Sitting on An Angry Chair

How I realized my life is an Alice in Chains song.

Welp, I’m 47 at the time of this writing and just now realizing that I’m firmly planted in a metaphorical Angry Chair — burning, in fact, in my own personal version of it. While the Alice in Chains song (click to listen) probably speaks to religious and childhood trauma related to Layne Staley’s brutal battle with heroin (which ultimately took his life in 2002) — it also describes my life from the perspective of my inner self.¹ The song is something adjacent, yet deeply personal — like it was custom-written for my story.

I used to play this song in my band as a teenager. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times over the years. Never really thought about what it meant. I just liked it. But this morning, on a walk — during this season of sabbatical, where I’m finally facing the weight of childhood pain and asking myself “who I want to be when I grow up” — the lyrics suddenly came alive. And they basically describe my inner world.

Sitting on an angry chair. Angry walls that steal the air. Stomach hurts and I don't care. What do I see across the way? Hey. See myself molded in clay, oh. Stares at me, yeah, I'm afraid, hey. Changing the shape of his face, oh, yeah.

This angry chair — it’s where I live.
I’m angry. About a lot of things. But it’s the kind of anger that simmers just below the surface, the kind you don’t even realize is there until something wakes it up. For some of us, surviving psychologically meant toughening up — as kids, as young adults, really all throughout life. That armor helped us endure, but it came at a cost. The emotions we shoved down didn’t vanish; they just waited. And eventually, they come back — not always as memories, but as anger, depression, body aches, fatigue, autoimmune issues and more. Still, we push on. March forward. Numb. Distracted. Unaware. Always sitting in the angry chair.

Generated by ChatGPT

But then something shifts.
I see something — that is, I become aware of something.

A figure. Familiar but distorted.
Is it me?
No… it only looks like me.

It’s a golem — in Jewish Folklore, a golem was an artificial being formed from clay and brought to life through mystical means to protect its creator, often in times of danger. Though powerful, it lacked a soul, emotional depth, or self-awareness—and over time, it could become unstable or harmful, requiring deactivation. This mirrors the psychological "false self" created in response to trauma: a protective persona designed to endure pain but disconnected from the vulnerable true self. Like the golem, this construct helps us survive but often leads to emotional numbness, identity confusion, and eventual breakdown.²

And so my subconscious created this twisted version of myself. A “thing” — to survive trauma — to be strong when I couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. But somewhere along the way, the golem took over. It began living my life: making friends, building a career, being in relationships. All while the real me — little Dain — stayed behind. Stuck. Silent. Sitting in that angry chair. Hurt. Disappointed. Hopes dashed. Betrayed. Abandoned. And furious.
Angry as hell.

This isn’t just poetic metaphor — psychology backs it up. When we’re traumatized, especially as children, a part of our subconscious can get frozen at the age when the pain occurred. To cope, we create a “false self” — a golem — to face the world. He’s charming. Adaptable. A people-pleaser. A chameleon who can read the room and become whatever is safest.³ But he’s not whole. He’s reactive. He lives to protect that wounded child, even if it means sabotaging us with behaviors that don’t serve us anymore.

And the real tragedy is that most of us have no idea we’re doing this.

For most of my life, I didn’t. I couldn’t have told you about the golem, or the false self, or the abandoned child. But now I see it. And suddenly, so much makes sense — the coping patterns, the emotional outbursts, the poor choices, the self-sabotage. I lived boxed in by pain I didn’t know I still carried, sitting in a prison of my own design. An angry box. With an angry chair. And I sat there, unknowingly ruled by the very thing I once created to save myself.

Candles red, I have a pair. Shadows dancing everywhere. Burning on the angry chair. Little boy made a mistake, hey. Pink cloud has now turned to gray, oh. All that I want is to play, hey. Get on your knees, time to pray, oh.

To me, this verse captures the rising intensity of my buried anger, sadness, and hurt — all of it just beneath the surface.
I’m angry because I was once innocent. I was just a little boy. Like my precious little grandson. Joyful. Free. Expressive. Happy. Protected. Loved.
Back then, life felt like a pink cloud — soft, bright, full of possibility.
But then something happened. Probably not just one thing.

Somethings that changed everything. I’m sure there are many things I can’t even remember. But little Dain remembers.

The little boy didn’t understand. He thought it was his fault — that he had made a mistake. That’s what children do in the face of trauma or abuse: they don’t know how to make sense of what’s happening, so they turn inward. They assume the blame, because believing they did something wrong is easier than facing the terrifying truth that the world isn’t safe and the people meant to protect them didn’t.

