The Discomfort Of Anger

[Bach]

I am very uncomfortable with anger. I know that I have a lot of things to be legitimately angry about and I need to let myself feel my anger and all that crap my therapist keeps going on about, but I find being angry to be exhausting and awful and I don't know how to express it appropriately or process it constructively or blah blah blah whatever I'm supposed to do or not do about it. I suppose I'm afraid that if I get too angry I will burn things down, figuratively, but possibly accidentally literally. I think there may have been an accidental fire incident with my mother in the kitchen when I was 4 or so.

But anyway. People talk about anger as a potentially positive motivating force, but to me it has never felt anything but destructive and scary. I  don't want to engage with it. My therapist seems to think it's very important to engage with it but she doesn't seem to know quite how to help me do it. That's very frustrating. I suppose that makes me angry. Oh, snap!

I'm not hostile to advice or guidance but  I'm not specifically looking for that, either. I would like very much if possible to hear about the thoughts, feelings and experiences of others regarding anger. If anyone has anything to say about this subject that I imagine presents challenges for all of us who suffer from trauma, please share.

[OceanStar]

I didn't know what anger was until relatively recently. I had to google it. I got a surprise, it wasnt all bad and aggressive like I had thought, it took a while for me to adjust my thinking but things began to make sense at least academically if you like.
I remember saying to my SO that I didn't get angry, he laughed and looked incredulously at me. I clearly did get angry but I had no idea I was angry. I now recognise the behaviours that accompany anger sometimes but not always the feelings. I can see anger in others. Acknowledging my anger is a different thing. I still dont really get it in terms of feeling it and recognising it in the moment or even how and why I'm angry. I think that's all for now. Hope some of that helps.

[Not Alone]

Bach, your post brought up a lot of thoughts for me. I will try and be concise. I am at times afraid of others' anger. I can feel angry at certain people and events/issues. I don't really feel angry about my abuse, although I do feel anger about others' abuses. Decades ago I was pushed to be angry at the abusers. I think they were trying to empower me, but truthfully, it felt coercive. For now, I'm letting myself feel what I feel.

[Hope67]

Hi Bach,
Your post also brought up many thoughts for me, as Anger is an emotion that I find hard to express and feel, but I am beginning to be able to express it and feel it, as time goes on.  I think it was repressed in my childhood, as my M didn't like me expressing it, and I think I had to repress many of my feelings.  I felt them physically instead - like with tension in my neck, my jaw and clenching my teeth.  I don't do this as an adult.  As an adult, I think there's been a part of me that's held my anger, and expressed it - by saying stuff, but which I don't actually express myself.  But I'm beginning to try to do so, and I realise there's probably quite a lot of anger that I've been holding inside, and it needs to come out and be expressed, but hopefully in a safe way.
Hope 

[Tee]

I'm not sure I've ever felt anger correctly.  As a young child before I was out in my place when I got angry enough I would scream back at my NM but that end at like 2 1/2 or 3. I learned quick.  As a young teen I would ball fist grit my teeth and when fully enraged a few tears would escape my eyes.  Now I can acknowledge I'm angry in my head, but I'm afraid to let any part of me feel any part of the anger for fear of the other emotions it may unleash.  Hugs.

[Bach]

I've spent a lot of my life thinking it's bad to be angry, because it wastes energy and makes people do stupid things.  Over the years, I developed a belief that understanding a situation would spare me from having to be angry and thus having to suffer the consequences of my anger, and I got very good at doing that.  That kept me sane enough for long enough to let me survive and come to understand enough of what happened to me to start to find some kind of healing, but it didn't solve the anger.  I'm now understanding that it didn't even suppress it particularly well.  The anger has always been in here, and has been oozing out all over my life.  It's like an infection.  It's why my bedroom is a hoarder's den, why I bite and pick my nails, why I eat too much and do too many drugs, why I spend all my time dissociating into the Internet or TV shows, why I don't do the lovely creative things my house is full of supplies for.  So, is the question not "What do I do about my anger" so much as it is "How can I nurture myself in the presence of this anger?"

[Violet Magenta]

I've only recently been able to acknowledge anger about my FOO at all. Gatekeepers of fear, shame and guilt kept anger locked out of my awareness. It's kind of a relief to quake and know I'm angry, when I can do it. If it feels out of control, it's too scary. I can do it at times of knowing that I can also hold forgiveness, compassion, love and resentment, and all the other complex feelings, and let them kind of flow over me -- that I can hold them all at once and it's fine. That's the ideal anyway. I'm still learning how to do it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Dissociation is a natural response to the impossible contradictions we were put under: to attach to our caregivers, but to also have to defend against them. Often it wasn't safe to let anger show, and then before long it goes underground, hidden even to myself. So, it's been difficult to bring it out, and often there had to be some kind of catalyst for it to happen.

[Not Alone]

"How can I nurture myself in the presence of this anger?"

I love this question.