He used to try to get me to go in the woods with him and beat trees with bamboo. I never did...one time he took me down there and did it himself. I would feel awkward doing that. I still don't have a healthy way to express anger

You sound like me. I was never one to express my anger outwardly despite several therapists who were sure I needed to. I was great about keeping it in, and it was like a pressure cooker with a broken relief valve: I ended up depressed and anxious and suicidal.

I honestly never did blow up outwardly in my anger. My last therapist finally realized it was just not in my character to do so. I am sort of a stoic German and my therapist tapped into other ways to help me get that relief valve working. I think that is how the CBT stuff (other thread) tied into my healing. He helped me take whatever was going on in my present as a starting point for working back into my old thinking and ultimately the events that precipitated that thinking. He discovered that for me, very deliberately looking at specific events and acknowledging how they made me feel initially and perhaps more importantly, what they left me believing about myself, was enough to relieve that pressure and that inner rage. I didn't have to have some outward display of anger; I just needed to recognize and validate that initial hurt and the legacy of mistaken understanding that was fueling all that unexpressed rage.