how trauma damages our relationship with anger (and how to repair it): a thread

to start off this thread, i want to bring up an issue that i rarely i see talked about: the notion of goodness as defined by a LACK of anger or, to be more specific, the lack of expression of anger. this is an idea we especially internalize if we’ve been traumatized.

like lots of people, fear of abandonment or of further harm can lead to repressing our emotions, failing to establish healthy boundaries, being unable to self-advocate, and avoiding honest emotional communication with others.

i think the biggest emotion we shove away is anger.

to put it more simply, anger is often seen as “bad” when, in reality, it’s a very normal and healthy emotion. when dealt with safely, it helps us process feelings of grief, frustration, and disappointment in a way that feels productive and personal. in short: it’s actually good.

a lot of us have faced the brunt of other people’s unhealthy relationship with anger. this has made us view anger as an abusive, aggressive force. it becomes something we want to push away, repress, and avoid in attempt to protect the people around us (and protect ourselves.)

TW: self-harm

being afraid to process/feel our emotions, or not knowing how to identify them at all, is a sign of trauma. we might dissociate, try to turn the pain into something more physical, or completely ignore our emotions until we’re crying for seemingly no reason at 3am.

whether it’s from society telling you that you feel too much, bullies on the playground making fun of you for getting upset, or a parent who never validated you, all of these things and more can detach us from our emotions. it can make anger feel especially scary and unfamiliar.

TW: abuse

maybe we were screamed at as children. maybe a loved one’s anger was expressed through silent treatments. maybe when people were angry with us, we were punished instead of communicated with. we were harmed because someone else couldn’t cope with anger in a healthy way.

it’s hard to see anger as a safe emotion. it’s even harder to see it as a safe thing to feel *towards* the people we love. what if our anger makes them feel as afraid as we were made to feel by the anger of someone in our past?

it’s so important to start combatting these fears.

feeling angry with someone you love does not mean you are less good.

in fact, good people can and DO express their anger every day. this seems fairly obvious when you think of real world examples, like social justice activists, but it’s easy to forget when it comes to ourselves.

there are so many healthy ways to express anger. processing it is an important first step. i like writing down (or venting my thoughts to a friend) to get them off my chest. punch a pillow. listen to loud music. let yourself feel safely and fully. ask for help if you need it.

once you’ve processed the anger, figure out what your needs are. if you’re angry with yourself, work on self-forgiveness. you did the best you could with what you had. it’s in the past now. you can grow. try to learn from the mistakes you made and practice patience with yourself.

if you’re angry with someone else, think about what you’d want to happen differently in the future and then share that with them. it’s okay to be angry. it doesn’t make you harmful, dangerous, or bad. instead, you’re using it to self-advocate and that is powerful as hell.

boundaries are an essential part of every healthy relationship. oftentimes, we don’t know that a new boundary is needed until we feel discomfort.

that discomfort can be felt as sadness, anger, or any other negative feeling.

anger can give us information about our own needs.

this is why having our emotions, like anger, invalidated by a parent, a partner, or society as a whole, can make identifying and expressing our needs really difficult.

if we *can* finally feel that anger, what do we do with it? how do we listen to what it’s trying to tell us?

what helps me is trying to think through the timeline of events in my head leading up to the anger. when i feel the anger come back up as i relive it, i try to figure out what exactly triggered the feeling. then, i decide what would help me best avoid that trigger in the future.

sometimes this does require telling the person involved, “hey, when you said/did ____ it made me feel angry. in the future, i’d like ______ instead.”

see, anger can be super informative. we just have to listen to it. expressing anger is not the same as taking it out on someone.

you deserve to have needs and to share those needs with others. if you cope and express your anger in a safe and healthy way, no one has the right to make you feel guilty for feeling it. you should never have to ignore the information your brain is giving you about what you need.

facing constant bigotry within society can also severely damage our relationship with anger. so much unwarranted and dangerous anger is directed at us and when we become angry in return, we’re told we’re overreacting or “being divisive.”

but we *should* be allowed to get angry.

things like tone-policing and institutional gaslighting can have a detrimental impact on mental health. society wants you to feel guilty about your anger, but you shouldn’t. your anger is just telling you that you need and deserve better... and you’re allowed to fight for better.

it can be so healing to find safe community spaces, either online or in real life, where your anger can be safely expressed and fully understood.

self-advocating as a community, through education and other forms of social justice activism, can feel really powerful too.

whether your relationship with anger has been impacted by societal oppression, interpersonal abuse, or other experiences of psychological trauma, there is still time to heal. learning to listen to your feelings of anger is a process that takes some time, but it’s possible.

please be kind to yourself. practice healthy, cathartic activities like making art, exercising (if you’re able to of course), or even having a good cry. it’s okay to feel anger, or any other difficult emotion. you’re human. you deserve the space to have and process your feelings.

the people who love you should want you to feel comfortable in your emotions, even the ones society tends to deem as negative. they might not be pleasant to feel, but they’re important for self-advocacy.

and remember: feeling anger does NOT make you bad. it makes you human.

if this thread was helpful, please consider supporting me by donating to my GoFundMe for a mobility and psychiatric service dog! i’m getting so close to my goal and it would completely change my life. please RT https://www.gofundme.com/f/295xbhbe1c?sharetype=teams&member=8141518&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&rcid=3835c91b627d47609f8ae7fc1a8d2efa

and lastly, if you’d like to check out my other threads and tweets on trauma recovery & mental health, they’re compiled here. i add new content all the time and it’s a great thing to save as a resource for self-validation. stay safe, my friends. https://twitter.com/i/events/1364172337659207680?s=21