What did you do with your anger?

[IRedW77]

I just wanted to ask people how they've dealt with anger at their PD parents. I was telling my therapist about how I'm kind of academically angry with my mother for some really awful stuff she did that I don't remember all of. After I learned about it last week it was a full day before it dawned on me, oh, wait, I should probably be really angry about this.

Like if I heard a stranger tell the story of what happened to me I'd be furious on their behalf. I'd probably say that the mom in the story should be locked up—but it's my story so I don't really feel anything at all.

I just kind of severed my emotional connection with my mother when I was a teenager. I still have contact with her. I just don't really feel much of anything towards her anymore, good or bad. I just get mildly frustrated and/or tune her out when she does her BPD shenanigans.

So when asked I can say in a heartbeat that I'm angry and I resent her and the things she did to me, but I don't have any feelings to go along with the anger and resentment.

My therapist called it "frozen rage."  He says that if anything I internalize it and manifest it as depression.

He suggested writing along letter not to send. I've seen that suggested before, but it just feels...awkward I guess.

Anyway, I imagine other people will have some thoughts, or I hope you do anyway.

[Boat Babe]

Anger. Yes. Mmmmm....

I was a very angry young woman, for years. I was also terrified of it as I didn't want to be that person! Therapy helped me immensely in dealing with this. I see it as a sane response to an insane situation. I eventually channelled it into domestic violence campaigning where it found its place.

I think fear of our own anger holds us back as it is something we need to feel so that we can work on it. The idea that unexpressed anger turns inward and manifests as depression is an accepted one in therapy. 

Would journaling help? Writing it down in small, manageable chunks and getting it out of your system and on to the page.

I remember chatting to a friend about this at University. He had had a horrible childhood and he said to me "You're lucky, because you're angry". I still remember that from 30years ago.

Sending hugs.

[GettingOOTF]

As part of my "healing" I worked with a coach who said to write down how my perfect life would look. I'd never journaled before. It felt very awkward at first and did a long time I don't really know what to write and it sounded very impersonal. I stuck with it and it turned out to be one of the most helpful things I've ever done. It really forced me to sit with myself and figure out what I was feeling and how I wanted to feel.

I think those of us who grow up in these homes battle to see ourselves as full people. We see ourselves as an extension of our PD families and their needs and fears.

I go through stages where I get angry about certain things to do with my upbringing but the more I learn about anger the more I see that I'm not angry in the way I should be. I suppress a lot of it and even though I'm NC with my family and can describe the abuse I don't have many feelings associated with it. Most of my feelings are still around blaming myself and thinking I'm less than when though on paper I am very successful and live a pretty great life.

I think that in order to feel anger we have to feel safe and supported and deep down I probably don't yet.

[Hepatica]

Thanks for this question. It's very relevant for me currently. I was watching the new season of Grey's Anatomy recently and Joe (a doctor) is getting therapy for the trauma from her childhood and the therapist is encouraging her to feel and express her rightful anger - because she isn't in touch with it. She does get in touch with it and they throw things hard against a wall and say things out loud together. I found that very interesting. Because anger does get lodged somewhere and physical movement seems a very intuitive way to release it, and directing it, even later on, toward the person who hurt us, is so healthy. Even in a therapeutic context the way they did it in the show.

I was too afraid to do anything with my anger as I grew up with my FOO. But my uNPD mother had free reign to have hairy fits whenever she felt like it. I was also afraid of my disordered father. I don't feel any anger at my mother now and I just have a sick feeling toward my father. Not exactly anger. More revulsion.

I suspect that anger is supposed to run through us like a conduit. It's natural for it to come up and be expressed in a healthy way but because we grew up in disorder, we stuffed it to survive, and then it lodges deeply and stays there and gets express in disconnected, unhealthy ways. It gets dulled down into resentment or addiction. You hate this neighbour, or hate that politician, or drink one too many every night, or shop too much, or smoke ourselves to death, however it expresses. It is placed often on the wrong thing, because it should have been expressed many years before at the person who truly hurt us. We should have learned healthy anger, and said, No, Mom, don't scream at me. In a healthy family the parent would hear that in their child, stop, and say, sorry. I lost my temper and I'm sorry I scared you.

