Anger vs. Being deeply, emotionally hurt

[Dyess]

It's hard for me to tell the difference sometimes. Or are they the same thing?

[Rainydaze]

This is what I'm wondering! I had an angry reaction last night to something out of my control but there was a nagging feeling that there was much more to it than simply being put out about the trigger. I then had a bad night of poor sleep and woke up this morning feeling overwhelmingly hurt and sad, with lots of mental imagery of negative childhood things that happened.

When I think about it, anger and emotional pain must relate very closely. I think you can often feel pain about what happened to you, whilst also feeling angry at your abuser for causing that pain.

[arpy1]

like, in the simplest terms, if someone walks up to you and smacks you round the head, your two instinctive responses would be a) ouch! and b) You B.....d!!! and smacking them back.

placing that analogy in the context of a small person, if a big person who should be looking after you suddenly smacks you round the head (even in metaphorical terms) your instant reaction of 'Ouch! remains intact up to a point... but the other reaction, anger , is problematic.. how do you be angry at someone whom you depend on for care, when anger exacerbates their violence and reduces further the amount of care you are likely to receive?? how do you protect yourself, retaliate, when they are bigger than you? and when you know instinctively that it is unthinkable they should be doing this anyway??

no wonder we dissociate from anger and retaliation!!!

[tired]

Anger is directed at something.

If my mother hurts me, it causes me pain.   That pain sits in my chest until I get angry and throw it back at her.  It's her pain now.

[Dyess]

Wish it was  that easy to give pain back. I was just curious if the deep emotional hurt turns to anger as a self protection system. Either by making you lash out verbally at something or someone to hide the hurt, or is an impulse for making you feel like you should do something to retaliate. Seems like when I've been hurt that's how I escalate. Being emotionally hurt makes me withdraw, I get quiet and often escape to cry alone. But when anger kicks in I can say things, mean , hurtful things, which I later regret. So I guess in a way anger is good to let yourself vent, but how you vent should be given some thought, before hand. Words can hurt so much deeper when they are people you care about.

[I like vanilla]

For me anger is a 'pure' emotion. It might express as irked, frustrated, angry, furious, irate, etc. but it 'contains' only anger-related energy.

On the other hand, when I feel emotionally hurt there seems to be more of a mix of emotions. Often anger is included, but also often emotions like sadness, fear, betrayal, loneliness, etc.


I seem to have the opposite response to some here. I am more easily able to feel 'hurt' than 'angry'. I had a T who nagged at me about not feeling angry (then got upset when I finally got angry at her about it - oh, the irony). In my role in the family, I was not 'allowed' to be angry. I think too, my father's anger influenced me. He carried loads of anger around. I'm empathic and it was 'prickly' to be near him. Worse than that, he would into explosive temper-tantrum-type rages that, when I was a child, were quite terrifying. I was scared of both him and his anger. I think then I learned to fear anger in general. But, I still needed to respond to the abuses done to me and so felt hurt. To me, hurt is much less scary and was easier to hide (and so less likely to draw additional negative attention). Now, I am working with my T to feel my feelings as they come and to respond to them constructively. It is often scary and painful, but I am finding also empowering too.

[tired]

i like vanilla: interesting that my mom would say "I don't care if you get mad" (she liked to make people mad, and felt like that meant she was on the right track) but she would say "you have no right to be upset".  and i'm too proud to admit to being hurt.  so it's just rage which to me is confusing.  maybe because like you said it's just a pure emotion/energy... not "real" to me.

[coda]

Seems to me that if you've been subjected to sustained abuse, you have an ocean of anger inside. Anger at the perpetrators, anger at yourself for taking it (even if escape was once impossible or unimaginable), anger over what you never had, for all you lost, at the sheer unfairness of it. Once you experience the powerlessness, confusion and self-conscious behaviors that come with cptsd, shrugging off life's little injustices and everyday friction becomes ever harder.

