I have trouble connecting to my anger.

[massaki]

It's hard to connect to my anger because i am scared of it. I live with my mother and i want to get a job, but it's hard to do anything without being connected to my anger.  One time i was connected to my anger after thinking of my childhood and going through some of it and i gained the ability to apply for a job in person  something which i have  been struggling with for many months now. When i got home and saw my mother i had violent fantasies of killing her for all the times she beat me, made me feel like killing myself and the times she got the men in my family to verbally and physically assault me. I always had violent fantasies and i even almost burned my house down wanting to kill everyone in it when i was about 5 or 8 like around there.After the ages of 11,  I started to  attack myself and made myself depressed and docile, it was a choice then to hurt these people as my rage began to grow.   I did have confrontations with them but i usually just hide or go limp if someone is doing something to me. Like when my uncle choked me, i didn't fight him back, i was looking at my mom to stop him, but she didn't, so i got angry got him off of my punched him in the face. He stopped after i fought back, but i was later blamed for the fight he started by my mother. I was sticking up for my 3year old  cousin. My uncle was screaming at him and making fun of him because he couldn't find his diapers which were in a locked room. For the most part i went docile again because shit like that happened everyday, so i quit life.  Now i want to get out of this hell whole and the only way that seems effective is getting angry at the situation that i am in in order to change it. I keep on trying to make myself docile every time i get angry, i think in fear of acting out against them and fear of their wrath when i am not docile. i m also trying to reject reality and think of things as more peaceful when i do this, but the peace is a lie. I am fat and i am destroying my body and my capabilities of ever recovering from this. I do want to go to therapy, but i have to leave this trashcan first and that means i have to get a job. The one i applied to the owner said she didnt have anything open, but she asked me to leave my name and phone number.  

 

 If anyone has any experience with this, any at all, i would like your advice.

[InquisitorM]

First and foremost I just want to say how incredibly sorry I am for the physical violence in your life. I mean, I'm sorry for all of the violence in your life, but I can sympathise with the mind- and blame-games from personal experience and I feel that such will come across in my reply, but the physical violence is something I have had very little experience of. As such, I feel the need to single it out as something I can't even imagine.

 

Now, I'm not sure I'd say it was advice per se, but there are two things that spring immediately to mind regarding what you have written:

 

Firstly, my own access to difficult or repressed emotions has been strongly affected by my ability to express the framework by which those emotions come about, so when I look at phrases like 'I keep on trying to make myself docile every time i get angry' I get a sense of where the limits of your ability to express yourself are. For example, you're not 'trying' to do anything, you are doing something. Framing it in a positive light (that is to say as an activity, rather than a 'positive experience') has always been very useful to me, so I invite you to try and extrapolate what it is you are doing when this kind of situation comes up.

 

Further, the phrasing in question is more of a fixed narrative than a situation that invites curiosity. In the same vain as discussed in Stef's Real-Time Relationships (available for free), it helps to consciously put a mental moment between the event and your reaction to it. When you supply a narrative for what is happening, you risk suppressing the possibility for a conversation. I often freeze up when I get angry, too, but many years of therapy – and no philosophy – have brought to to understand that I don't freeze up because I get angry. First, I can look at what exact event is triggering my anger – usually being ignored, trivialised, or dismissed – and use that to understand what I am gaining from getting angry or have gained from it in the past. Ideally, this is the kind of thing you can work on in therapy, and I think everyone here sincerely wishes that you managed to get some in due course, but right now I can at least try to help you understand that you don't know yet to make navigating such strong emotions more manageable.

 

Secondly, I find myself extremely curious about the relationship between your level of communication skill and the validity of communication as a pursuit in your family and immediate surroundings. I'm not saying this to attack you, but the lack of capital I's and extra or missing spaces really give me a sense of actual competency mixed with... almost despair, I guess. As if it really can't make much difference. Naturally I could be so far off base that it's not funny, but writing is something of a recent passion, to me, and so I feel confident letting those instincts off the leash to see if they can sniff anything out. I mean, it would stand to reason that quality of communication is hardly the norm in your environment, and it seems unlikely that you have a lot of emotional freedom to be critiqued for something as simple as writing. Yet, writing is how we come across on an internet forum and is therefore linked to our self-esteem and self-worth, so I'm wondering how it feels to even have it noticed, let alone commented on. It seems highly plausible to me that anything that comes up with regard to that would likely be a factor in getting a job.