There was none of that in my FOO. All of my rightful anger turned inward. It has turned into lack of discipline for me. Lack of confidence and consistency. Lack of voice in a public setting. I am painfully nervous to speak my power and I have anxiety around people who have that kind of confidence when I do not. I have many ideas about, for example, the village I live in, but I don't go sit on committees about upcoming projects and then I get resentful about how projects could have gone better.

What am I trying to say? I think the anger scatters inward and gets expressed in a thousand self-defeating choices. It does for me anyway, rather than having been given the opportunity to put the anger where it was meant to go, straight to my mother and father, who scared the life out of me growing up and never once said sorry and never once taught me healthy expression of anger. In fact, anger was perceived by them as a threat and an act of disobedience. I had an authoritarian family and being small you were not allowed anger. They were though and it was as if all the anger they had stuffed from their childhood went onto me and my sister.

All that said, I am beginning to really look at this in my mindfulness meditation practice and the saying I keep on my wall now is "Healing depends on how many times you are will to begin, again and again and again," So rather than getting mad at myself for giving up on a project, I stop and pay attention to my inner dialogue. Am I shaming myself? If so, i say gently to myself to relax, and try again tomorrow. Yep. Being hard on myself is the anger from childhood that didn't get properly expressed, coming back to get me now. Ugh. But at least I am beginning to become aware of it. Self-compassion is something I am finding very very helpful to heal this. And this "don't worry, just begin again" mind set and practice.

Anger is often about healthy self-differentiation, self-protection and power (growing into healthy self-confidence.) Disordered parents want all the power. They tried to make us feel bad about it and I'm finally taking a different look at it, as something that we've been given for a reason, to be wielded with thoughtfulness and care.

[IRedW77]

Thank you for taking the time to make some comments. It's validating, and I needed that. I think self-esteem issues go along with PD parenting (or so say my books). My last thread didn't get any replies, and that little part of me felt rejected—even though I consciously knew better. But, I asked for people to tell me if they had any common experiences in that thread. Not getting replies there just tells me that what I posted there is more of a me thing—which is something I needed to know. And something that my therapist suggested. It's hard right now to know where I end and someone else's influence begins.

It's encouraging to hear others say that journaling or writing in general felt awkward at first. Maybe it's part of that tendency to keep all your secrets and not talk about yourself with anyone ever (makes parties awkward). I don't know. I'll try to push myself a bit more when I feel ready to start—not let myself just give up when it does feel awkward.

I'm only one week into this process, so it's a lot. The irony is that I always thought that I had a really healthy and more evolved view of anger. Anger is just a waste of energy and a sign of weakness. You're just not mature enough to control your feelings so you lash out instead of talking things out and settling your differences. Or so I thought.

I was always amazed at people who held grudges. I could never hold a grudge to save my life. If I get mad the anger just passes eventually. Ideally you get to vent and talk out what made you angry, but if not the anger still dissipates (or goes somewhere else?) regardless.

My dad is still mad at my mom from stuff she did 40 years ago. I always thought that was an awful character flaw. I still don't know if grudges are healthy, but whether or not it's healthy 40 years later the original anger certainly was. At least having a grudge against someone emotionally toxic is a more healthy defense than anything I've ever done.

I learned to deal with my BPD mother when I was an early teen. I learned that reflecting her anger back at her was a good defense. If she raged I'd just match her rage until she backed down. If she was casting blame on me for everything I learned to outsmart her and turn the blame back around on her. That worked with my mom, but it's an awful life skill to take into any relationship with anyone else ever.

I've always been really calm and even. But if someone else gets angry or snaps at me in a moment of frustration I reflect it right back at them instantly and automatically—plus a little bit more to get them to back down. I realize now that it's a defense mechanism. I'm not safe when someone else is angry so I defend myself.

