When Anger Is Justified – Trauma

One of the stages of healing from trauma is the stage of anger. I know anger all too well. I am well acquainted with anger. I have also experienced periods of rage where the anger I felt was beyond my ability to control. Through the bulk of all the trauma I experienced – no matter how severe or light in occurrence – I was always left with the question “Why?” I wondered why had the traumatic experience happened to me. “Why me?” Then I felt almost simultaneously the feeling of extreme anger.

As I reasoned with myself and thought over the events that led up to the different types of trauma I experienced, I noted that anger was with me in all of its forms. At times, the anger I felt was limitless, bold, and overpowering, and at other times the anger was contained, sad, and burdensome. This anger leaked all throughout my nervous system connecting to all parts of my body. This anger wrecked my emotions … sending me into overdrive. I suffered physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and those around me suffered as the anger I dealt with on many occasions spilled out onto them – tainting their view of me and my experiences.

There were too many instances in which anger took hold of me until eventually a root of bitterness formed within me and grew to destroy everything around me. This bitterness caused me to hang onto unforgiveness of others and myself even though I fought hard against not becoming an embittered person filled with hatred. When I was a young child and teenager, however, being bitter was hard to fight against because I did not have the necessary tools or understanding to combat the anger.

Rage was fueled greatly within me, and I often found myself on the side of defiance. I was a ticking time bomb ready to explode, but I tried hard to cover the anger through bouts of dissociation. Dissociation was my preferred coping mechanism to ward off thinking upon traumatic experiences. It was a preferred way for me to abate the anger and rage that plagued my emotions and overtook my life.

How was I not a narcissist with so much anger within me? I reckon that there was indeed a fine line with this. After all, I am the child of narcissistic parents – with one being a narcissist I know for sure while the other seems to run along a continuum of the spectrum. Yet, deep inside of me there is empathy. I have always had empathy. For a time, however, I did have to get to know myself to understand empathy to make sure I was not just a hypersensitive and enabling codependent. Growing up and throughout my life, though, I have often felt a great deal of remorse for the way I felt because of the anger and rage I experienced that I knew had an adverse affect on others.

For the record, I sincerely did not want to be so angry, but I just did not know how to make the anger go away. Besides the fact that such strong emotions were not to be expressed outwardly in my family environment, I had to learn my best to contain as much emotion as I could when I felt the need for an outburst. Yet, this need for containment would prove to be my undoing at times when I least expected it. Coping mechanisms became the bane of my existence, and without the ability to cope, I do not know that I would have lived to speak of my experiences.

I know that I am not a narcissist. I have asked for confirmation from three therapists, and they all separately said that I was far too empathic. Even I know this though, but because of the anger that I have dealt with in the past, I had to be sure. Interestingly, there is no such thing as an empathic narcissist. Narcissists do not have empathy. Also, narcissists use their anger and rage as weapons to harm others, and I do not want to ever hurt others on purpose. I do not even want to hurt others unintentionally either. In fact, I want to be able to live at peace with others as much as possible.

Despite the knowledge that I am not a narcissists, I still have emotions, and these emotions have often overtaken me in the most volatile of ways. To understand my issues with anger and rage, I had to get to the root of the problem – the very core. I had to go deep into my psyche to understand myself, and what I uncovered helped me to understand how the anger that bellowed into rage during my earlier years was the culprit to many of the darkest moments of my life – moments that trailed me and invaded every aspect of my life. Getting to the root of the anger helped me to understand who I was and who I became – before and after trauma.

Stay tuned for the next post as I share one of the deepest parts of myself and the experience of trauma that I will never forget and where the anger I experienced was certainly justified.