CSA survivors’ complicated relationship to anger

[Teasel]

Anybody got a good name for my "raging bitch" that's showing up?

I think I might fancy giving it a name that humanises it, makes it less fearful.

Daphne?

 

[ninja]

It took a while but I finally learned that anger = more humiliation and powerlessness during abuse = total shut down, and by saying I can’t get angry, I was actually saying, I can’t get angry without shutting down. And I wanted to avoid that.

But then, just as you say, it is complicated by the fact that I seem to have no issue being angry at myself. It was safer. More predictable. Getting this internalized anger to externalize has been a long process, and I think most helped by noticing when I’m angry at myself and reframing it as anger at the situation. Not at the people who harmed me, not at myself, but the situation. For whatever reasons, that feels safer and more feasible than anger at the people who caused the harm. I suspect that this is a stage and at some point will be able to be angry at them. If I need to be? I’m not sure.

 

[Ecdysis]

reframing it as anger at the situation. Not at the people who harmed me, not at myself, but the situation

That actually resonates with me really deeply... As a deep kind of wisdom...

I realise, on your personal healing journey it may be important and valuable to eventually get angry AT people.

But from a deep wisdom and spiritual point of view, getting angry at the situation seems hugely significant to me and something that all humans generally should strive towards...

Thank you for this insight!

 

[Rose White]

by noticing when I’m angry at myself and reframing it as anger at the situation.

Found this really helpful as well

 

[Ecdysis]

Well, I just got to try it out live and in action and omg it's sooo helpful for me!

My personal relationship to anger and rage is this: I felt tons and tons of anger and rage as a child, about the abuse, I knew it was unfair and definitely not okay. I come from a family where the expression of anger is taboo tho, except for it seeping out in things like irritability, sarcasm, etc. So I'd always repress all this bubbling, seething rage and would outwardly be calm and polite, except for the seeping/ leaking at the edges.

It's gotten to the point where I feel that suppressed rage any time my boundaries are violated now, or when a situation goes utterly against my needs... (Didn't realise this, but worked it out with the forum's AI.) So that any stressful situation that sends me into overwhelm will have me feeling suppressed rage at whoever is involved in the situation (doesn't even have to be causal). Because I KNOW it's mostly not these peoples' fault, I repress my rage even harder and feel awful for feeling rage in a situation where it's not technically warranted.

So... I just had a situation lasting about half an hour, that I have multiple times a week that I find really triggering and stressful and in which I usually dissociate. Nobody's "fault" it's just a shitty situation for me that's basically unavoidable...

And I went into it thinking "I hate this SITUATION... I hate what it does to everyone involved... To me and to others... I hate that it makes everyone stressed and rude and pushy..."

That felt like I was being compassionate to both myself and the other people for "reacting poorly" to the stressor, whereas before I'd have been really angry and judgemental that they were being shitty "on top of" the already stressful situation...

Anyway, for me it's a really big win...

The trick is going to be remembering to do this, like... uh, all the time... Everytime I'm stressed, distressed, triggered, overwhelmed, dissociated... Realising that the SITUATION is bad for me and that the other human beings involved are in an not-ideal situation too and therefore behaving in a not-ideal way...

 

[Friday]

My son was TERRIFIED of his own anger, for yeeeeeears. Feeling it made him feel evil/bad/wrong/all the things. The self hatred and self loathing and SI and broken heartedness …broke my own heart. No one, but no one, could get through to him… that his getting angry didn’t make him like his dad, nor did other people’s anger predict the same consequences. Until? He started playing football. It was the very first time in his life, no matter how many people tried to help him, that he learned to see anger as something… useful. Interesting. Varied. Individual. Safe, in most circumstance. Okay, sometimes even preferred. Not evil. It broke through the black & white extremes… for him.

When he stays away from seriously codified anger outlets? He becomes more and more black & white, again.

When he has outlets that USE anger, like football, in productive ways? He is sooooo much HAPPIER. Able to see/live in the spectrum of grey that is really, all emotion. As how we feel, and how we act? Is highly individual. Dictated by circumstance + personality + je ne sais quoi.

The vitriol, venom, hatred, self loathing, sneering disgust of others… he attaches to anger of any kind when he does not have those outlets? Or even AN outlet? <low whistle> It is a HUGE thing in his life. I can’t fix it for him. He has to CHOOSE outlets that allow him perspective, and joy.

My own anger issues, with adult/combat trauma? Only RECOGNISE someone else struggling. They don’t relate. They don’t have the clarity of shared experience. As we’re both adults? HE has to choose to gain perspective, or to burn/seethe/lash out. Seething comes more naturally to him. It’s what he reverts to when things are hard. No matter, or maybe because, they hurt him so deeply. The pain, venom, vitriol. He seeks out. Feeds. Rather than the balance, usefulness, joy, control.

He’s tough as hell, my kid. With the biggest heart you can imagine. So it parses that, in every subconscious moment he’d choose the thing that hurts HIM. Chooses to eat the pain. Rather to relieve it, by seeking outlets and balance. Even when outlets and balance? Not only make his life better, but everyone else around him.

 

[Ice_Fire]

Anger... it's a difficult emotion for me for the same reasons it is for many of you. I too was not allowed to express anger growing up. And I reason to be but it resulted in everything being worse. As did being too upset. So it all got buried. Buried so far down that I still haven't felt appropriately angry about everything. Sad, yes. Anger at it being unfair, certainly. But true rage? Nope. I get close to it and then I shut down. My therapist said a long time ago he would throw a party for me if he saw me get really angry about it all. It hasn't happened yet.

But I too struggle with inappropriate anger sometimes. It leaks out into situations that don't really warrant it. And then I swallow it down and internalise it because I know really that my reaction is bigger than the situation.

I don't know what the answer is.

 

[Rose White]

Appreciate you sharing your perspective @Ice_Fire .

I don't know what the answer is.

We don’t have to know. We can just make space for curiosity. On this journey with you.