So, my poor wife... I've been pushing her to be less angry since I've known her. Every argument we have she feels like I never end up apologizing. She also feels like she leaves every argument feeling like SHE needs to alter her behavior and that everything is HER fault—even if the argument started because I did something that got her upset. I guess I got TOO good at defending myself.

I feel like just in learning about my mother's BPD a huge monkey at least loosened its grip on my back. The first book I read about BPD had a chapter on anger. I was trying to learn, so I had an open mind (and wasn't too cool for a self help book). It presented anger as healthy and necessary and highlighted a lot of my notions and strategies as unhelpful.

It's been really easy to reframe my view of anger with my wife and kids. It's a process, but even in a week I've made changes and seen positive results. So I feel really positive and optimistic about the present and future—and especially about protecting my kids from the awful stuff I learned. But the past... I can already tell that's going to be very tough to crack.

Yes Hepatica!  (your comment rolled in while I was writing this). Anger is a gift. It's there to tell us something. We don't question physical pain. It's there to warn us to stop doing something or to do it a different way, or that we have something inside that we can't see that's sick and needs attention. Anger should be felt. And just like pain (for the most part) you should feel it and address the cause and not the pain itself. If you just bury physical pain it just keeps happening and the underlying injury just gets worse. But yeah, how do you feel pain from very old wounds? It's a problem because the injury that caused the pain happened so long ago. The past can't be changed—and with PD parents the people that caused it likely can't be either. So yeah...

[Hepatica]

IRedW77,

I relate to the snapping back, oh do I ever. It's hard for me to view anger as a place to seek healing and equality, because it was very much taught to me that anger meant power over or under someone. I have so much work to do around anger.

Regarding the past. I don't know if we directly deal with it with the parents, but we find the clues in it in the present. How did they teach us? Did they do a good job? How can we work with the fragments from the past to make our lives more healthy now?

It sounds like you are already making great progress. It is wonderful that there is so many great books and forums like this to finally educate ourselves. And I'm also grateful that therapists are getting this education as well.

[Fortuna]

If you can find a way to feel all the feels you might help yourself. Maybe the 'inner child workbook' would help. The exercises put you back specifically remembering your childhood, the good the bad and the ugly. It includes writing letters not only to your abuser, but also to your younger self.

Maybe journaling it first if writing a letter seems too weird? It is awkward, but it's a way to express the fear we had as kids, the sadness of our circumstances, and the unfairness of having a parent that didn't do right by us. It allows us to put the blame on bad parenting back on the parent instead of internalizing it as shame. If you dislike letter writing, is there another medium where you would feel comfortable? an art piece, or just hitting a pillow for each thing she did as you say them out loud. Ask you therapist to brainstorm a couple of different ways to go about this. Maybe you'll find something that feels more right to you.

[Maxtrem]

Hi, I don't really feel anger towards my BPDm either. There is an obvious contempt for everything this family has done and represents but no anger. According to my psychologist, it is very rare that a child who has had a parent with PDD and has had an awareness of all the harm done to him or her does not feel anger. He even told me that my case is fascinating, although I hate that term for my problems! According to my psychologist, it is a defense mechanism where everything is rationalized rather than experienced and feel in order to maintain a form of balance. It is even a trait of Asperger's. As a small warning, although I have a successful professional life, a wonderful wife and from an external point of view everything seems perfect, I have a lot of chronic physical pain. I have a phenomenal amount of muscle tension throughout my entire body that hurts a lot! Many of my defense mechanisms have saved my psychological health, but I have had physical repercussions as early as my mid-twenties.A specialist doctor even confirmed it to me recently, the problem comes from my muscular tensions and that I need to work on the complex post-traumatic shock, that medicine can do nothing on this level. She even told me that she has never seen so much tension, but it is the result of a life of repressed feelings, stress and hypervigilance!   

[IRedW77]

I guess, as I always have a tendency to do, I'm trying to get way ahead of myself and solve everything all at once.

