, something was hurt, but they had to just shelve that for a while. And then they go back into safety, whether it's at the base or even outside of the military. And you've heard about all this with this PTSD and these soldiers that are struggling so mightily with this 10, 15, 20, 30 years later. And you see some of these self-destructive things that happen along the way to these soldiers. Were they afforded the opportunity to properly mourn and grieve this out and process what had happened, come to a level of acceptance with it? What does it do to them emotionally and mentally?

And smarter people than me can weigh into that one. But for us as caregivers, for us as human beings, when we're constantly assaulted with injustice or crisis or belittling from a loved one or just drama, drama, drama, what does it do to us? And how do we deal with it? Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn. Are we mourning? Do we grieve over what has happened to our loved one and us through this? Are you?

Am I? Do we take time to do that? What does that look like? Who helps us with this? Where do we go?

What's the conversation look like? Do we just take a moment's pause and mourn over what we wish could have been or what is? And I think that for me as a caregiver, acceptance has been one of the toughest things for me to just accept what is and what's mine and what's not mine. What's my responsibility?

What's not my responsibility? And give myself time to mourn over the brokenness of what's going on. You know, and I go back to things in scripture that just don't make sense to me. And if it makes sense to you, feel free to call in.

888-589-8840. But you know, when Jesus got to Lazarus' tomb and he wept, he mourned. Was he mourning over Lazarus and mourning over the wailing of the people or just the whole broken system?

I don't know. Scripture doesn't unpack that to me in a way that makes sense to me. And I just have to accept certain realities.

And I've heard some good teaching on it, but that's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around. He's God. He's fully God, fully man. He's going to raise him from the dead. He said, I am the resurrection. He knows these things. And yet he wept over it. One pastor, a friend of mine, explained it to me that he shelved his divinity as a man so that he could experience the human condition and only moved as the Holy Spirit gave him direction sent from the Father. And I get that. On a headspace, I get that.

But it's still kind of hard to wrap your mind around it. But he mourned. He mourned. And he said, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Are you mourning? This is a heavy subject this morning, but this is where caregivers live. I'm hopeful we could just unpack this a little bit more with you and we'll take your calls. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. This is Hope for the Caregiver. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver.

That is my wife, Gracie. And Russ Taft. I just want to send out a big shout out to Russ. He had a fairly significant surgery this week. Correcting something in his back.

But Gracie and Russ together. The joy of the Lord is my strength. And that's how we do it as believers. We lean on His joy to give us strength. We lean on Him for our strength. Not on ourselves.

Not on trying to make ourselves feel powerful through our rage and so forth. And if you want to copy that record, go out to our website, Hopeforthecaregiver.com. You'll see Gracie's CD cover right there on the front. And there's a donate button right there.

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It's two programs. Prosthetic limb outreach and then this show for what we do. It's for the wounded and for those who care for them. And the prosthetic limb outreach is our work in Africa for 15 years. We've been working with the Republic of Ghana. We teach and equip local workers how to build legs for their own people, sponsor limbs and so forth. And I've got a young man right now that you can help sponsor. He's got an above knee leg. We've been working with him for, gosh, 13 or 14 years. Watched him grow up. And needs a new limb and you can help sponsor that.

His name is Kosi. And send us a note and we'll be glad to apply that to whatever. We can't get over there and treat him right now because of all the virus. So we work with the folks there to provide the limbs. We send over supplies and so forth. And then if the patient cannot afford a prosthesis, even with the low cost we're able to help do with all the stuff, then we'll go ahead and sponsor it. If you want to help do that, go ahead, Standing With Hope will do that. And you can go right out to our webpage, hopeforthecaregiver.com. You'll just see the Standing With Hope link. You'll see Gracie's CD.

You'll see all that kind of stuff. Please take advantage of it today. All right, let's go to, we're talking about rage. And what's the antidote to this? And the antidote is not feeling happy. The antidote is not being happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time.

I believe that the antidote to this is mourning, giving herself time to grieve. With George Floyd was killed. There's no two sides to this. There's nobody that's standing up and saying, hey, this is a good thing.

Nobody's doing that. We all as a nation agree that this is a horrific event. And we need time to mourn that as a nation. And so many people were out there trying to get us to bow the knee, but we missed the opportunity to bow our heads in united sorrow. And we have to give ourselves time to mourn, to grieve. A friend of mine, she's watching the show right now, just lost her mother.

And she had been taking care of her for a very, very long time. And it was, it was, there was so much drama involved. And I talked to my friend just last week and I just said, you know, she said, I didn't even feel like going out with other people.

They asked us to go out. I just, I just couldn't do it. I said, there's no need to. You just give yourself space. Let yourself mourn this out. Grieve it out. Take the time to breathe. That's how we avoid this thing going into dark places.