Such a good place to channel that anger.
Without help and direction, those who have been abused often become abusers-very unintentional. For me, part of the healing process has been helping others. It begins with noticing the injustices. Sometimes its easier to help others than our own family members.
A couple of years ago, my niece age 40 confided in me that while a teen, and her parents in a nasty divorce, she was sexually abused by her friends father where she spent much of her time. She went to therapy briefly. I encouraged her to share this, among other things such as partner abuse beginning as a teen. She discontinued therapy before long.
While its my opinion that she abuses alcohol and drugs, I have seen it go from recreational to a real problem over the past 2 years. She has had a long history of chosing abusive men. I have also seen her very verbally abusive many times, a few toward me. I tend to view my gift of empathy as my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. Often I have just let her blow off steam. A couple of months ago, we went to get carry out dinner at our local pub. She was not drunk but had a couple. She started a fight with a woman who, most likely accidently bumped her. She "wanted to take it outside". I got her out of there..
Last night a few of us went to the same pub. It was a last minute plan for pm and I agreed to go for a couple of hours because I had to be up early for a construction project. She demanded that the group leave and go to her house to drink, and that way no driving, we can spend night. Im not interested in getting inebriated and feeling sick. When I declined due to other committments, she became verbal and then threatened to hit me in the face. Then she came at me and another friend stopped her.
I have a real dicotomy here. At this point, I want nothing to do with her. My mother was a raging alcoholic. Sisters fought with each other and with mother, physically while teens. I was less than 5. My therapist says that this is root of ptsd. There is a lot of anger in my family, misdirected mostly, and raging at times. I avoid most family due to this. At one point, my raging sister needed to live with me for a couple of months and it set me back a year. She screamed at dogs, MF'ed everything, nothing was ever good enough, etc.
I am completely anti violence. There is no excuse for violence in my opinion. Yet they are around me. In my nieces case, I feel guilty because I want to desert her. Yet I am fragile in some ways while strong in others. My attempts to help have usually cost me. When we reach down to help pull someone else up, we risk being pulled down as well. This has happened to me in the past.
The past couple of months, I have felt very overwhelmed with medical and financial primarily. Having so much pain that it also distracts in my abilities. While I have not raged, I have been irritable with incompetent people, such as clerks, or automated phone calls, computer malfunctions, etc. I become frustrated and just cant think straight.
I know that my niece has so much anger tied to the abuse that she experienced. She was only about 15 when sexually abused by friends dad. Went into relationship with abusive boyfriend 3 years older. She gets really angry when talking about all of this, and is mad at dad for having affair which caused parents divorce and moms inability to be there for her. Anger about every other abusive guy since, but continues to hop from one crappy guy to another and escalating substance use, to the point that it has caused problems in my immediate family. (picking her up drunk, her staying at my house and keeping me up all night, etc). I dont want to be a victim anymore.
I recently read a sign that said "Are you depressed, do you suffer low self esteem, or are you just surrounded by assholes" Often we could not protect ourselves then, but we can now. And if we can protect ourselves and allow people in our life that enhances it, then we can heal. If we can do that, we can speak out for others. We cant save everybody.
