Where is your anger ?

[Sheppane]

Hi everyone
Don't know if this is the correct place to post this but I want to know if anyone can relate.
In my journey Out of the FOG I am getting more in touch with my feelings , having come from a very enmeshed FOO , and taking time to be able to separate what are truly my feelings versus systems/ family feelings. As one who was always highly attuned to others I stuffed my feelings,  or if they were there discounted and invalidated them. I absorbed and carried the feelings of others,  felt over responsible and am only now coming to recognise my feelings, hand others feelings back to them , and set boundaries. It is so important for me to validate my feelings in order to feel I have the " right" to feel what I feel.
My usual operating system of feelings was guilt, obligation,  fear, shame,  and fear of shame. I also feel pain and sadness. But I am surprised and curious that I cannot identify anger ANYWHERE !! Despite having reason to. I'm expecting it to appear,  and it never does. I'm wondering how I will release it. I always feel tired , I have muscle ache so I know I feel my feelings physically. I was never allowed to be angry , and I have silenced myself a lot in life.  I did wonder had my anger been hiding in my guilt, but as guilt feelings lesson as I come Out of the FOG , it still is nowhere. I feel I really need to see it / find it. I'm guessing it is quite stuck. Appreciate any insights!!

[Associate of Daniel]

Hi, Sheppane.

Good on you for working through all of this.

I'm not an expert, and everyone experiences and deals with things differently. So take or leave the following.

I wonder if

1:  a counsellor /psychologist might be able to ask the right questions or make the right statements to trigger your anger.

2:  doing something physical like hitting a punching bag or chopping wood or smashing plates might do the same.

But I also wonder if you simply don't need to feel anger. 

I tend to process a lot of things subconsciously and am often surprised when I realise that I have actually dealt with something without knowing that I have.

There's also the fact that what angers some people just doesn't anger others.

Just my 2 cents.

Keep going.

AOD

[Sheppane]

Thank you AOD ...it hadn't struck me that maybe I don't need to feel it ! That's v interesting and I will think more on that. I can get caught trying to recognise whether I have dealt with something already in a healthy way, or whether it is repressed. So yes, maybe I don't need to feel angry. Or is that me just running from my feelings?  I have a lot of confusion around this. As I have always attended to others,  sought approval , and codependently tried to get the unconditional love , I can see how I have left myself open to mistreatment from others. And harming them and the relation ship by letting things pass and not putting boundaries in. So this is why I have a vague feeling that my anger may be lurking somewhere,  maybe disguised in some other emotional state or some other version of acting out. Or maybe I just hold it all physically. I have constant physical pain and exhaustion.

But yes as you say , perhaps it is no where .

As I write this I'm thinking I am very aware of resentments...which may be the end destination of past anger. Maybe anger is more a " current / real time/ in the moment " emotion ? If so, going forward I may feel it, recognise it and use it as my guide to set boundaries ? What I mean is maybe my past angers are stored as resentments, and my future resentments I may meet earlier as anger,  hopefully recognize it, and take care of me / set the boundary?

Short version : let go of the past resentments, be open to feeling anger going forward?

[Andeza]

I had all of my anger in the moment, years ago. Lots and lots of bottled up rage. But it all sorta fizzled out over time. I don't get all.... hulk smash about it anymore, not even when I've remembered something and it feels new again. I get annoyed, sure. And the resentment is for real.

Maybe you have buried anger, and maybe you don't. Something you'll find as you continue to process is that sometimes new emotions pop up seemingly out of nowhere as your subconscious revisits things and all the bottles of the past get uncorked. It's possible. But, don't feel like you're doing something wrong if the anger never manifests. There really isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this one.

I would say, let go of past resentments, forgive, but do not forget. Hold onto the lessons of the past so that, going forward, no one is allowed to abuse you. And if they try, be open to anger.

[Amadahy]

Hi Sheppane,

I started to say that I felt the same, but reaized that isn't true.

I have not felt direct anger toward my Nmom -- I've felt all the other things you list, also, but not anger.  However, anger has bubbled out to my DH, a safe person in my life.  I recognize this, always after the fact, as misplaced anger.  Can you pinpoint areas of your life where this might be true for you?  Even if it's anger directed back at yourself (which I also do with self-sabotage, binge eating, etc).  I think, on some level, I am still afraid to be angry with my Nmom.  I'm working on trying to tell the truth about my feelings, but it is hard when lying has been a survival skill.

Best wishes,  You have support and care here.

[treesgrowslowly]

It probably also depends on your current day to day experiences. If you are not having a lot of experiences where people challenge your boundaries maybe your anger isn't being triggered much by current circumstances?

Just a thought. Could be way off.

