Anger

I have never felt before that I was an angry person. I’ve felt angry. I have experienced anger. But I never felt like I had BECOME an angry person.

This year I feel like that has changed. I had a rough day today. And it’s been a rough year. Not the word I’ve ever had, but relentlessly stressful. Today I feel like anger has eaten me all up and I e become a part of it.

Has anyone else here felt this way?

I am Child abuse PTSD, and I a don't trust, don't believe life is fair, very cynical, and when younger (up to 40) had explosive anger. I am now older but often find my thoughts about my childhood running towards anger. Try to control my actions and interactions but can't control my thoughts.

I’m sorry for all that you’ve gone through Terry. I understand about trying to control the outward facing parts even though you can’t make it peaceful inside your head.

I’ve experienced abuse also, in childhood and then again as an adult in a relationship. PTSD sucks. The freezing up and the heart racing and nightmares are awful. This feels a little different somehow. Like I have just worn right through on the inside somewhere. It’s hard to be hopeful. And giving up isn’t an option, and I feel like I’m past being sad and just angry now at all of life. I almost miss being sad, because then I wished it was different and I guess I felt that it could have and should have been different. Now I just feel gritty. Like there isn’t anything else. Like I don’t want to think about happy things because they just make me angry. I don’t want this to be someone my kids have to live with. I don’t want to make them this angry. But I feel like just controlling the outward facing part isn’t good enough anymore. The inside part seems to be eating me alive and I’m having trouble caring about things that I really should care about. I find myself saying hurtful things, and being short tempered, when it isn’t anyone’s fault. But yet I don’t really care enough to try harder. I do, but it just feels like it takes all of my energy to keep all the rage from leaking out.

Wow that was like some one reading my past. Quite surreal. Could have written that myself. the whole thing. I will have to think about that and how I got from there to where I am now. I am away and heading home tomorrow. I will come back to you but will be a couple of day. I will PM you when I do.

Reading that was just like someone had taken my life and put it in print.

This is what I now know. PTSD has triggers. The physical and mental.

We get to know our physical, those things that create instant anxiety, high stress, and heightened senses, while others around us are unaffected.

I have also found mental triggers can be as wearing. They are those things, that turn our thoughts back to the past. How life has been unfair to us, how we have had to struggle while others skate free. Those thoughts left to run their course will lead us angry and or depressed. They are caused by triggers that are all around us. You stand in a shopping centre and hear a mother abuse a child. You go to a mothers day event where everyone gushes about how wonderful mothers are. An item on the news. Something that jogs a memory about getting fired because of our baggage and no one knew what was happening. All painful memories, that we need to tread around and not get stuck on.

Try and realise when this is happening and it sounds corny try and control it. Try and move your thoughts along and not get stuck there in that loop.

Wish I had more.

Good luck, if you keep trying it gets better.

Thank you so much Terry. What you are saying feels like it makes sense. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. It does help. I hate knowing that someone else has been through this, but I so appreciate that you understand and took the time to try to help me get through it a little easier than I would alone. I am sorry if I dredged up old bad memories and made you wade through them again. I wouldn’t want to do that to anyone.

I will try to keep your advice in mind. It feels like good advice that I’ve probably known before, but tend to forget too often when I’m running around full speed in the darkest corners of my head. Sometimes I don’t recognize the loop, but you are right.

Thank you

Yeah easier to say than do. Why I also talk about having interests, whether, news, movies, books, sport, whatever. Things we can mentally go to to take us out of these loops.

I once coached my son's baseball team. I used to rotate these young kids in and out of fielding positions, so the all could be infielders at times. Used to wake at night and then rearrange the fielding for three innings while lying in bed. Just something to control where my mind went rather than let it drift to the past.

Something people don't understand is that many of us have very little memory of our childhoods. We don't go back there, as the strongest memories are the worst. I find it hard to find a good one, as they are tucked under layers of very bad memories, somewhere now out of sight. Which is why family contact is hard. Mental triggers everywhere.