Co-dependency, anger and radical acceptance.

[HurtinNW]

I've been reflecting on my anger. Every break up cycle I go through this. My PTSD calms down, I get more regulated... .and then I am furious. Today I have had waves of anger break over me. I am angry at my ex for hurting me so badly. I am angry at my mother, angry at my siblings more than anything (not sure why), angry at the pedophiles who abused me as a child. I am angry at myself. I am just angry.

I wonder how much my relationship both triggered me and kept me from dealing with that anger. Being codependent is about stuffing our own feelings to tend to others, negating ourselves, feeling worthless and unloveable. Out of the relationship I am suddenly alone with my anger. And it is pretty epic.

The anger says this:

Angers wants the people who hurt me to be hurt back.

Anger wants them to see how they hurt me.

Anger wants them to cry as they made me cry as a little child.

Anger wants to survive and the only way to survive is to fight back.

Anger tells me that without it I will not live.

Anger saved me when I was a child. Anger was the part of me that said, "no more," and reported the abuse.

But then I kept reengaging in a relationship that not only didn't let me have my anger, it terrified me into losing sight of myself. I find that interesting. Did I somehow connect co-dependency with healing? Did I think true love meant retreating from survivor who was becoming a thriver back into a victim?

Now anger is back, and she is pretty darn hurt and pissed off. She might need to take a martial arts class 

I've been reading the radical acceptance thread, and thinking, if I radically accept my life and the trauma I experienced, will that let anger subside? Can I let go of the anger that feels like it once saved me? Can I experience life without anger, hurt or a partner? What would that look like?

[HappyChappy]

I found radical acceptance helped me a lot with anger and in reaching a more peaceful place. In fact it got me over a sticking point. The emotions you recount in your piece above are similar to the ones I had before radical acceptance. Lets be honest it’s a heck of a lot to accept, but it sounds like you're on the right track.

[fromheeltoheal]

I've been reading the radical acceptance thread, and thinking, if I radically accept my life and the trauma I experienced, will that let anger subside? Can I let go of the anger that feels like it once saved me? Can I experience life without anger, hurt or a partner? What would that look like?

Great questions Hurtin, great questions.  You might also add some empowering ones like "How great will life be when I transcend this anger?"  "What's good about this anger, what is it teaching me?"  Ask your brain some questions like that and the answers you get

You might have heard of the stages of grieving, anger being one, and it seems from reading this one thread that you get into the anger stage and then cycle back, only to repeat again.  The only way out is through, and staying in that anger long enough to feel all the way through it might just be the way to lessen it, to make it go away, to transcend it; if that was the case, what's next after anger for you?  Acceptance is one choice, alluded to here, although we can't force acceptance, we can't replace anger with acceptance, we need to feel through anger to acceptance, it takes what it takes.

You might try a great book by Pete Walker called Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, recognized as a sort of bible on the subject, and a very difficult read initially if you connect with it, which from what you wrote you will.  But I mention it because one skill be describes, as a healing and recovery tool, is "angering", intentionally getting pissed off at all the bullsht from the past, as a means to feel all the way through it.  That's one tool of many and limited on its own, but give yourself credit for being on the right track; anger is a good thing, anger is a solution, not a problem.

You ask What would that look like?.  So what would it look like?  The life of our dreams usually won't fall in our laps, we get to create it, the first part being creating an empowering vision for it, and then making that vision big and bright enough that it is compelling and pulls us towards it.  So what does that look like for you?

[C.Stein]

Hurtin,

If I may ask, why do you think you holding onto all this anger? 

[Grey Kitty]

I've been reading the radical acceptance thread, and thinking, if I radically accept my life and the trauma I experienced, will that let anger subside? Can I let go of the anger that feels like it once saved me? Can I experience life without anger, hurt or a partner? What would that look like?

Can you experience life without anger or hurt? I don't think so--they come up as part of being human and living on earth, last time I checked. And I bet if I asked the few humans who have left earth if that stuff stayed on earth when they left the answer would be no. 

What you are experiencing is that you have a bunch of anger which is bottled up from times you weren't able to let yourself feel it, and it is bubbling out in really powerful ways right now. (You are now out of the r/s where you couldn't express or feel your anger safely)

And that is the area where you can hope to experience life differently. You may be able to live your life so you feel angry about things when they happen, not after the fact.

To get there, I think you've got to feel the bottled up anger first.

And after you get through this anger, expect to find other feelings (like hurt or fear) underneath the anger... .and the same issue with those feelings being bottled up in the past and not safe for you to experience at the time to deal with there too.

 You are doing the right things here, and no, it isn't easy.

[HurtinNW]

Thanks for the responses!

I have ordered the Pete Walker book and will read it. I definitely think I need to pass through the anger instead of side-stepping it.

C. Stein, in my family anger was not allowed. My very mentally ill mother required her children be slavishly supportive, even as she was abusive. I was the scapegoat. So when I was a child I was treated horribly and then punished if I tried to fight back. My anger at being molested and abused was something I had to hide inside me.

I was lucky that I channelled a lot of that anger into my art and career. It was a driving force behind me wanting to escape my family dysfunction and create a much better life for my children, which I've done.

