Anger

Needless to say, I don’t deal with anger very well at all. I remember my mother getting angry when a was younger, which I don’t think she dealt with it very well either. She would hold her emotions inside of her until she could no longer suppress it, and the anger would come out explosively. She never was physically abusive with me or my brother, but it scared me to see her behavior because it seemed to come from out of nowhere. Part of my personality, even as a young boy, was to blame myself and find ways to fix me so that I wouldn’t be the cause of her anger anymore. She would make these general statements, such as “No one ever appreciates what I do!” “Everything would fall apart if I didn’t keep it together!” etc. Of course, I took that to mean that I didn’t appreciate her, I wasn’t doing enough around the house, or I was just inadequate as a person to satisfy whatever need she required.

To a degree, I do much the same with my anger. I suppress it just like she did. However, I don’t allow my anger to escape because I don’t want others around me, especially in my home, to feel like I did when I was growing up. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve trained my body so well that it will shut down any emotion before it gets out of hand, whether I want my body to or not! In fact, I can turn my anger against myself, not matter how irrational that may be. Everything is my fault, I’m completely broken beyond repair, and there is nothing I can do to change who I am. Some of that does go back to my sexual abuse. If I had done something differently or if I had just said “no”, then it wouldn’t have happened to me. I’m also deserving of the abuse because I’m not good enough for anything else. And all of these irrational thoughts just feed the cycle of being angry at myself and suppressing the emotion again.

I wish I knew a perfect formula for getting angry but remaining in control of how that affects others. Unfortunately, I don’t think that can really happen. For me, I think I’m just gonna have to get angry in a safe environment and communicate my emotions as best I can. Jesus got angry and threw a table, so I think that I can allow myself to feel that way too. And I hope that I’ll be able to express other emotions better and more easily if I can put these things into practice.