Excessive anger

[Laynelove]

So since I started my 'healing' journey I have been really really angry about the life I have had and the abuser. I have been preoccupied with getting revenge and I spend most my day in a state where I'm on the edge of absolutely losing it.

I'm in a trauma processing phase of therapy so it's on my mind 24/7.

But the scariest part was this morning I woke up from a dream beyond angry. I was * furious, I literally woke up in a hyper adrenalised state...heart racing, jaw clenched etc. I can't remember what the dream was about but the abuser was in it.

How do I release some of this anger? I know what it's about, it's about how much of my life he stole from me. All the missed opportunities, the self destructiveness and lack of achievement and connection.

I'm drowning in this

[Multicolour]

Me too. I am furious. My losses feel unbearable. I feel angry and despairing, and so much grief.

I think that there is both anger and grief and for me. Crying and releasing the grief seems to make the pain and anger lessen a little, but only if I'm with someone- counseller or friend- who can listen and hear why I am crying. Without talking at the same time, the crying can become endless and I feel despairing and hopeless, and that's never healthy or helpful.

It's hard to know what to do with the anger. I want to campaign against abuse but that has it's own drawbacks- it's triggering and bad reactions to speaking out can be very upsetting and frightening.

I have torn up old phonebooks and directories- it helped a bit. You can grab a thick wad of pages and tear it up and keep going until the whole phonebook is in pieces. You could do it with really rubbish paperbacks too . Other things I've done is make cardboard doll of an abuser and destroy that. If you exercise vigorously that can be a way of venting anger.

Art helps too, drawing myself as an avenging superhero, or making posters that name and shame my abusers (I've never put one up but it can feel good to do it just for myself.)

Nothing can bring back what the abuser stole and on top of that our community has no public recognition for the losses- unlike with a death, or serious disease, abuse trauma produces no public rituals, no fun runs, no way to have pain recognized or be with others. It's incredibly tough.  Remember that you are part of a club of millions who all feel alone and unheard.

If justice was not done in your case, that's another layer of disempowerment that can result in unresolved anger.

I'm so glad you wrote what you did, because I feel like I'm going mad with anger sometimes too. Do any little thing you can to express the anger safely. Things will get better incrementally. You might need to grieve the losses as well.

I have done a therapy exercise where I wrote all my losses down on slips of paper, dug a hole, buried them, put a statue on it (I put a plaster statue of a woman) and did my own funeral service.

The anger might go and come back but you won't drown in it, you're here, doing something of extreme difficulty, you have survived what many people simply can't imagine surviving and you are working to get back what was taken.

I don't think many people other than survivors and trauma counselors can comprehend just how painful and hard it is. You are mighty.

[Oakridge]

I truly appreciate the candor of you both about feeling overwhelmed and like you're drowning. Today is a day that i am in a similar state of mind. I am not feeling anger as much as complete despair that i will never be able to really overcome this illness. I am in total self-loathing for not being able to handle this illness and feeling isolated due to hardly anyone around me understanding the impact of CPTSD. So, i have been crying and hurting terribly. It just feels so bad and i keep telling myself that this will pass, but the pain today has been the worst that I have ever experienced with CPTSD. I am hoping that this is all just due to the fact that in the past 6 to 10 months i have engaged more fully in facing this illness now that I have a diagnosis. I don't know what else to write at the moment. I just wanted to thank you both for your sharing.

[tired]

I got that way after my husband said he wanted to have an open relationship. It was beyond the last straw.  I spent three months in a rage I had never experienced. I had overwhelming urges to do horrible things like when you see women in movies throwing their husband's clothes out the window.  I couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to stop myself. It felt so good to be lost in rage. 

It went away eventually when I was basically exhausted.  I cried daily for three hours.  I guess I had no more energy left.

I'm still angry but the physical symptoms are gone. I have a lot to be angry about but somehow that had a huge triggering effect like nothing else.

[Summer Sun]

I'm sorry you are experiencing such anger, understandable, necessary to get, but so challenging to process. 

At on point in my therapy, she suggested I throw rocks in the ocean, pretending the rocks were the PD, and shout obscenities if need be, like "you $&@?!".  It felt good, certainly helped!  Lucky, it was a fairly secluded cove, only the seagulls thought I was crackers.

Wishing you better days ahead.