Repressed Anger

[apex_70]

It has been a year and three months since I posted on the forum for the first time. I have gone through so many different symptoms but the one that is really bothering me lately is a feeling of intense repressed anger.

Before this happened I don't remember ever feeling any abnormal anger. But, now at times I feel consumed by it. I am not the type to express it, I don't have a temper, I don't yell. It is just this constant feeling of anger and rage that simmers below the surface.

It started off as anger towards my perpetrator and now I am also feeling anger towards my parents and another person who abused me in the past. I never show it, but it sits in my chest and won't go away.

Does this feeling ever go away? How do you deal with it? Why does it surface and not resolve?

 

[Sterre]

Does this feeling ever go away? How do you deal with it? Why does it surface and not resolve?

Hi apex,
I am no therapist of any kind, but maybe it wont resolve because you keep on repressing the anger?
Maybe, if you feel safe enough, you could experiment with releasing the anger a little bit by yelling in a pillow or some physical excercise ( again by slamming on a pillow)?

 

[MistyLu]

Apex-

I went and am still going, through something similar. i was molested by my step father and my mother knew and stood by him for 20 years. Just recently I have found this intense anger towards her. I hate her for letting this happen to me. I have been in therapy, and the only thing that somewhat relieved some of this anger was telling her what her lack of actions caused me. Our relationship is very superficial now, just pleasantries, but I don't think that I could fully heal if i didnt tell her. Another thing that sometimes helps people with this sort of thing is to write a letter to the person that is causing this feeling in you. You dont have to send it, but just writing it can relieve some of the feeling.

Just a thought, I hope these are helpful!

 

[Abrasky]

I have got the same thing. I was at one point never angy, people commented on it. Now I've got all this anger and it's unbelievable, like a volcano and comes in waves. It's because I've been finally dealing with the trauma that happened to me. It's part of the grief cycle of healing I think.
I was told by my psycologist it would go away. I hope it goes away soon. I've had it for a year. It's getting better, it's not as bad as it used to be. You might be dealing with powerful feelings, and this powerful feeling has powerful grief attached. Float throught it, it will pass I think, and will help me get better.

 

[Marie E.]

For me I take it as when I have so much pent up anger that comes out, that my body remembers and as well thinks that is it safe to come out as since I'm not in danger anymore that I can deal with it. So, I try to get the most support I can. I take to punching pillows as well and listening to music that expresses how I'm not guilty for others wrong doings against me and now I am better. (The abusers usually cannot face themselves.)

 

[apex_70]

Thank you all for your insight!

For a long time I was in a coma like state, in a daze and in a way, I guess, protected from the traumas that I had experienced. But, when the last trauma happened all my walls came crashing down and now I am faced constantly
with what has happened to me throughout my life. Part of the anger is towards the people who stand by my perpetrator and part of it is towards myself for being so naive and trusting and basically unaware and stupid.

I would like to let it all out but I just can't. I don't know how to get angry. I will keep going through it and hope that with time it gradually subsides.

 

[livergirl70]

I have found after having therapy where I have picked my past apart that I am full of anger. I don't express it and I too let it simmer and then will explode at someone who has done something to niggle me - like nick my parking space - I end up going off on one and then after feel terrible for how I've reacted

 

[purple butterfly]

I don't feel any anger, my T says it is because the only models for anger I have had in my life are totally out of control. I will say things like "I should be angry about...". I keep waiting to feel something but I haven't been able to get beyond numb, anxious, fearful or scared.

People that have known me for a long time say I am the calmest person they have ever met and praise me for my tolerance. I now know I am a master of emotional numbness I have learnt to put up with anything that life throws my way.

Has anyone had experience with tapping into their anger and other emotions? I feel like I don't know how to live with the rainbow of emotions that life presents.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

I also don't feel anger... Well, I will qualify that. I DO experience anger, but it is always at small, everyday things. I cannot feel anything remotely close to anger about the BIG things.

The very idea terrifies the hell out of me. Like you, purple butterfly, my role models were out of control. My mother stuffs hers, and represses it.

And my father exploded, which he has mostly learned to stop doing now (I think because of my daughter, and also because when he did this the last couple of times with me, this was during the time my partner and I had split up, I gave myself a head injury the last time, so I think my mother told him he had to stop doing it and he agreed because I have epilepsy) but instead he either has to withdraw and handle it on his own or he lashes out.

But most of my life he was a violent, unpredictable, explosive rage-a-holic, and between my mother's messages that anger is unacceptable, and what he did to us with his, I think I am just too afraid to experience any anger, and how would I handle it if I did? I have no coping skills.

When I was younger, I stuffed it till I exploded. Needless to say, that didn't work very well.

I told my therapist about this and she said we could do it in a way that the amount was in manageable doses.

But I still am nowhere near that, and the very idea of walking around angry like my father was, scares me senseless. Or feeling anything that overwhelming.