A lot of us feel our anger at a perceived injustice. But we're complex beings. Other emotions are felt too when we see something we believe is unfair.

There is some theory about anger that a lot of people wont express anger unless they feel safe to do so.

We codependents can get really really good at making sure our friends don't get angry with us. And one of the ways I did that was to never express angry at people even when they acted really insensitive. I still find myself doing this to keep the peace sometimes. Especially with people I don't know very well. Do you work to keep the peace?

Thanks for posting about this.

Trees

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Thanks for bringing this up, Sheppane.  I had a counselor once say to me, rather incredulous, "Where is your anger?!?"  It was a lot of years later when it started coming up.  Like you said, Trees, when I finally felt a little safer.

I was in a therapy group where the T had us each do anger work, whether we felt any anger or not.  She wanted us to bring the energy level up (from stuff like shame, depression, insecurity, etc.)  I know they don't advocate this for people who have anger mgmt issues or a history of violence.  But she had us use a bataka and yell out each time.  Putting a lot of force behind our voices was important. 

If we had no anger we could just say "I'm angry!!!" over and over.  Then maybe something like "I'm angry that I have this stupid codependence!!!"   Until finally you really connected with whatever anger was still unresolved.

For me it really worked to finally get in touch with and express that old anger about how I had been treated. (Kinda like "Yeah, I didn't deserve that, and that was your problem and not mine that you were like that")   

She would always have us end with empowering statements while hitting the bataka like "I'm never going to let anyone treat me like that again!!!"  She'd have us keep at it until we felt the energy move up and out.  And man did I feel clear and good afterwards!  I sometimes do it at home alone, maybe with a rolled up dishtowel on a doorjamb.   It may not be for everyone, but it did facilitate movement for me.  I should probably do more of it.

[Duck]

I am similar. My PD father was the only person in the house allowed to have emotions, especially sadness, anger, frustration. For many years, I didn't just have no anger, I had no emotion.

My best advice is to leave a space inside for anger. It doesn't have to be inhabited anytime soon or ever. No pressure. Just let there be a space in case it ever wants to visit.

I agree with those who say it may not come until you are sufficiently safe. I've read many accounts on this board where people didn't feel all their anger until they went no contact with their parents. You'd think the opposite would happen, that you would feel calmer with them out of your hair, but for some people, it's like they couldn't put their defenses down and feel their anger until they were safe.

If you do feel anger, it will be good to process it with a therapist and/or support system, especially if it starts pouring out.

All of my anger from growing up turned into major depression. It very well may be the cause of your physical pain.

One surprising thing for me when I felt anger was an impulse to put it back where it came from because it didn't feel good and I wasn't used to it and I was still tempted to judge myself for feeling it. Folks here helped me understand it is an honorable emotion that protects you from harm.

I worry a lot about how healthy or unhealthy my responses are. My therapist has shown me that I can accept myself no matter what. If you had to bury your anger, that was probably the coping mechanism any normal person would use in your shoes to deal with your situation. You did what you had to do to survive. You are not abnormal. On the contrary. You've been through a lot.

[Duck]

One additional thought - something that helps me is thinking about myself the same way I think about a friend. I get mad if someone mistreats my sister, really mad. What if I saw myself from the outside? What if I was my sister? What if I was a human being like my sister and valuable like her? How would I feel?

[Happypants]

The first thing I thought of when reading your post was that anger can show you where your boundaries are being breached. I wondered whether it was possible that you associate feeling anger with deep seated memories of trying to have boundaries and the consequences of doing so within your FOO?

In my family, anger was met with mocking, mobbing and humiliation, and subsequently into my teens and beyond i became a brilliant diplomat - i talked myself out of anger by justifying the other persons side of things to an extreme, to this day I can find reason behind others behaviour and give away my right to experience anger (until it shouts loud enough). But it still rears it's head a lot and it's only recently I've listened to it rather than punishing myself, especially looking back at previous experiences and realised others behaviour definitely wasn't justified. Is it possible you had greater self awareness further back in the process of coming Out of the FOG, your subconscious maybe didn't need to shout as loud and manifest as anger?

