The purpose of anger is that it often can open a door to being able to articulate the things that have somehow "hurt" an individual. It is also a part of the grieving process as well because it can represent the anger of something "lost" to the individual as a result of abuse and neglect and proper nurturing.

What you have discribed is a child that learned how to withdraw and become emotionally numb. That would make sense if a child did not have access to a nurturing presence that was willing to help them feel and understand these emotions. Many who disassociate and withdraw from talking about a challenged history do so because they never really had someone help them or allow them to feel emotions. Often children learned how to find ways of not being seen or heard somehow because they were often punished or abused in some way. Or even allowed to have their own boundaries that are respected by others. It is no wonder a child would withdraw in an effort to have some kind of boundary right?

One of the challenges I had myself was that whenever I tried to talk my father always interupted me to correct the way I tried to talk about anything really. I got so I began to actually struggle to talk, especially to adults and I actually had a kind of studder from my brain coming up with words and getting them to come out of my mouth. Also by being the youngest child in my family, my siblings tended to interupt and talk over me a lot as well. I also learned that the emotions of others around me had to come first as well. So in a way early on I was learning how to become a codependent, long before I would ever even hear that word, much less know what it meant.

Actually, what helped me was playing by myself and having my dolls and play animals talk to each other and then I used to read aloud to myself and later what helped was babysitting for children as they loved having me talk to them and read to them and rarely if ever insisted on correcting me.

When I witnessed so much of what I had created and loved destroyed and broke down and developed PTSD, what made it worse was how upon reaching out for help all the ways I was talked over, interupted, misdiagnosed, and being told in one way or the other not to feel. I began to feel anger that I did not even know I had in me too. I have been working on that a lot too. I have been working on it in ways others have no idea I am working on it too. Especially here in these forums.

You probably have anger, you just don't know it, I didn't.