Lack of anger and memories

[swanlake]

I’ve been having some more counselling and spoke a bit today about past events and my feelings towards them.

I don’t know whether it’s just that the emotional cruelty, physical violence etc were just so normalised, I can’t remember many things about time with my abuser though the humiliation, shame, terror etc are vivid, sometimes even nightmares and flashbacks.

I had some abuse-specific counselling previously and we talked about my lack of anger about the way that I was treated, even trying to deal with it with humour.

I’m not really sure what to try to do, whether I can get the anger out somehow and what I could try to do that whilst i have support in counselling again.

[Lisa]

Hi Swanlake,

Thank you for your post. I’m sorry to hear about your situation. When you have been through a lot of trauma- repressing those memories can be your brains way of trying to protect you. Its good that you are going to counselling and having that support you deserve. Anger can be seen as a negative emotion and you may have felt you weren’t able to feel that way when you were in that situation. You do have a right to be angry and may need time to heal and to process those emotions.

Best Wishes

Lisa

[Bananaboat]

My counsellor explained that, like Lisa said, our brains protect us and block out certain memories. I’m finding memories are starting to return as I go through the sessions usually in the week, odd things just creeping out. They also explained that it’s a bit like the grief cycle where you might experience feelings of anger, go into denial all the way through to acceptance. They said anger might take a while to come as we’ve been conditioned for so long so have almost forgotten how to show or feel it. They also mentioned possibly EDMR for unblocking memories. Not sure if any of this helps

[swanlake]

It definitely makes sense to be conditioned to repress anger and not have the right to express it towards an abuser. It seems important to experience anger as part of healing and I’d like to try helpful techniques to let it out.

I’m a bit scared about remembering stuff. I feel like it’s all unpleasant memories and I don’t want to remember anything. It feels like the whole ‘relationship’ was a fake as my abuser went on to abuse actual children under the age of 16 and I was very young when I met him.

Maybe I can help my brain by remembering things dispassionately. I think that I’d rather do that with a trauma focused counsellor. I’ve had sessions before but can always go back for more.

I also wonder if it’s necessary to remember things. I’m not sure if in therapy for child abuse people are asked to recall instances of abuse as part of their healing apart from in an EMDR situation where that’s mysteriously helpful.

[Author]

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