How to deal with your own inevidable feelings of anger

[arcticfox]

First of all, a huge thank you to this community. You all know how incredibly important it is to find this place  Thank you, and a huge warm hug to all of you . I'm sorry that we all have to be here, but I'm also so thankful that this place exists: you all have helped me to keep my sanity.

I  finally left my ex partner, who I am now 100% sure has BPD even though he is undiagnosed (he does have a diagnosis of ADHD + dissociation episodes due to childhood trauma). It has been an exhausting ride of about 5 months to end the relationship, starting with my own thoughts, then a separation about 3 months ago and now a final goodbye with me leaving him with a text message (not proud of that one but it is what it is) and me getting all my stuff, keys, important documents, money stuff etc sorted yesterday and quite bluntly just leaving him.

I have so many thoughts, but what I wanted to post about is my own anger. I understand my frustration, I undersrtand my understanding, I understand my disappointment, I understand my fear and hurt, I understand a wide variety of feelings in myself.

But what I'm getting now, after a long process of gradually leaving, being in therapy by myself, seemingly coming to terms with coming Out of the FOG and all that, are these very intense bursts of "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT" (pardon my french). These are all in my mind, and I have not acted them out to him in months, because I understood the futility and chose to mainly gray rock. I've also never acted them straight out to anyone else either, or even spoke that much about them, save for my therapist.

I keep remembering random situations, big or small, where I was being treated clearly unfairly and having these very intense moments of absolute pure anger towards him. Cruel things he said to me when I was at my most vulnerable or dependent on his help, situations where I was tired and sad and shattered and asking or relying on him to just be a shoulder to lean on for a few minutes.

And my mind just flashes with all the promises and plans he didn't keep, all the times and all the ways he let me down, all the ways he hurt me. And simultaniously all the ways I was always there for him, all the times I put up with ridiculous crap to help him, the unfairness of it all.

I mean at the lowest point I was absolutely and very clearly falling apart and crying in huge sobs curled up in fetal position on the kitchen floor. And he looked at me and called me a pathetic clown. And blamed me for trying to manipulate him with my fake tears.

And I still ended up comforting him that night, because he kind of snapped out of it and started to feel so bad about himself because he had been acting in such a horrible way that I had to comfort him for hours because he felt he was absolutely worthless and a horrrible human being.

I feel like I would need to shout out in to the world some direct dragon-style anger about how my feelings, thoughts and needs matter as well and how such an {insert your profanity of choice} he is for never ever being able to even for a second consider me and my feelings and thoughts, and how all he did was take take take.

But I can't shout this out to him, because I know that any contact from me would be considered a "win" by him, and I also know that losing my temper or getting into any kind of conversation with him is not safe or wise for me.

I do not want this anger. I do not want to not be in control of my feelings. I want peace and quiet and to forget this whole sad saga.

So what do I do with this anger, where do I put it to burn it out? Do I need to go into the wilderness and scream on some cliff top or what? What have you done?

[Poison Ivy]

I've been divorced for almost 7 years; I was married for 31 years. I used to describe my anger as a type that made me want to go onto the roof of my house and scream at and about my ex. Expressing my feelings on this forum has helped. So has occasionally venting to my family (siblings). I still get angry sometimes; I no longer want to go on the roof.

[BeautifulCrazy]

Angry... heck yes!
I have gone through periods of intense anger too over the unfairness of it. The meanness. I remember times when I was. So. Damn. Angry.
 

Here are a few things I did with that.
- Letter writing. Not sending them. Just writing the yuck down and then discarding/ burning/ shredding. There is a place here for those unsent letters too.
- Channeling that energy into something physical: Working out, cleaning or getting tasks done that I am not often motivated to do.
- Meditating. It sounds weird, but there are lots of neat guided meditations online for releasing anger.
- "Do I need to go into the wilderness and scream on some cliff top or what?" Yep. For sure. Crying/ howling/ singing it out. Sometimes a good cathartic wailing session feels very cleansing. Highly recommend wilderness wolf howling or singing at top volume in the car.
- Vents to bestie. Walking over to my girlfriend's house and having a ridiculously silly angry time swearing and saying it all out loud and voicing all the immature vengeful nasty thoughts together. I nearly peed myself one time when she stomped her foot and said "If I ever see him, I'm gonna punch him in the throat!" (She is tiny and would NEVER ever punch anyone. Ever.)
- Once, I let my middle son smash up some small broken kitchen appliances when he was upset about his dad. I filmed it so he could make a neat little movie. (Personal protective gear required)  I remember someone posting about smashing eggs or something along those lines. That sounds great. I haven't tried it, I'm not angry very often anymore. I hear pillows work great too.