 

I hope that gives you something to think about, and I look forward to hearing from you.

 

And again, I am deeply sorry for the experiences you've had. How old are you, If I might ask?

 

 

-Scott 'Inquisitor' Mence

[massaki]

My first response when i read your critique was "Fuck" You are correct in your analysis of my writing. I don't put much effort into writing and I am in despair most of the time. Since I was younger i loved reading and writing, but when i wrote people were able to see through my writing all of my anger and that i hated my mother. My tutor saw that and pointed it out. I wrote this story called Zane, that was about me basically, in a fake society and he uses his anger to break from the fake society to find true friends and family. It's funny i wrote that when i was 13 and I'm trying to do that now. 

[InquisitorM]

Well, you may have thought 'fuck', but to illustrate the point I'll return to what I actually wrote:

 

 

Yet, writing is how we come across on an internet forum and is therefore linked to our self-esteem and self-worth, so I'm wondering how it feels to even have it noticed

 

I asked how you felt and you told me what you thought. Now that I've challenged you again, have another go at seeing if you can focus on how you feel.

 

There's a high chance you just can't. Don't worry about it. I mean, it's important and all, but it's perfectly understandable for someone in your position to have a great deal of work ahead of you to have easy interactions with your feelings. I expect writing provided a way for you to feel something that was otherwise unsafe.

 

Let me know how the experience goes for you. There may be some online CBT guides that can help you, and I know someone who works in that field who could give me a general idea of how appropriate that might be for you. I wouldn't want to suggest anything with the potential to cause short-term harm while you're still living with your mother.

[Quadrewple]

For the most part i went docile again because shit like that happened everyday, so i quit life.  Now i want to get out of this hell whole and the only way that seems effective is getting angry at the situation that i am in in order to change it. I keep on trying to make myself docile every time i get angry, i think in fear of acting out against them and fear of their wrath when i am not docile. i m also trying to reject reality and think of things as more peaceful when i do this, but the peace is a lie. I am fat and i am destroying my body and my capabilities of ever recovering from this. I do want to go to therapy, but i have to leave this trashcan first and that means i have to get a job. The one i applied to the owner said she didnt have anything open, but she asked me to leave my name and phone number.  

 

 If anyone has any experience with this, any at all, i would like your advice.

 

The first sentence of this quote is very interesting.  You went docile because those terrible things repeatedly happened and so you "quit life".  I believe I understand what you mean by that, and it could also be said that you chose life.  Obviously your safety was constantly threatened and if you had continued to fight back, especially since your mother tried to hold you morally responsible for the fights, your actual physical safety was being threatened by the police and law who could have thrown you in juvenile hall or jail or even prison if things got even more out of hand than they already were (i.e. a fight escalated to the point of serious injury, or even attempted murder).  But I think I get what you mean by quit life - you had to sit back and basically be a slave to the evil assholes who raised you.

 

I disagree with the way you phrased the thread title.  Based on what I read in your post, I would phrase it as "If I connect to my rage which was beaten into me by those who raised me, it makes me want to do things which are criminally punishable and deemed unacceptable by society."  Saying "I have trouble connecting to my anger" seems highly inaccurate to me.  Your caregivers were the ones who put you the position where you have this rage inside which you cannot express without being viewed as mental ill or a criminal.

 

I'm afraid I can't in good conscience give you advice for what to do because I recently got a job and still haven't moved out even though I have the means to and had horrible parents as well.  But I want to tell you how sorry I am that the people who were supposed to teach you to walk tried to cripple you, and how glad I am that they were unsuccessful, and that I hope you will find what you are looking for on this forum and in life.