Anyone Struggle with Anger?

[ajvander86]

Honestly, I am SO angry.  There is so much anger in me it's unbelievable.  I mean honestly, and I say this having done all kinds of emotional processing work, grieving work, inner child work.....you name it.  Forgiveness.  But it's still there. 

It feels like a never ending well of anger and rage.  Now, I can control myself and you'd never know it if you met me.  But I find everything that has happened to me in my life, everything I struggle with as a result of it, and everything around me to be infuriating. 

People infuriate me, noises infuriate me, chaos infuriates me, God infuriates me.  Stupidity lol. 

I'm working on it of course as far as releasing it properly goes, but does anyone find they struggle with anger because of cptsd?

[Rainagain]

Hey,
Anger is a big thing for me.

I keep it under control if I can, walk away from hassle, maintain a calm demeanour, don't engage, try to monitor my level of control over myself.

I'm afraid of losing control and harming someone who doesn't realise I feel pretty violent much of the time, or can become so without warning if provoked.

Explosive anger is part of PTSD/cptsd I think, have read that somewhere.

'You'd never know if you met me' - that is true of me too.

Had an incident where a chap was trying to provoke me, the people who knew me were saying how gentle and peaceful I was while I had already snapped and had the aggressive fool by the chin and was whisking him out of public view for a 'discussion'....... Everyone was very surprised as it was so sudden, the guy who had been trying to provoke me all night went into shock, he went from bully to pinned on the ground before he knew what had happened.

He thought my earlier lack of response to his actions was weakness, in reality I was trying not to respond and hoping he would leave me alone.

Luckily I just restrained him and managed not to harm him, could have gone anywhere though, I was barely aware of what I was doing.

It nearly happened again more recently

I wonder if my isolation is partly to avoid hurting someone, I don't feel safe to be in company, where I live is a bit macho and I don't handle threat well at all.

[Dee]

I struggle as well.  I try deep breathing and doing something that can help me vent it.  I have destroyed stress balls, had to get stress putty. 

Anger is ok, healthy, and normal.  It is about learning to sit with it.  Not to say I never lose it, I do.  Still, I know that it is a normal emotion and even a good one as long as I can express it in a healthy way.

[MyPrison1965]

I am angry for being born.

[Blueberry]

ajvander,
I have struggles with anger and rage which I wrote about here http://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=8502.0 I don't feel like going back into the topic atm. Maybe there's some useful or validating stuff for you on there too though.

This is another recent anger thread, though not mine: http://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=8801.0

[Contessa]

I used to feel rage. I still feel anger, but am in the process of learning to control it better. Still stumbling about, but am gaining a hold on it.

I am also asserting my needs better, which does annoy others sometimes. But being assertive will reduce stresses that lead to anger. So the others can just deal with it.

There used to be a time where the word 'anger' was too extreme in my vocabulary. Hopefully I will get back there.

[ajvander86]

@rainagain

You sound like me.  I isolate and just want people to leave me alone.  Dealing with people in general is a real hassle and strain for me in general, but when someone decides they want to mess with me for whatever reason, they quickly find out that wasn't the best idea. 

For me I think cptsd gave me something that....I don't know how to explain it.....but it almost feels like something one might get from military training.  The look that people get in their eyes when they realize not just that they made a mistake by trying to cause problems with a person that they apparently assumed would take their *, but realize they are now dealing with something they've never quite come across before in normal circumstances is always somewhat enjoyable to me.  It's as if they are witnessing some wild beast that has emerged from the depths of the congo that no one has seen before and they have no idea what's about to happen next. 

And you know, my fear of anything is completely stripped from me.  I don't have any fear of death, and I regret being born into the world I was and I have nothing to lose. 

Sometimes I wonder if I isolate to stay away from people as well. 

I think that there are certainly ways of coping with such things, but you know, cptsd is a certain degree of permanent damage that we now have to deal with and cope with.  And for me I have lost my entire family as well as my ability to interact normally in the world which has been a huge hindrance for me.  So I don't think there will ever come a time when everything is perfectly fine.  I don't think there will ever come a time where some of this stuff that I've been through will cross my mind and I won't be somewhat perturbed by it. 

And for God's sakes, cptsd is barely even in the DSM so for those people who have told us to just 'move on', how are we supposed to do that when most of the mental health field doesn't even know what's wrong with us, let alone how to heal from it?

[ajvander86]

@myprison1965

I'm right there with you.  There's not a day that goes by where that thought doesn't cross my mind.

[ajvander86]

@Blueberry

Thank you for sharing that post with me.  I definitely can see how anger serves to cover up pain and the feeling of being a helpless child and the shame that comes up with it.  It's almost like something triggers you and makes you angry, but then you start having an EF which brings up feelings of shame and helplessness and you get angry that that happened, then you get even angrier thinking about the people who abused you in the first place.  That's sort of how it happens with me anyway, and it happens in a split second when I get triggered.  Writing things out for me has been a method that has really helped me to slow my thinking and feelings down and really be able to process them. 