And so, from that point on, a grey cloud hung over his life.
The pink cloud vanished.
The world got serious. And so did he.
No more playtime.

But I didn’t want playtime to end. I didn’t want to grow up so fast.
But traumatized children don’t get to decide.
We grow up too soon, long before we’re ready.

And as we age, we eventually begin to understand that it wasn’t our fault. And that realization can bring a new wave of rage — not just at what happened, but at how we were left to carry it alone. Angry that no one stepped in. That no one shouldered the burden or protected us when we were too small to handle it. We had to survive on our own. And so, we did what we had to do.

But we paid for it.

Now, looking back on a lifetime, I can see it clearly:
I never really had a chance.
Pain was always waiting.
And when it finally arrived, I had to build a golem just to endure it.
A false self. A protector.
But one born from sorrow, not strength.

This is truly the experience of many. I’ve learned it’s pretty common. And that’s incredibly sad.

“I don’t mind.”
As in: Let’s just shove all this pain down where no one can see it.
We’ve got the golem now. He’s got this.
No need for help. No need to feel. No need to remember.
Just pretend it never happened.
“I don’t mind.”

And so we go on — living in a kind of false hope, clinging to the illusion that we can survive with a fractured subconscious and not have it catch up to us. But it does.
Oh, it does.

I—I—I…
The machine stutters. The record skips.
Little Dain is cracked and glitching, barely holding together.
You can see it if you look closely — the way he malfunctions around the edges.
I’ve lost my mind. And I know it.

But still, the golem? He’s a master of disguise.
He makes sure everyone thinks Dain is fine. Thriving, even.
Good enough to perform. To crush it at work.
To build a family.
To wear the titles — husband, father, professional — like armor.

And look at this life the golem has built.
It’s impressive, right?
Everything looks amazing.

I—I—I…

Corporate prison, we stay, hey. I'm a dull boy, work all day, oh. So I'm strung out anyway, hey.

And so the golem builds a great life — at least on paper.
A thirty-year career in IT, marked by success, respect, and financial security.
He fathers five beautiful daughters.
But somehow, the career always seems to come first.
Maybe that’s because the golem was never built to love —
He was built to survive.

His mission was simple: protect little Dain at all costs.
But little Dain knows love.
He longs for it.
He aches to connect with these incredible girls — his own daughters —
But the golem only allows glimpses.
A few precious, fleeting moments where the real Dain shines through.

But then it’s back to business.
Back to performance.
Back to the mask.

Dain becomes dull. Numb. Bored.
Because the golem has made life into a machine —
A machine powered by productivity, achievement, and control.

And so little Dain cries in the shadows,
starving for love,
aching for affection,
longing to just be.

But the golem doesn’t know how to give love.
He only knows how to pacify pain.
So he reaches for whatever works.
Whatever it takes to keep little Dain from feeling too much.
Whatever keeps the ache at bay.

The golem ensures we’re always “strung out” on something.
Because that’s what survival looks like to him.

I think it’s interesting where the guitar solo is placed.
It sounds like all those years — from my early twenties to now — just stretching on…
long, sad, numbing years of living behind the mask.

Loneliness is not a phase. Field of pain is where I graze. Serenity is far away.

And over time, it gets lonely.
There’s only so much the golem can do to cover it up — to pacify the ache.
Eventually, you start feeling alone in your own life.
Not just occasionally… but constantly.
Chronically.

You begin to notice the pain again, even if it’s still just under the surface.
Those old go-to solutions — the distractions, the escapes, the indulgences that used to numb you — they don’t work anymore.
Peace slips through your fingers.
Joy feels unreachable. Distant. Foreign.

I will say this, though: knowing Christ does anchor a deep, unshakable joy somewhere at the bottom of all this.
And I can’t imagine surviving this long without that foundation.
I’d hate to be someone in my shoes without Christ.

But let’s be real: simply knowing Christ doesn’t make all our pain vanish.
And I wish more people would admit that.

Too many pretend that Jesus is the magic fix for everything.
But trauma doesn’t dissolve just because you pray.⁴
Wounds don’t heal just because you know theology.
And pretending otherwise only adds shame to those already suffering.

Saw my reflection and cried, hey. So little hope that I died, oh. Feed me your lies, open wide, hey. Weight of my heart, not the size, oh.

