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“Little Things Upset Me, Yet I Feel No Anger About My Trauma. How Come?”

“A lot of bad things happened to me. Shouldn’t I be feeling more angry about it?”

The dictionary defines anger as a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a real or supposed wrong. Often times in PTSD, in spite of an extensive history of real and imagined wrongs, we don’t feel much anger. A person develops PTSD as a result of having a difficult childhood. The person has either been abused in one or more ways, or suffered some sort of traumatic rejection or neglect. When such things happen to a person, it seems perfectly natural for that person to feel angry. Yet often times we don’t feel angry or can only get in touch with our angry feelings through much effort. When bad things happen to us as children, what sort of emotional responses do we have? Did we feel anger then? Do we feel angry about it now? What did we do with our anger? What do we do with our anger now?

In spite of the fact that trauma is potentially a great source of anger, we often don’t feel much, if any, anger. Partly this lack of angry feelings is the result of programming. We were taught that getting angry was bad, unwelcome or even dangerous. We also learned, or thought that we learned, the same lesson by observation, if we lived with one or more angry persons. Their anger seemed really wrong, bad, we didn’t welcome it and in some cases it seemed extremely dangerous. We may also have observed the perpetrator or another victim in denial about their anger. And, so in turn we learned to deny our own anger. And maybe we even decided to buy into their denial of their anger.

As one client pointed out during a group discussion of this topic, “Anger has a righteousness about it. You have to have a knowledge of right and wrong to feel righteous.” When we have grown up with so much chaos and confusion, we may not have a very clear sense of right and wrong. We often don’t feel very righteous about anything and consequently we aren’t able to get up much of a head of steam about anything either.

Then there is the issue of overwhelming affect. In cases of severe abuse, neglect or rejection, the emotions and accompanying bodily sensations can be so unpleasant and overwhelming to us that we have to find a way to shut them off. And, of-course, our anger gets shut off along with the rest of our emotions. We may have no outlet for our anger, no way to express it and no one to express it to. When this is the situation, then it adds to how overwhelming and how powerless our anger feels.

In these situations, there is usually no one who is helping us learn how to express our anger appropriately. I have seen many clients with histories of trauma who see the appropriate expression of anger as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. To them, anger feels like it is never appropriate. They feel like they are a bad person whenever they have some anger that breaks through their defenses against it. No one has taught them that anger is okay, that anger is a normal human emotion. No one has taught them how to express their anger constructively. They think constructive expression of anger is another oxymoron.

I am no advocate of expressing anger willy-nilly. I think that too often this sort of behavior very rapidly becomes counterproductive. What I do strongly advocate, however, is allowing yourself to be aware of your anger. Sometimes we confuse anger with power. It seems that angry people have a lot more power than people who are not angry. And, we ourselves feel more powerful when we get up a good head of steam. It’s not actually steam. It is brain chemicals and adrenaline, and to this extent, at least, there is a sense of power. But this is not true power, this is just bluster. Real power comes when we have harnessed our anger and when we have conscious rational control over our behavior, i.e., when we are making good choices to bring about all the things that we want. What we really want, if we are honest with ourselves, includes the various outcomes that we seek and the good will of those from whom we seek them. This cannot be obtained with bluster.

Anger also comes out in a variety of forms that are not so much destructive to relationships or to those around us as to ourselves. We act it out in a variety of ways that are at the very least counter-productive and at worst self-destructive. I believe that probably all addictions have a fairly large component of anger. I have never met an addict that wasn’t struggling with a lot of anger.

It also needs to be said that anger is a normal and natural part of grief. Of course if we are honest we must recognize that we have a lot of this grief over what happened to us. We may not feel very attached to our perpetrators. We may not feel attached at all now. But at one time we wanted to feel a sense of attachment to them. The loss of that wished for attachment is an occasion for grief. And of course a part of that grief is anger.

The challenge is to get in touch with our anger, past and present. We need to allow ourselves to feel it and to express it appropriately, at least to ourselves and ideally also to a trusted close confidant. Next we need to assess what our wants and needs are. Then we can set about figuring out how best to get them met. This is what I mean by the constructive use of anger.

Desired Outcome: To help facilitate our healing process by reconnecting with the anger that we necessarily must have had due to the difficulties we suffered as children, and then, to learn to use our present-day anger constructively.

Discussion Starters: How in touch are you with your anger about your trauma history? What things have you done to try to get in touch with your anger? What hesitation have you felt about trying to get in touch with that anger? What things have worked? How do you feel about anger in general? How do you feel about angry people? Are you able to see, or at least allow, that anger might actually be a good thing, a positive force? Can you see that anger, directed constructively, can be the impetus for creating positive results? Do you need time to practice using anger appropriately and constructively? How might you go about practicing this?

Try This: If you don’t feel much anger, or you don’t feel your anger about your trauma history very often, think about how you would feel if similar things were being done today to a child that you care about. Now recognize that you are that child. Can you make the transition from outrage on behalf of another to outrage on your own behalf?

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John C. Flanagan is a LCSW in Portland, Oregon. He specializes in working with adults who experienced traumatic abuse or neglect as children. Learn more about John at www.johncflanaganlcsw.com .

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Lisa Brookes Kift is a therapist in Marin County, CA., writer and creator of The Toolbox at LisaKiftTherapy.com.  See more mental health articles. 

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