if we have the ball, they cannot score!” This described the essence of my approach, not only to basketball and other sports, but also to coping with all manner of uncomfortable emotions and situations. In terms of emotions and their expression, anger is the most potent embodiment of “the best defense is a good offense.”
In the vast majority of circumstances, anger is a secondary emotion, forming almost immediately and automatically in response to someone or something that brings up feelings of hurt, fear, shame, and inadequacy or of not being good-enough. These primary emotions made me feel weak and vulnerable—self-perceptions that were intolerable to me as a child. I used anger as a defense against them, a shield that deflected them and gave me power. Anger like this serves two important psychological purposes: it provides a sense of control when one is desperately needed, and it directs our focus outward, providing identifiable, external others, indeed, scapegoats, to blame.
Displacement is a defense mechanism that unconsciously transfers unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or desires from a psychologically unsafe object to a more acceptable, less threatening substitute. A classic example is the man who is angry at his boss and cannot express it directly so he comes home and kicks the family dog or yells at his wife and kids. When we cannot confront the real sources of our anger, hurt, fear, and pain because they hold power over us, we tend to take it out on someone who is weaker and effectively “safer.” Children engage in displacement when it is too anxiety-provoking to consciously acknowledge and express upset at parents and other caregivers they are dependent upon for their survival needs. Instead, they tease the cat, bully someone at school, or lash out at younger siblings.
Although there were many times when we had fun and played together, my brother and sisters were safe objects onto which my anger was regularly displaced. I treated them so badly. I could be mean to the point of cruelty. I’d call them names and put them down verbally. Occasionally I’d hit them, usually in the big muscles of the biceps and thighs, giving them “dead” arms and legs. While the physical abuse I perpetrated was sporadic, to them the implied threat of it was constant, and the emotional abuse ongoing. I’ve come to learn that when we were left alone at home they consistently felt unsafe, because of me. It wasn’t unusual for them to lock themselves behind closed doors, hoping I wouldn’t find a way to break in, though often I did.
My anger was generalized and free-floating, always searching for concrete targets to latch onto. Most of the time I wasn’t consciously aware of how angry I was, or even what it was that I was angry about. And during our formative years, my siblings bore the brunt of it as I terrorized them. A vicious circle ensued wherein my parents would get angry at my behavior and punish me, and I’d feel that much more rejected and angry, taking it out on my brother and sisters, which only elicited more anger from my parents. As absorbed as I was in acting out my anger, there was no space left for me to appreciate that my siblings were being traumatized.
I lied like a rug, though sometimes it was blended with degrees of denial and a child’s magical thinking that if I didn’t admit to it, the reality would just go away. I shaded the truth and told half-lies or lies of omission, and sometimes I was straight up dishonest. I lied to make myself look better. I lied to try to feel better about myself. At times I lied for reasons outside my conscious awareness. Most often I lied to evade the consequences of my behavior. I became so used to lying that I lied even when it would have been just as easy to tell the truth.
I lied so frequently that I lost credibility for telling the truth and became like the boy who cried wolf. My parents were so accustomed to me lying that they assumed I was, even when I was telling the truth. Of course, this only exacerbated my feelings of rejection and emotional abandonment, and provided another source for my anger. My younger brother (the family Hero) learned that he could do something wrong and lie about it, confident I would catch the blame and that our parents would believe him rather than me.
As practiced as I was, I never perfected the art of lying. I was basically a shitty liar, unable to separate my internal responses from my external presentation. Inside, I knew it was wrong and part of me felt guilty. This discomfort expressed itself through my body language, and those who knew me best usually could identify my prevarications.
Anger triggered my ardent oppositionalism and rebelliousness. Overt at home, it was more subtle and indirect at school. I was an inveterate wise-ass and unrepentant class-clown. In third grade my class-clowning incited the teacher to try to hit me (this was an era that allowed public school teachers to discipline students physically with relative impunity; one teacher who some of my friends had the misfortune of having was renowned for picking kids up by their hair). I ducked and she missed, striking her hand hard on my desk before sending me to the principal’s office where I was well acquainted with the office staff. Most of the office staff wondered how a student as polite and well-mannered as me could get in as much trouble as I seemed to. My parents only wanted to know what I had done to provoke the teacher, assuming that I had deserved her wrath. Fourth grade marked the first of many times when I got in trouble for using profanity in school.
My acting out brought me to Dr. Seymour Gruber, a child psychiatrist in Great Neck, NY (actually, it was my mother who brought me to the good doctor). By this time, my parents figured there was a real problem, and it was me. Appointments with Dr. Gruber got me out of school early and sessions were painless enough, spent making model ships and airplanes while talking about whatever. Still, it reinforced the feelings I had of being different and damaged. He diagnosed some sort of nonspecific chemical imbalance and put me on Dilantin, a medication typically used to manage epilepsy and other seizure disorders. Though not FDA-approved for it, there are indications that Dilantin can be helpful in stabilizing mood and managing anxiety, and it’s sometimes prescribed “off label” for those purposes.
Interestingly, Dilantin was used both as an anticonvulsant and as a chemical restraint to control patient behavior in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey’s acclaimed novel about a locked psychiatric facility and the interactions between the milieu and its unfortunate inhabitants. Of course, Kesey’s main character was a recalcitrant rebel rather than someone suffering from severe mental illness, but that didn’t keep him from being lobotomized.
Throughout elementary school my grades were mostly “A”s with a small smattering of “B”s. “B”s were cause for questions and concerns at home. In fifth grade, I got a “C” in math one marking period and based on my parents’ reactions, a casual observer might have thought there was a death in the family. My siblings routinely produced straight “A”s. They did their schoolwork with dedication and consistency, whereas my approach gravitated toward getting the best grades I could while doing as little actual work as possible.
Thank god for sports. Sports were my safe haven and my saving grace. It was the one area of life where I felt whole and good enough. The athletic arena—whether a baseball diamond, football field, basketball court, or lacrosse field—provided an environment where I had a coherent sense of self and a clear sense of self-worth. It didn’t matter whether it was a school yard pickup game or formal league play, I was given freedom from the feeling that I was a fuck-up. There was something transcendent in how sports integrated my body and mind. The hand-eye coordination required to track and catch a deep pass in football, to time and hit a baseball on the fat part of the bat, or to gauge the distance to the rim and execute the proper trajectory to make an outside shot in basketball had a present-centered life-affirming melody all its own. To me, these were majestic pursuits, and when I was immersed in them, the disease that followed me wherever I went for as long as I could remember melted away.
Although I was always drawn toward team sports, I busted my ass to hone my individual skills, practicing constantly, pushing myself to get better: shooting baskets on an outdoor court covered in snow and ice in the dead of winter; playing catch until it was too dark to see even the outline of the baseball or football against the evening sky; coming early to team practices and staying late. When I was nine, I remember committing to myself to continue playing after basketball practice until I had made 100 additional baskets.