[Sheppane]

Wow, so many amazing responses here,  thank you everyone for your support 

Love the idea of going forward,  being open to anger but leaving the resentments behind.  I had also never thought of the self directed anger LOL - and I have a LOT of it , self sabotage,  binge eating + self shaming, inner critic..so maybe that's where I've turned some of it. I'm still fearful of others anger as I always controlled it going up , kept the peace so to speak,  or people pleased to make sure others anger never manifested. I really like thi idea too of bringing the energy up - I guess anger is a very energizing emotion , whereas I hangout more in shame , depression, lower energies . It is a very true point that at some level maybe I have protected myself by not feeling my anger until I feel safe enough too. Yes it may be all of my physical pain which by now is so familiar I can't imagine not having it. It will be interesting to see as I come further Out of the FOG whether the liberation of or expression of anger might lessen the physical pain . It's not even just that I don't express anger , I don't feel it in the first place. I shut it down instantly,  I might maybe concede I'm annoyed,  but it's almost like I wouldn't know what to do next if I felt angry , even over something minor.
Lots of food for thought

[DetachedAndEngaged]

There's lot of debate in the realm of psychology about anger. One theory that I tend to agree with is that it is a secondary emotion. Meaning, what we call "anger" is an extreme expression of a primary emotion that is underlying it like fear, sadness, grief, shame, etc. Do a web search for "anger secondary emotion" and you'll see a ton of links.

I'm like you in that I seldom get angry. Having grown up with a uNPD father with serious anger management problems has given me a high degree of distress tolerance, for better or worse. I think it has influenced how well in touch with my interior state I am. That was a self-preservation mechanism I developed as a kid to avoid exacerbating my father's anger. I developed Medium-Chill without knowing it was a thing. My wife noticed it soon after we started dating. She calls it my Teflon Face.

So, my question for you is when you shut down the anger are you shutting down the underlying emotion?

I definitely find some of my emotions are transmuted into physical symptoms. The other day I received some bad news and found myself thinking "This is really sad. But I don't feel sad." And then I started feeling nauseous, hot and dizzy. I went outside to get some cool air and walk around and the physical sensations subsided; I felt a bit sad, but my sadness was muted... it didn't really match the gravity of the situation.

Perhaps you can relate.

[treesgrowslowly]

I agree with detachedandengaged that it might be worth reading about anger as a secondary emotion.

Each emotion tells us something about who we are. As the child of parents who didn't care who I was, I was taught early on that my emotions don't matter to these people.

Becoming aware of our own emotions is a personal process. Because this process is actually meant to happen during the first 18 years of life during childhood, we have to give ourselves a lot of time to do this exploring.

For a lot of us, having our own emotions ignored was so common that once we get older we examine it like you are doing.

Trees

[Hepatica]

I think that my first expression of anger toward my uNPD father this August saved my life.

I am pretty much like a mouse around my family. The yelling begins and I go into my "teflon face" as DetatchedAndEngaged says, which I think is apt. Inside I am like a mouse that runs into the hole in the wall, but I am still sitting there, showing no emotion. Because I learned that if I expressed emotion, they'd turn on me like a fire hose.

How many times I sat in my parent's house on their grimy couch, amidst the dust and the hoarding and kept my smile pasted on my face as I listened for the thousandth time about my mother's problems and received the pouting side swipe of judgement from my father for not spending more time with them.

I could not get angry though. I would walk out of the house feeling like I nearly drowned and tears would be in my eyes and dismay and a sense of powerlessness. And this big feeling of rejection. I was doing the best that I could but they wanted more and my father felt in the right to punish me. But I could not feel angry.

Then in August my father gave me a "gift" so to speak. Instead of pouting and spreading rumours about me, he directly said to me the thing he had said to me before, insinuating that I am crazy. "Go see your shrink, Hepatica," I had said absolutely nothing. I had been sitting there listening to him rant and out of the blow he shoots me with the narcissist's favourite bullet, self-doubt.

It was the first time I allowed my rage to surface and I stood up and told him to leave. This was pure anger, but it wasn't messy. I didn't call names or yell or threaten. He didn't leave of course. So I left and went inside my house and left him there with my Dh.

That anger has saved me. I finally got the will and clarity to go no contact with them because of it. There was no confusion. Calling me crazy one more time was the last straw for me to release it.

I am grateful for it. Because I was dying inside maintaining this hell relationship with them, where they used me again and again and I sat there smiling. Anger is a powerful emotion that means our boundaries are being crossed. I think it gets a bad rep bc it can be scary, but it doesn't need to be. It can be a tool for escaping the mire of this crap that we go through, if we can allow ourselves to feel it.

But growing up in the families we grew up in, we were not taught to use anger for good. They were allowed to use it for bad against us and perhaps we are afraid of it, when we shouldn't be, because it's often a sign that we need to protect ourselves.

[Coyote23]

So this sounds pretty simplistic, but I often realize I'm angry when I "wake up" in front of the fridge and discover I've been mindlessly stuffing my face.

[DetachedAndEngaged]

But growing up in the families we grew up in, we were not taught to use anger for good. They were allowed to use it for bad against us and perhaps we are afraid of it, when we shouldn't be, because it's often a sign that we need to protect ourselves.

This.