I think that maybe focusing on the present is a good place to start. At the end of the day I only really care about processing the anger in so far as it affects me and those around me NOW.

Knowing that anger manifests as depression in and of itself is probably a big deal. Now when I'm depressed out of nowhere (which happens on the regular) I'll have a new place to look for why.

As far as journaling, just writing some of these posts has been more helpful and natural than anything. I've written a lot of posts that I haven't even finished enough to post.

In that process I discovered that I do have access to some anger when it comes to the self-delusional stuff she's done over the years. It's just the stuff that she's done that's comically stupid that gets me—like sinking thousands of dollars into a pyramid scheme. "They call it 'multilevel marketing' mom. What the hell is wrong with you that you don't see that's a pyramid scheme?!?!??!!!!" Oh, BPD. Yeah, I can get my hands right around that anger. That's a good start, right?

Right now I just need to get through the day to day without hidden things from the past bubbling up and getting in my way.

I also need to figure out how to feel about my mom. I'm not NC, and I don't think I plan to be. I figured out ways to navigate her years ago. It helps that I'm "the all-good-child" if you're familiar with that book, because I am the only person she actually listens to. I can break through most any of her arbitrary stances on reality. It's just a lot of work, and it's almost never worth it.

I haven't challenged her on anything deep—like getting her to acknowledge what she's done over the years. I also have been fighting with myself not to ask if she's actually had a BPD diagnosis anywhere over the years. I've gathered enough to confirm a solid diagnosis, (that my therapist supports within the bounds of his professional responsibility) whether or not she's had an official one herself. I'm absolutely itching to bring it all up with her, but all signs point to that being a fools errand.

I just need to reconcile within myself how I should feel about her. Understanding her BPD puts everything in a completely different context. Also learning things about her (that she did to me) makes me see her in a very different light. It's beyond what the person that I understood was capable of.

I can couch it in the fact that it was almost 40 years ago and she's older and radically less volatile now. She's also not under any of the same kind of strains she was then. But it's an awful thing that I don't know if I'll ever forgive. Maybe I need to write another thread about how you reconcile the mother with the monster. I'm generally good at dealing I with grey areas, but black and white AT THE SAME TIME is not the same thing as grey.

[blistering]

This is a more 'pragmatic' and perhaps short term approach. But I've found that for acute anger I need to physically exert myself to let it out. I can either go running (relatively fast so I really get a sweat going) or for example rip something apart - I usually have a small collection of old paper boxes, like amazon packages etc around and when I'm angry I go and rip a few into small pieces with my bare hands, it works great for me.

[Blueberry Pancakes]

I think recognizing people close to you behaved in ways that would reasonably trigger your anger is a great validation. Also realizing it is nothing we need to stuff away. I read that accepting what happened in the past and not trying to change it can ease these feelings. I think it is worth working through because I believe unexpressed anger eventually surfaces in unhealthy ways. I realized I had an explosive anger that would spike at small things. I knew my anger was not appropriate, but I had no clue where it was coming from and why so much was simmering beneath the surface. I also had an eating disorder in college that never made sense to me. It has only recently become abundantly clear. I think I read somewhere that unexpressed anger turned inward can lead to self-hatred and I believe that was my experience. Maybe it is just a good start to acknowledge it and not try to change it, then just keep working thorough it until you find something that feels peaceful. 

[Wolf]

Interesting topic. When I was a teen I had anger problems to the point that my whole body would shake uncontrollably when I got angry. I used to do hundreds of pushups and pullups every day to let out anger (at 18 I lifted weights so vigorously that I was unable to vertically extend my arms for four days without sharp pain, but during this period of time I still managed to do several hundred pushups per day lol). Now  I don't get angry much at all anymore as a 24 year old male and have good friendships. I am, however, hyper analytical and prone to overthinking stuff. i also like getting drunk a little too much, and so i only drink occasionally and never alone, to ensure I stay under control.