And when people disappoint, as they inevitably do, the pain of it reawakens that resentment, and fuels it. Sometimes I feel I'm fighting the same old battle, over and over. I can literally feel an injury morph into anger as I process it. Maybe it's defensive, or maybe it's healthier than thinking I actually deserve bad or insensitive treatment. But I also know it's usually not helpful, and reminds me of the instant, indescribably viscous rages my parents flew into, when there was no chance for reason or appeal. I don't want to recreate that for myself or anyone else.

[tired]

I think I feel rage more than anger.  It's nothing rational or thought out just a horrible something that does me no good.

[Kizzie]

An "ocean of anger" - yup, that describes it perfectly. Anger seems to me to be a healthy reaction to the pain of knowing we do not matter to those who were/are supposed to love us. Waiting and waiting to be loved, validated, valued, and ..... nothing.  It just hurts at the very core of our being so it's not a stretch to see how that hurt develops from natural anger to something nearing rage if it's perpetuated and never acknowledged or validated. 

Pete Walker talks about grieving and angering for all that we endured and lost, acknowledging and processing the pain which, to carry the analogy of an ocean further, would be like draining the water down to pond-size anger I suppose. I think he calls it "defueling" until what's left is a healthy, clean, natural level of anger that all humans need to be safe (e.g., establishing a boundary when someone oversteps).

[tired]

I guess I am not having a healthy anger reaction. My therapist said this and I can see what he means.  My motivations seem to be 1. not admitting that i'm hurt because that means she wins and 2. holding on to rage because rage makes me feel good in a way.  i don't know why. it's a comforting thing, to feel it as rage.  the real life result is i end up in bed with a bag of chips.

[Dutch Uncle]

An "ocean of anger" - yup, that describes it perfectly. Anger seems to me to be a healthy reaction to the pain of knowing we do not matter to those who were/are supposed to love us. Waiting and waiting to be loved, validated, valued, and ..... nothing.  It just hurts at the very core of our being so it's not a stretch to see how that hurt develops from natural anger to something nearing rage if it's perpetuated and never acknowledged or validated. 

Pete Walker talks about grieving and angering for all that we endured and lost, acknowledging and processing the pain which, to carry the analogy of an ocean further, would be like draining the water down to pond-size anger I suppose. I think he calls it "defueling" until what's left is a healthy, clean, natural level of anger that all humans need to be safe (e.g., establishing a boundary when someone oversteps).

I like what you say here. Boy, does this feel true to me. Thanks for sharing this. 

[arpy1]

because rage makes me feel good in a way.

yes, i guess rage makes me feel good too, praps becos it feels like i have power, the power to stop what happened or to just protest it?  trouble with me is that i don't rage unless something really really tips me over the edge (like my brother trying bully me a year or two back) and then i get really dangerous (i totally wiped the floor with him verbally until he stomped off - and this was in his own house...). which stopped him in his tracks but didn't make me feel good about myself.

most of the time i default to 'collapse' so that i seem to do more fear and grief than anger and i get swamped with feelings of powerlessness. this is what i was taught was my only permitted response, i guess. i think i can't access 'normal' anger becos i am too afraid, it 'isn't allowed' for me. 

of course i can relate this to both my early years and the JP, especially the latter but knowing it doesn't help me to change it. my normal healthy responses were knocked out decades ago.  i am having to reinvent.

[Dutch Uncle]

Yesterday I read these articles on 'closure'. The writer makes a quite compelling point that what we really want is revenge. Quite thought provoking, so I thought I'd share. I think it has a bearing on "Anger vs. Being deeply, emotionally hurt".

Narcissist Abuse & Giving Up Our Need for Closure
Anybody Seen My Closure? (Part I)
Anybody Seen My Closure? (Part II)

[Dyess]

Geesh that made my head spin. I don't understand how you would ever get closure in a co dependent case. Revenge....depends on how you would define that. I think the word itself has a negative connotation to it. But if you were able to thrive and be a respected person by others and yourself .....I think that would be the best revenge. You could move somewhere and re-invent yourself, be the person you want to be an no one would know different. Make sense?