[notrightinthehead]

Yep. The anger stage of grief. Lasted the better part of a year for me. And it felt like rage and often hit me at three in the morning.
As we all know, we cannot control what we feel. A feeling is just a feeling. And that anger has been suppressed for a long time, and wants to come out before it turns inward and does damage to ourselves.
So many good suggestions on how to work through it have already been given. You will find the ones that will work for you. Ultimately, I used this as a learning experience. How to feel my anger. How to tune into it and find a way to express it politely. I believe, had I been able to express my anger in a better way at the beginning of the relationship, he would have moved on quickly to a better,  easier to control target, and I would have saved myself from. years of unhappiness.
The best you can do now, work through your anger, learn from it what you can, come out a stronger, more assertive person.  Try not to get stuck in bitterness and resentment. Try to think what the new, self assured, calm and authenic you would have said in the situations that come to your mind.

[Srcyu]

The bpd problem in my life was a parent so for me telling people about what happened, one episode at a time, has helped a lot.
Some stories I have told more than once. The people I tell have to be selected very carefully ofcourse. Generally speaking, trying to talk to people about it all in normal day to day life is not going to work.

It was a huge step forward for me to be able to connect with people online who are in similar situations.

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. ".    ANNE LAMOTT.

[Catothecat]

I divorced my NPD ex over 30 years ago and sometimes I STILL get angry about what happened.  It mostly comes up when I hear other people talking about when they were young, having a good time dating and going out and partying and whatnot...those same years when I was in a marriage that I'd upended my life for and gave up everything to be with him.  And finding out all he wanted was a servant to take care of him. 

I own my anger.  It's legitimate and has cause to exist, but I don't let it own me.  I feel it because it's what I sometimes feel, and I have some consolation in knowing that his life didn't seem to exactly work out for him (last I heard he was on wife #4) while I took my experience as something to learn from, to not run away from or deny but to confront my part in.  I realize that much of my anger is being angry with myself for allowing what happened, but coming to this site has helped me deal with that aspect as I now know so much of my behavior was the result of being in the fog. 

All I can say is--addressing the anger directly has helped me.  It's there and it's real and addressing its reality has taken away most of its power.  It still comes at me at times,  but is no longer a big deal.  I don't see it as a negative, rather as something that just is.  If that makes sense!

[NarcKiddo]

I've just finished reading "When the body says no" by Gabor Mate. Anger is mentioned a lot, and given the book is about the psychological link to disease it was not a huge surprise to hear his finding that patients who can muster anger about their situation tend to fare better than those who battle away stoically.

One problem with anger is the paradox about how to express it if the expression of it might damage others. One example being of a parent raging around a child.

There is a specific section about anger towards the end, and some quotes (which I am still struggling with to some extent) are:

"The repression of anger and the unregulated acting out of it are both examples of the abnormal release of emotions that is at the root of disease."

"Both repression and rage represent a fear of the genuine experience of anger."

"Anger does not require hostile acting out. First and foremost, it is a physiological process to be experienced. Second, it has cognitive value - it provides essential information...I am greatly empowered without harming anyone if I permit myself to experience the anger and to contemplate what may have triggered it. Depending on circumstances, I may choose to manifest the anger in some way or to let go of it. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it."

For myself, I have long been an adept represser of anger (or at least the expression of same). In recent years I have discovered that the best outlet for me is hard physical exercise. Ideally boxing. And for me it is purely a tool. People at the gym come up to me and joke that I must be pretending the boxing bag is somebody, and they feel very sorry for whoever that person is. In truth I never imagine the bag to be anyone, nor would I want to.

[lkdrymom]

I was married to my first husband for 8 years. We divorced in 1999. For many years afterwards I would feel intense moments of rage over what he did to me.  At first it happened a lot but eventually less and less.  This is completely normal for you to feel this way.