[ajvander86]

@Contessa

I am working on the whole assertiveness thing myself.  Honestly I didn't even know what being assertive was for the longest time.  For me it was either passive passive passive until I had to become aggressive, and even passive aggressiveness would pop in from time to time.  I mean I can confront people and tell them what I think but it's always fueled by anger underneath.  Learning to be assertive in a healthy way is definitely something I'm working on for recovering from cptsd as well as my low self esteem.

[LearnToLoveTheRide]

Good day

For a long period of time I was constantly enraged. I had the presence of mind to direct it towards the pursuit of Justice rather than just blindly lashing out (once or twice admittedly).

I became a regular at police station bringing in street criminals.

I recently spoke with a trauma counsellor. Part of the issue is purely physiological - we are constantly in a state of fear and our PNS is always-on.

I was familiar with this but she had another angle that was new to me. As we're exposed to the experiences that develop our c-PTSD, we develop resentments: why me; not my fault... These resentments become unconscious and influence our Primary Motor Complex lower cortical responces. This in turn keeps the PNS red lining.

Serenity. LTLTR

[ah]

I recently spoke with a trauma counsellor. Part of the issue is purely physiological - we are constantly in a state of fear and our PNS is always-on.

I was familiar with this but she had another angle that was new to me. As we're exposed to the experiences that develop our c-PTSD, we develop resentments: why me; not my fault... These resentments become unconscious and influence our Primary Motor Complex lower cortical responces. This in turn keeps the PNS red lining.

Just my two cents:

I definitely get very angry sometimes. I used to really get mad at myself whenever I got enraged, and it didn't really help, what a surprise... heh 
For many years it just fed my self hatred with no way out, it was like a very tiring feedback loop. My only way to exhaust my anger was to let it bubble on until I was too tired to keep going. It's been improving lately thanks to books I've been reading about trauma. It helps me see that what I call "I'm suddenly extremely angry at just about anything" is actually a strong, sudden EF. It means I just got powerfully triggered by something, and I'm afraid.
Paradoxically, letting myself see that when I'm so upset I'm actually losing control helps me regain it, little by little.

I think part of the reason I struggle with anger is that emotional abuse can be so extremely harmful. My anger was used against me when I was a kid, taunted till I snapped, then abused for snapping. I was so young, I always ended up losing control if it went on long enough so I always ended up believing my anger was my enemy. As a result, I guess, I now believe it is.
But originally, our anger was our friend. It's there to protect us. It takes care of us when we're in danger, and in a normal upbringing we'd probably be helped and taught to manage it and feel it safely.

As for the new angle the trauma counselor added:
LearnToLoveTheRide,
I'm sorry but I don't like what she said to you one bit. I think she may be quite wrong about that part.
I'm not a counselor but it doesn't correspond to what I've been reading and what I notice in myself.

In my experience, it's a little different. I think it's actually the opposite.
I think: It's me because I deserve it. It's my fault because I'm always at fault.
When I'm in an EF, the stronger the EF the stronger these voices.

Which is in itself a dangerous place to be, because it doesn't allow me to recognize abuse or to protect myself from abusive people.

I don't think cptsd is caused by resentments, traumas aren't resentments. 
You have every right to feel traumatized, it doesn't mean you interpreted what happened to you incorrectly. It does mean life can be dangerous, and we unfortunately met some very serious dangers in ours.

I think the resulting cptsd is very much a physiological ache. I notice that when I manage to help my parasympathetic nervous system "kick in" (and calm my body down a bit) with mindfulness meditation, it has an immediate influence on my thoughts and emotions too. The line between physiological cptsd and psychological cptsd, to me, is non-existent. I can't tell them apart.

Also, the way I see it, I think we have every reason and right to feel angry at times.
It doesn't mean we have resentments, that sounds really shaming to me and I don't think we deserve that label at all. No good will come from more shaming. We can learn to manage our anger without feeling ashamed about our own emotions.

I think strong anger just means we're very human, and really hurting.

[LearnToLoveTheRide]

Hi ah

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I think what she meant is that we develop resentments during our trauma, hold onto them and them release them inappropriately.

They don't feel like typical conscious resentments, I have to say. When I experience these episodes they're more dissociative than anything else.

C-PTSD is definitely both physiological and psychological. I too don't know where the line is. Depending on what professional you speak to they will each put more importance on one than the other, according to their training and their desired outcome for you. I do know that I experience both, they influence each other and that I have to work both.

Quiet, meditation or critical analysis will help me feel better, just as a quick run will.

Thank you for sharing your personal insights. It helps!

[PeTe]

I have trouble with anger, too. For me it's mostly a feeling that I repress or turn towards myself, and that just makes my life so much less enjoyable. The anger stems from being treated unfairly with no way out of the situation. My whole life in a way feels like a fight. When I showed anger, it was always turned against me, so I feel a great deal of shame about my anger, as well as I feel it's uncontrollable if I release it. What I'm trying to do is to have adequate responses to being treated unfairly, escalating slowly verbally or through actions, but even making a small stand for myself brings about a lot of shame. I see it a bit like diplomacy, where war is the last resort on the diplomatic scale.