Why am I so angry at my family? (And the crushing guilt that follows) | East London Therapy
Home: Usually four walls, inhabited by people connected through blood. A place of love, of return, and of safety.
Home: Also a place where you can feel a deep sense of loneliness, hurt, anger, and sadness.
We often hear people say that if you don’t feel safe or appreciated in a particular environment, you should leave. But what do we do when it’s our family? What do we do when it’s our home?
How do we say, “I’m feeling really hurt and alone. I feel like no one’s paying attention to me”, to the people who don’t want to listen, or refuse to do anything about it?
When we feel unable to voice our hurt to the very people causing it - our parents, our siblings - we swallow it. We keep swallowing it until it starts to bubble like a cauldron.
Eventually, that trapped pain begins to change shape. It manifests as a sudden flash of anger. As a heavy, quiet rage. As deep-seated resentment.
To make matters worse, guilt creeps in, leaving us feeling as though we’re wrong for feeling this way about those closest to us, especially in the fleeting moments when everything feels good between us.
So, what do we do with it? What do we do with the anger we’ve been suppressing and the guilt that keeps spilling over?
What do we do with our silenced pain?
It can seem like an impossible task: being asked to pay close attention to the very feelings we’ve become accustomed to burying. There can be fear in facing them, and a great deal of discomfort in allowing ourselves to feel what we’ve spent so long trying not to.
You might ask yourself: “What if it’s too much for me to handle? What if I face it and things still don’t change? What is the point?”.
The way I see it, we’re faced with two choices:
We continue to ignore and abandon our feelings, our pain, our voice.
Or, with a great deal of courage, we slowly begin to give them space to breathe. To exist. To speak to us, so that we might begin to understand what they’re trying to tell us.
Becoming the emotion:
Anger is often labelled a ‘negative’ emotion. You’ll often hear things like: “They’re so angry”, “Stop being so moody”, “It’s not a big deal, get over it” or “Now, look what you’ve done”.
It’s no wonder such a normal and healthy emotion can feel so difficult to express. So often, it’s met with hostility, dismissal or punishment. And, over time, the way our anger and pain are received by others can become the way we learn to respond to those feelings within ourselves.
The clue is in the title of this blog: “Why am I so angry”, rather than “Why do I feel so angry”.
There’s a subtle but important difference between the two. We begin to see ourselves as our negative emotions, as though we embody them. As though they define who we are.
Always angry. Always an inconvenience. Always overreacting.
And so, we begin to belittle our own pain. We silence our inner voice. We stop listening to what it might be telling us:
“I feel abandoned.”
“I feel unimportant.”
“It’s unfair that I am being treated this way.”
"What have I done to deserve this?”
Perhaps, beneath all that anger, there is a part of you that has been hurting for a very long time. A part you’ve learned to convince that it isn’t hurting at all, that its feelings don’t matter, or that it’s easier to stay silent than to risk not being heard. A part that hasn’t felt understood or taken seriously. And perhaps the question isn’t how to get rid of that anger, but what might happen if we finally began to listen to it.
Finding space and control:
Therapy with me is real. That means I will always be transparent about what I feel is and isn’t in our control. Whilst we cannot change or prevent the actions of others, we can explore how we respond to them.
It might feel like a hopeless place to be at first. But slowly, you may begin to discover what it feels like to meet your own needs in ways you may never have experienced before, creating space for a different kind of relationship with yourself and your emotional wellbeing.
In our space, we can welcome these suppressed feelings as we might welcome a guest in our home. They don’t have to stay for long, but we can make space for them when they arrive. We can listen to what they’re trying to tell us, why they’ve shown up in the first place, what they might be offering, and what they might be trying to protect.
In your own time, we can begin to build a relationship with your inner voice and learn to listen to it rather than silence it. When we begin to make space for what we’ve been holding inside, something incredible can happen to the cauldron. When anger is allowed to breathe and be embraced, it no longer has to scream to get your attention. By giving your pain a safe place to simply exist, you give yourself permission to heal, even if the environment around you stays exactly the same.
If you’d like some support in easing that pressure and and learning to meet your anger with curiosity rather than judgement, you’re welcome to book a free consultation with me today.