I’ve been there.
After years of trying to fill the void — chasing every external thing imaginable to soothe the ache — you reach a point where you start to wonder who you’ve become.
You look in the mirror and think, “What happened to me?”
You’re not happy with what you see.
And it’s not just the physical reflection — it’s the emotional exhaustion, the mental weight, the choices you’ve made… and the regrets that won’t let go.

I’ve prayed for God to just take me.
There was a time when I wanted to die.
I didn’t see a way forward.

But thank God I kept going.
And honestly, I believe that without Christ, I might not be here.
I don’t know for sure. But He’s been the thread holding me together when everything else unraveled.

Still, what do you do when you reach that point?

Yes, I have regrets. A lot of them.
But I also know I have a big heart.
I’m not evil. I’m not beyond redemption.
It’s just that I’ve been carrying the weight of grief and pain since childhood.
And to survive, I created the golem.

But the golem made choices I wouldn’t have.
He believed lies I wish I hadn’t.
And those choices — they led to more pain.

Sometimes I look back and feel like I wasn’t even in agreement with myself.
Like Paul says in Romans 7:
“What I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.”

So now what?
Go back to denial?
I can’t — it doesn’t work anymore.
Praying it away didn’t fix it either. Prayer helps me endure, yes, but it hasn’t erased the pain.

I’ve tried so many things — therapy, distraction, discipline, escape — all of it.
And still, here I am.
What am I supposed to do?
Stumble through life like a broken toy, painfully aware of the damage but powerless to fix it?

The old coping mechanisms are losing their grip.
They don’t numb like they used to.
And my options… they’re running out.

Pink cloud has now turned to gray. All that I want is to play. Get on your knees, time to pray, boy…

And the song ends here — with the boy fixated on what he’s lost.
That pink cloud of innocence he still remembers but knows he’ll never get back.
I think it’s pretty clearly a metaphor for sin and the loss of Eden.
And I believe every human being “remembers” Eden in their heart.
What I mean is: deep down, all people yearn for wholeness — for the peace of that original harmony, and ultimately, for union with their Creator.

The loss of our “pink cloud,” and the weight of life under this grey one, should drive us back home — back to God through Christ. And to solutions.
But often, it doesn’t.

Instead, our golem keeps working.
Still trying to protect the vulnerable self.
Still distracting us from the ache.
Still convincing us to chase after anything and everything “under the sun” — as Ecclesiastes puts it — just to avoid the yearning.

As I’ve said before, I don’t believe Christianity always offers a quick fix for human suffering — not in this life. In fact, it often brings more suffering. And I believe Christ warned us about that - even demonstrated to us how we might suffer well.
But it does offer something even more profound: an existential hope, and a joy that transcends our present pain.
A promise.
Christ promises to come for us — to lead us out of the angry chair, out of the angry room, out beyond the dark clouds…
And into a new, more vivid and beautiful reality than anything we’ve ever known.

That’s the new creation.
And it will come, when Christ returns.

But what about now?

Am I doomed to just keep plodding along in a broken state?

I don’t think so.
I believe there are tools — psychological, emotional, spiritual — that can help us heal even now.
Some of those tools have already helped me gain the insight I’m sharing here.
They’ve helped me name things.
See things.
Feel things.

And I know I still have a lot of work ahead of me.
But for the first time in a long time…

I feel hopeful.

Generated by ChatGPT: Still sitting in the angry chair — but hopeful.

1. The term “inner adult” and “inner child” are used in some therapist circles to describe aspects of our subconscious when dealing with and healing psychological trauma. It is interesting that Layne wrote this song all by himself whereas most of the band’s music was written by Jerry Cantrell, one of the guitar players. It is pretty obvious how this song reflected Layne’s childhood trauma, addiction and what seems to me like religious abuse. I don’t know what it was, but Alice in Chain’s music always did something to me and I had always been specifically interested and amazed by Layne’s singing. When I played and sang this song as a teenager, I had no idea that it would become so significant to me as an adult.

2. The Lord of the Rings parallels should be obvious. For a good visual depiction of a Jewish golem see — “Watch The Golem | Prime Video.” Accessed July 27, 2025. https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Hani-Furstenberg/dp/B07MJPDZ6G. Moshe Idel, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990); Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1974). Donald W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development (London: Karnac Books, 1965/1986)

3. People have different expressions. Not all become people pleasers for example. These are just some of my golem attributes.

4. I recognize that some people claim that it does. And if this is you - praise God. However, I do not think this is the norm.