• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

I'm angry

Status
Not open for further replies.

open eyes

Confident
I'm just angry and it's eating me alive. My body is falling apart because of it.

Last April my ex sexually assaulted me. He choked me hard during sex when I did not consent to it, and I could barely speak or breathe. I him to stop choking me, and he stopped for a minute, but then did it again, even harder. The cherry on the cake was that I was late on my next period and found out that I'd gotten pregnant from that very incident. It was during my midterms week of college and so I spent what was already a brutal time in the semester miscarrying.

For a year I told myself that it was fine, it was just a miscommunication, I should've set a boundary beforehand, I was just being dramatic etc.. This finally stopped when I told two of my friends what'd happened and I realized that I'd experienced assault, not bad sex.

Ever since, I've been slowly crumbling. I just got diagnosed with Conversion Disorder, which is when psychological trauma symptoms get 'converted' into neurological symptoms. I fortunately have a milder case of it, but it is still causing me immense difficulty in my work and social life.

I'm enraged. I want to scream from the top of a building. I have so much pent up hatred that I suppressed for a year.

How the hell do I let go of all the anger?
 
The best way of know of -in the moment- IS to convert it. To put all the chemicals rushing through my bloodstream to use... to burn them off. Physical exercise is the best IME (and if you want to scream? But want more control? &/or not to cause a scene or inspire your neighbors to ring the police? Try singing. Singing uses both gross and fine motor, as well as breath control, and is an incrediably useful/effective tool to keep in your back pocket.)

That doesn’t mean that I won’t still be angry, nor that what happened is something I’ll suddenly stop being angry over / isn’t worth being angry at or about.

It just means that all the physiological OOMPH! that’s happening as a side effect of the emotion? The galaxies of neurotransmitters, hormones, adrenaline, etc. that are spinning around in my blood in response to my anger, fueling it even further, readying me to fight? Get regulated down to more normal levels by being put to use. Burning them off, like an emergency vent in a steam engine, rather than quenching/tempering... or exploding.

It’s just my body trying to help me, is all. Fight/Flight Anger/Fear are highly adaptive survival mechanisms. Uncontrolled expressions of either can get dangerous, but if I can direct them? Use them as they want to be used? I suffer far fewer after effects.
 
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I can see why you're in a bad place. You also lost part of yourself when you lost the baby and greiving. All of this emotion is coming out as anger because you have a hard time with emotions. That might be the " conversion disorder" they are talking about. It's just so ?. I would have had him arrested for sexual assault.
 
I’m like @Friday . My anger converts well into physical energy, and I can manage it quite well that way.

And it’s about managing it, rather than “Bleh, hate this feeling, must get rid of it entirely”, yeah? Because this anger is at least partly helpful.

Anger is telling you, “What he did actually isn’t okay, the consequences for me were too high, and I deserve better than that.” That’s 3 super powerful things for an emotion to tell you.

It’s not just an uncomfortable feeling, it’s your brain learning something, or communicating something about an experience you’ve had. Thanks brain, noted!

To me? Anger is also a bit of an achievement. Because of that “what I deserve” concept. There was a long time that I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that “I deserve better”. People treated me badly all my life, so it was my normal, not something I got angry about. So to me? I’d be high-fiving myself. Yes it’s uncomfortable, but in terms of processing this trauma, you’ve moved from the initial distress, to “hell no, that’s not okay”. Being able to be angry on your own behalf is a big deal.

And to keep that emotional process moving, and not get stuck there? Bring on the physical exertion. Work it out as physical energy.
 
I’m like @Friday . My anger converts well into physical energy, and I can manage it quite well that way.

And it’s about managing it, rather than “Bleh, hate this feeling, must get rid of it entirely”, yeah? Because this anger is at least partly helpful.

Anger is telling you, “What he did actually isn’t okay, the consequences for me were too high, and I deserve better than that.” That’s 3 super powerful things for an emotion to tell you.

It’s not just an uncomfortable feeling, it’s your brain learning something, or communicating something about an experience you’ve had. Thanks brain, noted!

To me? Anger is also a bit of an achievement. Because of that “what I deserve” concept. There was a long time that I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that “I deserve better”. People treated me badly all my life, so it was my normal, not something I got angry about. So to me? I’d be high-fiving myself. Yes it’s uncomfortable, but in terms of processing this trauma, you’ve moved from the initial distress, to “hell no, that’s not okay”. Being able to be angry on your own behalf is a big deal.

And to keep that emotional process moving, and not get stuck there? Bring on the physical exertion. Work it out as physical energy.
I love this. Thank you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top