But yes, the anger is still there. Or maybe it is back, after being emotionally and verbally abused by my ex. Part of it is me being angry at myself.

I think in my last relationship I replicated my family dynamic of denying my anger. My ex completely denied I had a right to anger, hurt or other feelings beyond being unconditionally approving of him. I hadn't thought of that way, but it is true. He is very convinced his abuse is justified, therefore I "deserved" it. Since it is justified in his mind, that makes him the victim of whatever caused the anger. I was not allowed to get angry in response and in fact that would definitely fuel his rage. Very much like my mother... .

So I engaged in a relationship that hit all my core wounds, reactivated my PTSD, and brought all those old hurts to the surface. I think I wanted to heal those hurts, have it end differently, but instead the hurts got hurt more, and I was left with them. The anger I was feeling, someplace deep inside me, while he was being hurtful is now here.

I'm going to try and work through it.

Grey Kitty, I just saw your response, and bingo, yes. You wrote: "You may be able to live your life so you feel angry about things when they happen, not after the fact."

Exactly what I need to do. And yes this is so hard.

[Narkiss]

Anger is good. I'm trying to work myself up to that point. I also was never allowed to get angry on my own behalf, so I think I've funneled it into anger on behalf of others... .For myself, anger has always quickly slid into guilt or panic or forgiveness. Anger is the most logical response to mistreatment. Hope to get there soon

[Daniell85]

I don't think there is any skipping over the anger. I keep seeing this radical acceptance. For me the acceptance is about the state of my ex and what happened. He is being an absolute pill. It took me a very long time to accept that he actually meant to be so mean and hurtful. He, too, thinks I deserve it. I don't agree. Which is why I finally and abruptly put down the boundaries and am seriously angry about how I have been treated. I dropped off the face of the earth as far as he is concerned. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of me for almost a month.

I get to be angry. So do you, Hurtin. The intention to instantly jump to forgiveness may not actually be healthy for you right now. I saw you said that elsewhere. Why don't you just feel your anger for a while and leave your ex out of it, because you don't have to forgive or fix or anything for him right now.

I was wondering your thoughts earlier on that. Do you think maybe it is that co dependent thing a lot of us have going to skip over what we need ( to process the anger and resentment) and try to be "good" and work on forgiving someone who hurt you so deeply when really now is the time to be there for you? You first, not the BPDs out there.

[HurtinNW]

I don't think there is any skipping over the anger. I keep seeing this radical acceptance. For me the acceptance is about the state of my ex and what happened. He is being an absolute pill. It took me a very long time to accept that he actually meant to be so mean and hurtful. He, too, thinks I deserve it. I don't agree. Which is why I finally and abruptly put down the boundaries and am seriously angry about how I have been treated. I dropped off the face of the earth as far as he is concerned. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of me for almost a month.

I get to be angry. So do you, Hurtin. The intention to instantly jump to forgiveness may not actually be healthy for you right now. I saw you said that elsewhere. Why don't you just feel your anger for a while and leave your ex out of it, because you don't have to forgive or fix or anything for him right now.

I was wondering your thoughts earlier on that. Do you think maybe it is that co dependent thing a lot of us have going to skip over what we need ( to process the anger and resentment) and try to be "good" and work on forgiving someone who hurt you so deeply when really now is the time to be there for you? You first, not the BPDs out there.

That's a good point, Daniel85. I think right now I am trying to understand the anger, to name it, and most importantly, to feel it. To see it in the room. To know it.

I do believe that in our culture women in particular are encouraged to not be angry. We even have a lot of ways to describe female anger in derisive ways. Women are often told we need to forgive. Like you say we are encouraged to bypass healthy anger and return to being a doormat. Heck, we are even criticized for being assertive.

I am trying hard to feel my feelings as they happen, and this anger has been a big one... .for a long time. I would like to let it go, eventually, when it is right.

I am mad at him. Today I found myself having revenge fantasies. They weren't very satisfying, but I recognized them for what they were.

Anger is so complicated for me. It saved my life as a child, and yet I was punished for it.

[doubleAries]

I too find myself shaking with anger at times--sometimes over things that happened long ago. And I believe it is part of the healing process, but not the bottom of the pile.

I think that the anger, which can be very self validating and protective and one piece of caring about self, is also an armor, protecting the vulnerable scary hurt underneath. The anger you talk about here (versus the relentless self criticism) is directed outward, at the people who did the hurting. Nothing wrong with that.

But I also find myself drawn back toward those people who hurt me if I don't at least poke around under the anger at what is underneath it, what the anger is protecting. I believe because the hurt and fear still needs to be allowed to be expressed and experienced, and if we don't do it in a direct purposeful manner, then we are drawn back to situations/relationships that will trigger it.

Think of the hurt as the walnut, and the anger as the shell.

I have begun to (a) allow the anger while reminding myself it is just a feeling and won't kill me, therefore I don't need to "do" anything about it (doing something about it is meant to relieve or banish it), and then examine it (not to be confused with microscopically analyze it, which I have a tendency towards, and is a pattern I engage in to avoid the feelings and switch over to intellectualizing, which is more familiar and comfortable for me), and then ask myself what it's protecting.

Someone told me once something I have never forgot--anger is a mask for fear. I have found that to be true. And maybe fear is a mask for hurt.