I can't get angry.

[amanda_]

Hi, I'm new. I joined because I feel I have very helpful advice to give in a lot of areas on here.

 

I am 19 and have C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since what happened to me at 5 (sexual/physical/emotional abuse many times by baby sitter's boyfriend and then prolonged alcoholism by father/neglect/abuse) I have always reverted my anger into sadness or helplessness.

 

When I even think about getting angry, I start crying.

There are plenty of time throughout high school where I fly off the handle, throwing things at my parents or beating myself. If I can cause my parents hell, if I can be completely mad, act insane and irrational, that's the only time I feel better.

 

If I cry or feel helpless/anxious/paralyzed, then I get angrier.

 

Since 5, I have reverted my anger or any "unfair" feelings into sadness, "have to do the right thing", helplessness, and anxiety.

 

It's an automatic thing.

 

I need to express my anger because this is obvious very unhealthy and I have an entire life of anger. I don't know what anger is, so when it comes, it looks like I need booty juice to ever calm down, and I usually scream for hours until my throat is hoarse...and solve nothing.

 

Other than that, I am a master of emotional disguise. I am kind, passionate, and a free spirit. I am an artist/musician/writer, and am in a Chicago blues/rock band, and have a band of my own. I am off all my medication as of this week, and have quit all therapy.

 

I have been through 8 years of misdiagnosed medications, wrong therapies, and pointless hospitalizations until the spring of 2008 when we found out I had been abused through EMDR, a process of working through PTSD.

 

Does anyone know strategies/books/whatever!! to help? Does anyone have the same problem?; where they CAN'T get angry for unknown reasons???

[cantexplain]

 

Does anyone know strategies/books/whatever!! to help? Does anyone have the same problem?; where they CAN'T get angry for unknown reasons???

 

I think I sometimes don't get angry because I am blaming myself. In some cases I do have some part in the incident that gave rise to the resentment. In other cases I really did nothing and was an object of neglect or abuse by some person a person to whom I had no real choice but to have been subject. But again, I blame myself -- think I am the loser when it is the other person who is the at-fault party. Thus I get depressed and not angry.

 

One thing which sometimes unlocks the anger is to imaginarily sit the person down in a chair, then sit accross from them and begin to tell them what they did wrong, why it is wrong, how it makes me feel, and what I expect from them now for their wrongdoing. Of course, they just sit there (imaginarily, of course) and do and say nothing (for the most part - LOL) and this then really ticks me off. How could they just sit there and do nothing after what they did to me?

 

Seriously, try imaginarily sitting the person down and pretending to tell them what they did, how it makes you feel ...

[waveseer]

I highly suggest taking up martial arts. I couldn't even hit the pad when I started, I mean, it was just a pad! I had contained all of my "lashing out" emotions for so long I had forgotten how to let them out. I was afraid I would lose control and something bad would happen. In martial arts it's okay to hit stuff and kick stuff and defend yourself. It's a safe environment in which to learn control which greatly eased my fear. Now I can get angry and stay calm and say, "I am angry." Seems quite miraculous.