I'd been processing something that happens regularly on several of my current and former Reddit haunts when the thought occurred to one of my newer -- and more reasonable -- Internal Family Systems Model "parts." (Which may have been the same part as the one that come up with Reciprocal Reactivity, Ego Protection & the Cycle of Addiction: The Interpersonal Pandemic of the New Century? a year and a half ago; IDK4S.
Rage IS a Stage we have to go through in the course of recovery from abuse. Be that abuse from an authoritarian, control-addicted, malignantly narcissistic, self-obsessed / other-ignoring parent, spouse, boss, pastor or guru. Staying in rage indefinitely, however, prolongs the recovery process unnecessarily and can make the upshots of the earlier trauma much worse. “Too much of a good thing may not be,” and all that.
But such reasonableness as the last two sentences above are difficult or impossible to make sense of when one is still stuck on the second rung of Kubler-Ross's ladder. And often at the first of Prochaska & DiClemente's Five Stages of Psychotherapeutic Recovery, even though one believes oneself to be at the fourth because they think they are doing something about their dilemma, their anxiety, their depression, their addiction, their childhood, their codependency, their obsessiveness, their "wasted years" in a bad marriage, ratty church or other abusive cult by merely raging. (Which, I'm forced to say, is a good deal of the time on supposed "recovery" or "support" forums on Reddit and elsewhere.)
Understanding that, I've suggested such as Would you try to reason with an IV Drug User whose mind is Controlled by the Drug? Is the Religion Addict any different from a junkie or a crackhead? and Do we actually need to say anything to set a boundary? to hundreds of people stuck in codependent reciprocal reactivity with parents, partners, co-workers, bosses, addicts, gurus, pastors and other cult members.
And I have -- for decades -- asked, "Where is this person on the The Five Stages of Addiction Recovery?" as well as "Is there any reason to think they're going any further on the basis of anything I have to say?"
NOW, however, that IFSM part is beginning to tell the rest of the riders on my (mental) bus to stop and do the best they can in the half-blind world of Internet social media -- where one cannot see, hear or otherwise sense another's facial expressions, body language or "non-verbal cues" -- to try to figure out where that person is on both of those five-stage progressions.
Because those at the first four of Kubler-Ross's and the first three of Prochaska's & DiClemente's five stages are NOT reliably ready for anything like "Being with what is in relationship" or any other form of looking to see, listening to hear, and feeling to sense what IS vs. what is not. And one has to continue to allow them to suffer until they reach what AA founder Bill Wilson called "willingness," what super-psychologist Otto Kernberg called "the depressive state," and I have called "healthy desperation" (since the mid-1980s).
Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity is an awful place to be. But to climb out of it, one has to observe > notice > recognize > acknowledge > accept > own > appreciate > understand where one is. And trying to -- or even just appearing to -- force them to do so is almost always counterproductive unless it occurs in a large group dynamic setting where others have already worked through that process.
Not being in such an immediate setting online, one is forced to step back and hope that those who remain stuck in those earlier stages of the recovery process will hurt enough -- and for long enough -- without collapsing into total loss of their compensations to make it to the fifth and fourth stages of those two progressions respectively.
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