Granite, my T didn't try to make me not angry at others--just the opposite. A big part of my depression was probably because I'd only been able to be angry with myself, blame myself. He wanted me to feel the anger, but feel it appropriately and connect it to those who abused me. I didn't typically feel anger toward other people, more often than not, I'd feel hurt and disappointed by their not meeting my inappropriate expectations of them. I see you doing that when you decide you're horrible and deserve no better. Anger at the world in that sense is a distraction from looking at the source of the anger.

Anger at those who abused us isn't a problem--that's righteous anger. But I couldn't feel that as a child, and as my T often reminded me, it wasn't safe to recognize that anger when I was a child because children need adults--they can't survive without the bond to adults, even when that bond is abusive. But as an adult, I could survive experiencing that anger because I could take care of myself. I didn't need inappropriate anger to protect me from pain. Of course, it didn't feel that way--the power of any feeling long suppressed is enormous, and when you've not been allowed to learn how to safely experience feelings as a child, they can feel dangerous and overwhelming. But the bond with my T created that emotional space that made it safe to allow myself to slowly experience the fullness of those dangerous feelings. He provided the protection that I couldn't provide for myself. I had to risk what felt like internal destruction--feeling the anger as connected to those people who were so powerful in my child's mind--while choosing to believe in my T that he would keep me safe. And I didn't need to do it all at once--step by step was fine--he could control the process that I felt was uncontrollable.

Only after that developemental experience, and the experience of being nurtured and validated in a way that was missing as a child, was it possible for me to have an adult relationship to those feelings: not rationalizing them away by deciding everyone is horrible, or that the world is horrible, or that I'm so defective there is no place for me in the world. The anger is, in fact, reasonable and appropriate: people who abuse children should arouse our anger because abusing children is morally wrong and inhumane.

Righteous anger isn't driven by unmet needs, nor vengefulness. It's not generalized to everyone, but targeted to individuals who perpetrate harm. In that sense, anger is an emotion of positive power, rather than negative destruction. What one does with the anger is a conscious choice, rather than an unconscious imperative. Some choose to channel that power into advocacy, some into protecting others in their life, some into expanding their circle of protection, some into becoming their best self, some into forgiveness. I think each person has to find their own way with that.

So it isn't about changing our perspective of the world, though that's a consequence. It's about changing our perspective about ourselves, and that begins with the willingness to share our unfiltered internal life with someone who can support that process of reexperiencing it in order to understand and accept and transform it, so that we are able to live a freely chosen life.