I think for traumatized people rules can feel like cages. The essence of true traumatic energy is being trapped. Neurologically, what happens when you trigger the fight or flight or shame/submission response and none are possible–when you can’t run, fight, or grovel–some part of your self collapses; some boundary fails; some flood is released which drowns some part of you.
For me personally, I struggle continually between my rational, rule making self, and some childish part of me which resists and sabotages my efforts. I think anyone who is ineffective at anything has something of this in them. I think it is very common.
Socialization is a tricky thing, and I think we still have not worked out the optimal way to do it. You can’t let three year olds run wild, or you get 33 year olds running wild in the streets. Look at your news: those kids were probably not spanked, and were probably not told no very often. This is what happens.
But conversely, if you beat the shit out of kids, they spend their lives shaking in the corner, emotionally. There is a middle way, the details of which would be a highly useful and fascinating topic of research for honest (they are manifestly not all honest; it is confusing to me why all therapists are not conservatives, since they all understand–or should understand–the value of personal agency and moral autonomy) psychologists to study.
But if the whole world feels like NO, then it is not unhealthy to scream FUCK YES!!! And this happens even if the no is reasonable ,and intrapsychically, even if it is in response to some rational, frontal cortex idea and plan.
My work continues. As I’ve said before, I think my particular life task is to understand the nature of evil–how it arises, what it is, and most importantly how it is healed, and prevented in the first place. Perhaps, as Lao Tzu implicitly taught, history began with the emergence of evil. In this time, when so much has happened, so much learned, and so many possibilities are present, it is past time we completed that loop consciously, and returned to our beginnings, but this time with awareness and control.