When Anger is Justified
I often felt that the anger and rage I encountered were justified, and on many occasions and under several circumstances, I would say these emotions were justified, but continuous anger and rage are emotionally draining and time consuming. I will just say that it was increasingly difficult to navigate these huge emotions as a child and teenager. I had to find other forms of expression as outlets. I had to develop coping mechanisms to survive. Yet, even as an adult, I do not like sitting in the emotion of anger for too long because I can quickly become a cynic oozing with sarcasm.
Anger As A Reaction To Rejection
As a child, I often experienced rejection. I was surprised when my dad told me that I was a relatively happy baby – one of the happiest babies he ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I supposed that I had to have been born angry because of how overwhelming this emotion felt when I was younger. Anger seemed to consume me at certain points in my life, but of course, the emotion itself was only secondary to the true feelings I harbored within me. I harbored a lot of feelings within me, and I was very aware of those feelings even when I was very young.
I was frequently sad but always attempted to mask it. Emotions were just not tolerated in my household to a certain degree – particularly emotions deemed as negative. Anger was considered a negative emotion that I could not express, but internally, I always felt this anger as sadness first. I was often so sad that no one knew the tears that I cried on the inside – tears that never materialized from my eyes to fall – tears that bathed my insides and felt like a towering tidal wave of fury. I carried a lot of tears that I never cried out loud. This form of learning to cope without revealing my emotions is something I still do now, and sometimes I do not even know that I am doing it until I realize how I feel on the inside.
Dealing With Rejection
For the most part, I faced a tremendous amount of rejection in various forms. First, just imagine being told by a parent that the day of your birth was despised in all forms. Then imagine that parent being your mother. My mother’s rejection of me was quite painful for me to experience. I always internalized her words and turned my anger inward against her, but at the same time, I frequently aimed to please her. I hoped that one day she would look at me differently and realize that she loved me. I hoped that she would look at me with the same heartfelt affection she seemed to shower upon my siblings and complete strangers.
Eventually, the rejection I felt would feed the depression I later developed and propel me into suicidal ideation as early as nine years old. My suicidal feelings were not something I shared with anyone even though I made several attempts to do so. Those ideations were always met with fear by others that I did share my feelings with – particularly an adult relative I mistakenly believed would understand me and help me. What I know now is that I projected my desires for a mother onto this particular relative only to end up with her rejecting me as well. I do not think it was because the relative may have not cared, but I think it was more that my emotions of anger and sadness were too much for the relative to handle. I did not understand this back then though.
Because I did not understand my mother’s rejection and mistreatment of me, I frequently lashed out in anger against my siblings by becoming a bully over them, and I lashed out against my mother through tears, contained tantrums, and silence. It was not so easy to lash out against my father with this same behavior because he had a tendency to go for the jugular with his words. Plus, he worked all of the time. When he was home, he was either asleep or in a foul mood. My rage against him did not surface until my preteen years, but by then, it had become apparent to my dad that something was terribly wrong with me.
Nevertheless, my outward expression of anger had to remain hidden in most cases because neither of my parents or any other adult seemed to understand me. I was always labeled the weirdo, the crazy one, the kooky kid, or the strange one. Yet, I tried ever so hard to frequently show that I was just as lovable as anyone else. I frequently tried to gain my mother’s attention and affection with my anger when my dad was not around, but she never gave into the anger I expressed outwardly to her. She did not even react as if I had anger, and if she did, she would shut me down with her dismissive hatred of my existence. It was a very dysfunctional cycle.
Dissociating From Anger
It was not until I was a teenager that my anger reached a point of extreme and volatile silence. I was so silent with rage that my father took note and sought to get me help. He noticed that my moods did not seem to be that of a typical teenager. So he suggested that I talk to someone since I did not seem to be able to talk to him or my mother. Talking to another person was therapeutic enough, and for a while, my anger did abate and seemed to go elsewhere. I had also developed a newfound motivation to escape my stressful surroundings when I entered high school. High school was my saving grace. It seemed to offer me new perspectives.
In high school, I was able to channel my emotions into learning as I disappeared into the context of tangible study. My mind was too focused on learning new concepts to even consider the anger within me that had become squelched, but I was glad for this. Unhinged anger is exhausting to carry around, and I needed a break. Despite the social issues and the rejection I faced from other students, high school was a different and special time for me. I excelled immeasurably, and I even worked after school. Any time that I did experience anger, I somehow managed to have the capacity to deal with it. In retrospect, it was during the time that I had dissociated from trauma. So it was easy not to feel the anger. It was easy not to feel anything. Plus, I had gained an outlet via a school librarian, and if it were not for her, many of my suicidal ideations would have materialized into a path of destruction for me.
College was not as easy for me to navigate as high school … at least not during my freshman year. Although I was free from my narcissistic household, I found that I was not equipped to handle the outside world so easily without my family. I was independent physically, but I had not been taught to navigate a life without the entangled emotional connections I had with my family. Although my family was never with me during college, they seemingly showed up in the form of roommates, classmates, professors, friends, and enemies. I faced rejection in college in a way that I had not experienced in my previous home life, and I neither understood or liked this system. My struggles had nothing to even do with the studies. I actually thrived away from my parents and found even greater academic success, but I was an emotional mess – drowning in a cesspool of whirling depression. I longed for connection, but I was a reject even in college.
