When Your Warranted Anger Makes Emotionally Unavailable People Mislabel You as Crazy
When your boundaries are crossed, anger is what protects you and is very normal and NOT crazy.
As animals, we humans have the intuition and the physical and emotional ability to protect ourselves from invasion of our personal space. This can come out in actually fighting off a predator physically by hitting, biting, punching, or kicking; hearing or knowing on some level to get out and run away fast; or by emoting. Screaming and yelling are ways we try to escape danger, and these are not only very normal ways of protecting ourselves, they are sometimes quite necessary or we wouldn’t have them built into our earthly vessels. Unfortunately, in our society, many of us have been trained for many hundreds of years to “act civilized” even when we are being brutally abused. Because of this “training,” many of us have this belief that anger is “wrong” or “bad.” As children, and especially for us girls, we are told that anger is akin to being “crazy” or “emotionally unstable” and that showing any sign of it is a really terrible thing to do. So, we listen and we obey. We stuff our anger with food, we cry more (unless we are told we are babies for crying), and we submit, placate, and appease instead. We are kind to the bully, polite to the sexual abuser, and accommodating to everyone. We paste a big, fat, fake smile on our faces and pretend that we are not angry when people touch our bodies without permission, talk about us in front of us like we aren’t there, condescend to, mock, and ridicule us in front of our peers, hit or call us names, or belittle us for being “fat” in front of the entire school. You get it. All of these things would cause anyone to feel angry. I think we can all agree that these kinds of treatment warrant true outrage, right?
Think about this though. What happened to you when you were a child and were hurt in some way by an abusive parent or caregiver? Were you allowed to scream at or fight your abuser? Were you told that yelling and screaming was wrong? Were you hit for reacting? (Or “overreacting” as many of us were accused of back then.) Were you completely ignored after being molested by your babysitter and did they act like nothing outrageous and alarmingly horrific had just happened, leaving you completely confused and feeling violated? Did life carry on as usual after your young self had been completely changed from the inside out and your innocence was forever lost after you had just been touched inappropriately and harmed deeply? Often, we are afraid to react in a fighting way to abuse. We fear that it will bring on more abuse or even death. Children don’t know if they might actually be killed by their abusers, so instead, they feel shame. Shame creates a protective barrier in the form of inner criticisms that keep a child small and behaving so that they will not be harmed more. We generally react by freezing in shame and fear or even fawning to make our abuser “like” us. We hope on some level that it will help them see our value so they won’t abuse us anymore. The freeze keeps our anger stuffed down and hidden and also helps us play small, not show off, and absolutely never, ever be big or to shine.
However, the anger that is caused by the abuse does not go away. As mentioned above, it is stuffed far down and forgotten on a conscious level. In order to go on as usual, we can channel the anger into more socially acceptable activities that might also get us praise and good standing with the abusers so that we can hopefully avoid abuse. Becoming the best student alive, winning at all the athletics in the world, being the most brilliant pianist in town, or making a mean casserole so that the abuser will be happy and possibly not abuse us are some ways that we might try to escape future abuse. Conversely, adding layers of fat might be the very best way that a child has to protect herself from unwanted attention from the opposite gender or the gender who abused her or to become the “fat girl” to make sure the girls at school like her and accept her and don’t feel threatened by her beauty. After all, fitting in, not rocking the boat, and not outshining others will “make” them happy and a fawning trauma victim wants to please, please, please and never make anyone unhappy. He or she might starve themselves to become “invisible” and to not take up too much space. They hope that by “disappearing,” they will be overlooked by the abuser the next time they go into a rage. The abuse victim might want to seem “dumb” too because being “better than” others or their abuser in any way could make their abusive and jealous parent feel threatened and become enraged and hurt them.
When you encounter people who are not emotionally available to themselves (and, by extension, to others), it can lead to some real problems for you. First of all, if the emotionally unavailable person is also emotionally, verbally, physically, or sexually abusive toward you, you absolutely will not get any kind of validation or compassion from them when you start screaming or standing up to them when they abuse you. An abuser abuses; they are not in it to tell you that you’re right that they are scum for how they have mistreated you. They will, in fact, make sure to convey to others just how absolutely nuts you are for freaking out about something that should be freaked out about. When you are standing up for your child who is being bullied and abused or you are angry about how someone has wronged you, you are allowed to feel this anger or even rage. You might have decades of suppressed anger that is finally being set free. Now, this does not mean that you abuse others with it, but you are allowed to express it in a healthy way. Again, there is nothing wrong with anger. It’s just how we use it that can create problems. Remember that we need our anger some of the time and in certain circumstances.
The emotionally unavailable or narcissistically abusive people in your life have layers of their own hidden shame that help them deny culpability for their crimes. They feel justified and believe that it is the best thing for you to be abused (whether consciously or unconsciously). It will “help” you be a “better” person if they straighten you out by hitting you, calling you awful and demeaning names, or gaslighting and manipulating you into doing it their way, even if it runs counter to your personal values. The people in your life that you have known before healing your trauma, such as friends and family, can very often be more on the side of the abusers in your life (or even BE the abusers in your life) and they absolutely will not validate that your anger is okay. They liked you being a doormat who smiled through the pain they inflicted onto you. So, once you start speaking up, yelling out in rage against wrongdoing, and voicing your opinions about anything, your abusers, and anyone who is on that side of the coin, will simply write you off as “crazy” and “unstable” because they are not available and open to their own emotions and appropriate reactions to abuse (likely because they too were abused at a young age), and because they preferred you being silent and passive while they harmed you and used you as their personal punching bag (verbally and emotionally as well as physically or sexually).
When you heal your past trauma, the anger that has been frozen into place into the deepest parts of your body starts to thaw out. You suddenly have a voice and you have choice, too. You start to create real and healthy boundaries and when you or someone you love is being threatened in some way, you will stand up to the abuser and fight them, yell at them, and do whatever it takes to create your own power—once and for all. You validate yourself because you know that protecting yourself—your body, your mind, your life, and your peace—is what is most important. You stop abandoning yourself for people who cannot and will not see you, understand you, and who will continue to abuse you because they have not healed. You no longer make others feel happy or at peace at the cost of your own happiness or peace. You walk away from the things that drain and hurt your being because you love yourself first.
When you are ready to heal your past wounding and step into your fullest power, confidence, and strength so that you will never again be abused by anyone, please contact me and I will help you.
