How to Feel Your Anger toward Your Abusers

July 28, 2010 by faithallen

On my blog entry entitled A (Helpful) Christian Perspective on Forgiveness after Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment:

I just wishi I could actually feel anger and hatred toward my abusers….at this point I just feel numb about it and frankly don’t even believe most of the stories the other parts of me tell. ~ Barbi

I was once in that same place. My self-perception was that I had a very long fuse. I would never stand up for myself or show any anger (or really even feel anger). However, about once a year, I would “blow up.” I now recognize that an angry alter part would finally have enough and express my repressed anger.

I told my therapist that I really did not feel any anger toward my abusers. I also felt very detached from the abuse, as you describe. My therapist assured me that I did have anger inside that I needed to express. When I was ready, I would experience the anger. I did not believe him.

I believe it is the book The Courage to Heal that calls anger “the backbone to healing.” That book, along with the Survivor to Thriver manual, provide good exercises for tapping into your anger. I was actually afraid to tap into mine. I knew that, based upon the memories that I had already recovered, the anger had to be intense. If I turned the anger “on,” could I then turn it back “off”?

The first step to tapping into your anger is believing your memories. Even though they might not feel like “your” memories, they are. You need to start accepting that those memories are of events that really happened to you. I know how hard that is to do, but it is crucial to healing.

Then, choose an exercise to give your anger a voice. I chose punching pillows. I felt an idiot for the first three punches, but the anger exploded out of me with the fourth punch. It was empowering to tap into the strength of that anger, and my anxiety symptoms eased immediately afterward.

I have heard many wonderful suggestions for processing anger:

Beat the ground with a baseball bat
Punch pillows
Take a kickboxing class
Throw objects against a wall
Visualize beating up your abuser
Write your abusers’ names on red balloons and pop them

I find that doing something physical is helpful when you are first learning how to tap into your anger. Invite your anger out, and tell yourself that it is okay to feel and express your anger. Then, give one of these tools (or something similar) a try and see what happens.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

Posted in Anger | Tagged anger, anger toward abuse, anger toward child abuser, can’t feel angry about child abuse, don’t feel angry about abuse, lack of anger after child abuse | 7 Comments

7 Responses

on July 28, 2010 at 8:27 am | Reply MFF

I was afraid that my anger made me like the abusers. That if I became angry I would be like my abusers.

As a multiple I have found that one can not express the anger for another.

I have found that I have gone through the motions and felt and thought that I expressed anger when I had not. I needed to express the anger with that part of me present. It was part of the learning.

Some of us see anger as the province of adults and not for children.

For me expressing anger was hard and did not immediately feel good. In fact it still makes me sick to my stomach and sometimes I throw up. That is my bodies normal reaction.

This is my list.

I drew the monster on the back of a mirror in marker. I smashed the mirror over looking the town where I lived from age 3 to 14.

I throw eggs.

I get a bucket of crushed stone and throw them into the water.

I pound nails into a block of wood.

I break pencils in my therapists office and throw them across the room into the waste basket. I miss a lot. My therapist helps me pick them up.

I tore a photo of me as a baby to pieces.

I take my art and rip it up.

I pound a big block of clay.

I punch the water in the pool when no one is there.

In the winter I kick a block of ice down the road until it is all gone.

I go to a mountain and yell at my abusers.

I found it helpful to look at ways that I expressed my anger before therapy. Like disbarring attorneys, driving fast and slamming on the the brakes.

I found it helpful to remember expressing my anger when I was a child. I found it helpful to remember how I could not express my anger around the abusers or my family.

Like so much else expressing my anger alone was not really possible until I had done so with my therapist. Some things I can not do alone.

For me expressing my anger is followed by a deep deep sadness then exhaustion. Then I notice the relief some times days after. Much of it is being aware that expressing the anger is connected to my relief.

I feel the physical part of it is huge.
- on July 28, 2010 at 7:32 pm | Reply MFF
  
  I should have mentioned that it is very important for me to use both sides of my body. If I drive nails I need to use both hands or I will list to one side and get very distraught.
on July 28, 2010 at 9:52 am | Reply barbi

thank you Faith…..very helpful insight.
My therapist recently brought in a large blocking bag (used for football practice) for me to throw my body at and beat. He only uses it on occassion because he says learning to express anger in this way is simply a “step” towards learning to express it verbally. But this step is important to go through.
“Feeling” the anger is still sometimes difficult but there is progress and it is due to exactly what you said; believing the memories.
barbi
on July 28, 2010 at 11:54 am | Reply Sarah

Thank you so much for writing this..
I normally don’t get any anger when I recover a memory, mostly terror and panic. But yesterday I did feel a small amount of anger, but it disappeared quickly before I could do anything with it.
Was it dissociated? How would I work on keeping it?

Sarah
on July 28, 2010 at 4:10 pm | Reply mia

Great suggestions Faith and MMF… I particularly like the one that involves hammering. I feel better just thinking about it!
Peace,
mia
on July 29, 2010 at 10:18 am | Reply shenison

I’ve done a lot of anger work (which I’ve written about at my blog, ReunitedSelves). It’s so interesting that MFF mentions having to use both sides of the body. This is something my therapist stresses in all the work we’ve done – including anger work. Using both sides of the body, especially alternately, triggers one to use both sides of the brain. Since memories from the past are stored in one side and we deal with the present with the other, activating both sides of the brain is thought to be helpful in bringing the memories and feelings to the surface.

In addition to the things you listed there, my therapist recommends tearing up phone books – (saying what you are angry about while ripping several pages apart at a time,) and throwing eggs in a bathtub (a gratifying sound and feel with a pretty easy clean-up) while saying what you are angry about.

Also, left-right writing has helped me get in touch with the feelings. I’ve written about all of these thigs and more. One of my favorite anger work-outs was when I destroyed hot-wheels cars (a symbol for what I was really angry at). You can read about that one in a post – hm, think it is called “whos powerful now?” or something similar, at my website.

Getting the anger out is certainly necessary, and getting in touch with feelings is so difficult.

Another great post. Faith
on August 26, 2011 at 9:29 am | Reply Sr. Sarah Elizabeth Roy

i really appreciate all your post. i’m finally getting in touch with the anger inside of me. i was too afraid to go there and for whatever reason, i’m ready now. I’ve been so emotional and exhausted all week. i love the suggestions for getting anger out. i went out to a field once and took a big stick and started beating the ground. realized later that i was in the middle of poisen ivy. Needless to say, i took home a nice souvenir of my moment .