Rage & shame

[Mathilde]

I have been so terribly angry with my family. And expressing it in all the wrong ways. So it is followed by deep shame.

My mum was and dad is well-intended. Sort of. But use a lot of controlling and manipulative tactics. That was always a trigger. But especially after incest and after the relationship with my sociopathic ex.

Dads behaviour would send me into severe flashbacks, suicidal feelings and even wards.

I have begged my dad to acknowledge his side of problem and seek help together. My son lives with him and it harms us all. He blames me for not healing my ptsd...but I worked so hard...and he refuses to do any of his side of the work.

He says his childhood was bliss (he was deeply traumatised). He has no problem (my mh team thinks he is autistic with narcissism-like learned behaviour). All the fights he had with my mum, me, his business partners was because we all were difficult and crazy. He did absolutely nothing wrong the last years (he was hurtful and supertriggering and refused to change anything). Everything I found scary "didn't happen and was in my head".

My faith asks of me to be calm and peaceful and forgiving.

But I'm so very angry. My family shoved the complete problem on me. And refused to see their own problem. Even incest was blamed on me.

I have been turned into a mess. And this hurt my family and kid.

So now I hate myself. And I'm deeply angry and unforgiving at my family for refusing to change. And I deeply ashamed about myself over that. How can God forgive me if I am so angry?

I just hate how everyone (ex, family, cps) refused to break the generational problems. And I hate how I fought to break them but failed to win against an abusive system. Because I was too stupid. I did it all wrong. And my son suffered for it.

I knew what was needed and nobody listened. Even I did not.

[Kizzie]

Hey Mathilde, as long as you are angry and full of rage for those who abused you and not yourself, you are on the right path to recovery IMO.  If you re-read your post I think it speaks volumes to the fact that you should be angry, a lot was dumped on you when those involved refused to take any responsibility for their actions. 

Now the sad, very hard to take part.  Most of our abusers never do change nor admit any responsibility or wrong doing.  Typically they are narcissists or broken in ways that don't make sense to those of us who do see things as they really are. It is one of the hardest things to do, accept that that is. We need to move from anger and rage to grief to acceptance that we were dealt a really bad hand I'm sorry to say.

I am not a person of faith so personally I believe we have every right to our anger and rage, that it is likely necessary to heal. I personally don't believe we need to forgive our abuser (but yes forgive ourselves for thinking we played a part in the abuse - we did not), but instead we need to recognize who was responsible for all our hurt and pain, anger and grieve about that, and then move on in our lives to something better, healthier.

Just my thoughts of course. 

[Mathilde]

Thanks...

I think both my anger at family and self are normal. I too made a mess.

Expressing my anger - however logical - was used against me indeed.
By shaming me, declaring me crazy, gossiping to family and friends, parental alienation,  blackmailing me to not fight back when they took away my child, use it with cps.

So it is logical I am pissed off. And also logical that I am frightened of my anger.

I really want to forgive. My faith asks forgiving attitude. But that too was used against me...to keep me in line.

I am really not sure. I think I should not suppress my anger and listen to what it says. But not express it to family or cps. It is of no use and will be played against me.

I thought about it. And do not know whether God asks to forgive if there is zero repentance. There are some vague apologies nowadays...because I said they were never sorry..but they do not really see what they did.

[Blueberry]

 A long time ago I got a few hours of counselling from a Catholic charity, altho it was open to anybody of any faith or non-faith. (I'm nominally Christian sort of sometimes...). I very shame-facedly said I couldn't forgive my abusers tho I'd been told to 'forgive and forget' (by my abusers and various enablers). The counsellor said that forgiveness is not something that you can force and that at sometime or other a sense of forgiveness would probably grow without me doing anything about it.

In my fairly limited experience within the Catholic church and maybe more mainstream Protestant churches as opposed to evangelical, there's pretty wide interpretation of the Bible and that would include forgiveness too. I don't want to kick off a religious discussion on your thread. Just saying that if you look I think you may find a version of your faith which may be more supportive of you and your history than you think.

One good place for expressing anger is our Recovery Letter board https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=43.0 I used to do a lot of angering over there. It's good to be able to write it TO our abusers and their enablers rather than just about them.

If you're at a stage of rage, imho forgiveness towards abusers/enablers is an awful lot to ask of yourself. Healing from cptsd takes time and there are different stages to go through which are probably all necessary and my experience has generally been that I can't short-cut them. Much as I'd like to.

I agree with Kizzie that most of our abusers don't change, admit responsibility or wrong-doing. In my FOO there actually was some admission, which lulled me into thinking there had been change, whereas actually the emotional abuse was as vile as ever but had been changing hands and kind of hidden from me. Till it wasn't anymore. My experience says to be wary of vague apologies. I always hope someone on these forums will have it better in this respect but it's rare, especially for any change to be long-lasting as far as I read, which admittedly is not every post and every journal.

[Mathilde]

Thanks.

I feel sorry for not changing better myself. I changed everything else. But keeping stuck in the nasty family patterns, cost me my health and my kid.

I don't think I can do forgiveness now. I'm too angry.

My dad kept saying little things about change or sorry. But he never really did. It indeed just got more camouflaged. I kept hoping. But they kept pushing me back in trauma responses. And I responded.

Their behaviour indeed got more camouflaged.