When The Anger Had A Turning Point
I was absolutely bored out of my mind during my first year in college, and the lack of being able to have a mind flowing in information was depressing to me. I had gone from being an academically gifted high school student to a college student who made her first attempt at suicide. I faced rejection during college because my personality was considered to be awkwardly different. Eventually, I began drowning in despair and a whole lot of anger. It was tough losing my ability to channel the anger. So at some point, I decided that I no longer wanted to handle this life. Not resisting any urges to fight, I gathered a bunch of pills, called a suicide hotline, and sought the confidence of a crisis counselor who understood his assignment.
Blessedly, my life was saved before I could take the pills, but strangely, this saving moment also aroused the anger. Although the anger was still present, I was relieved that the crisis counselor cared enough to stop me. I did not really want to die. I just wanted my internal pain to end. I needed the pain to stop , and I needed the anger to die. Yet, I raged on with an outward display of anger, and I fell even deeper into a realm of depression. Because police were dispatched to college campuses in the wee hours of the morning to seek out a specific girl by my name, I was forced into getting help.
Perhaps my guardedness kept me from receiving the help I so desperately needed from the professionals that I was assigned to for counseling, but I could not take any of them or their methods seriously. I needed deep help, but they suggested surface level remedies. I had an anger inside of me that was volatile and screaming for release, but none of the professionals seemed to notice. I did not want to waste my time throwing ice chunks at the walls in my dorm room. Nor did I want to write about a sad time in my life. I wanted help with the anger, and because I felt that I was not getting immediate relief, I dissociated into a robot, did what I considered to be my time in therapy, and waited patiently for my six sessions to end.
Learning To Cope With The Anger Of Rejection
My remaining years in college were spent earning money to stay in school, taking as many credit hours during the semesters that the college would allow of me, and working as hard as I could to avoid the emotional anguish I felt. Keeping myself busy often helped me forget that I was so angry even though I had long since put out of my mind what I was so angry about. I did try to do the work to heal myself though. I spent time in counseling and eventually gained the confidence of the on-campus chaplain who talked with me on a weekly to bi-weekly basis. Despite the rejection I faced for being a depressive, my remaining time at college was successful enough. I graduated summa cum laude and moved on to the next phase of my life, but I still had great anger.
The rejection I experienced seemed to follow me everywhere as I became older. I was frequently rejected by more than just my family. I also experienced rejection from supposed friends, significant others, various social groups, colleagues, and church members of different denominations and beliefs. I often felt that I belonged nowhere, and I often felt lost in a sea of people. I just did not fit in, and this was excruciatingly painful to experience for me. It did not seem to matter what I did or did not do; I was bound to find myself in a situation of facing rejection to the point that I would brace for it. In fact, I felt frequently ignored as if I was invisible, and many times I really did feel invisible.
I was an outcast for all types of reasons – my introverted and highly sensitive personality, my quiet and observant nature, my social awkwardness, my varied interests, my quirky style, and whatever else that was deemed as strange about me to anyone. Over time, I developed very thick skin, and although scathing words by others were hurtful to my core, I trekked on with a smile on my face. I learned to face every new day and push past any negative emotions, but it was not easy. Inside, my spirit seemed to die a little each day while I prayed for deliverance. Deliverance was still rather far off until my late 20s, but I managed to keep myself afloat while only making one other attempt to take my life.
Anger As A Response To Rejection
Anger was a driving force of motivation for me to stave off feelings of rejection. Whatever anyone said that I could not do, I did anyway to defy them. I did what I was told I could not do to prove the naysayers wrong, but I also did so to prove to myself that I was acceptable and not the reject that others seemed to believe of me. At some point, I began to study about rejection and its connection to the anger I felt, and I found that the rejection did not induce the anger at all. Of course, I did not like rejection, and I did not feel pleasant about being rejected either. Yet, over the years, however, I uncovered the anger that I experienced in situations of rejection as deep sadness and grief over other more serious issues. In fact, I was able to come to the root of the anger that sometimes turned to rage, and I have been working to break down the issues at the root ever since so that I can continue to heal.
The rage I sometimes felt on the inside has vanished, and although I still experience times of anger, I know that my feelings are a normal reactions to often challenging circumstances. I would consider myself to be currently in a state of recovery and on a path to continued healing. Although I continue to deal with any bitterness and unforgiveness and other emotions that tainted the goodness that I wish to exude forth, I am more at peace now. For the most part, I have found that it works to my advantage to release people. Now, I do not condone nor deny what people have done to me that has been hurtful, but I do choose to forgive so that I release them. I keep in mind that for all purposes, vengeance belongs to God, and He will repay. Particularly, I know from experience that what one sows will also be reaped. So, I let go, and I work to move on.
To maintain peace on this journey, I continue to work on myself. In the past I have done extensive work on myself in therapy – inside the office and outside the office. I also stayed the course with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. When things became sometimes too difficult for me to bear, I prayed and battled for healing, and to this point, healing continues to happen, even if at times slowly. I know that I am not the same person as I was when I first experienced my first painful stab of rejection, and I know that I will continue to change and grow when I face more rejection. When I feel myself regressing, I take a look at all that I have been blessed to overcome, and I remember gratitude. Yes, I have to remember to be thankful and grateful because even in rejection, there is gratitude. I have learned that being rejected by others has been the protection I needed from further harm.
Stay tuned for the next post.
My Voice Unchained 