Quote:
Originally Posted by Alatea
@ LabRat27,
I admire so much your fight response, and I also do not underestimate all other ways of coping, as all of us were fighting for ourselves to survive, one way or another.
My first instinctive reaction to violence was also fight, before I was broken into freeze, that became my coping mechanism for longest time. As a result I literally could not express anger for decades. I would feel anger, as a heated band pressing all around my head, and I could feel the blood rushing to my face and neck, but I could not find way to express it, basically I would switch off in every such situation.
However, in my dreams, or rather nightmares, I managed in the last three years to express anger unrecognizable to me otherwise, to scream loudly in a distorted, howling voice that scared the hell out of my husband and probably all of our neighbors, and to twitch violently with my whole body, fighting the sense of powerlessness. So far this anger was turned towards my mother, for not seeing me, for not protecting me, and for emotionally abusing me my whole life. I haven't even scratched the anger towards my father, it is still off limits, as is most of my memory of the abuse.
So, to me it seems that dreams unlocked some of my conflicting emotions, and brought about some realizations that become elements of my healing. The most obvious being the changed pattern of my response from freeze back to fight, as I managed to actually express some of my anger towards my mother in reality, for the first time.
Have you considered the thought that perhaps this anger that you feel now in your nightmares is not the same old feeling, the one that fueled your fight response then, but the new feeling of anger, of an adult who feels protective of the child who had to fight so badly for dignity? I do not want to sound presumptuous, and of course I cannot know your experience, but it is just a thought - do you perhaps associate your anger back then with your feeling of powerlessness, as it was locked in that repeating circle of anger-fight-powerlessness? Because you are not powerless now, and you have every right to express that anger now for what has been done to you, as much as you had the right to express it then, by fighting.
I hope you will not think I was out of line with expressing these thoughts.
Take care,
A. |
I'm glad you've been able to get in touch with some of your anger. Anger can be a very normal and healthy response when we are threatened or in danger.
I think my own anger in my dreams really is the anger of back then, but that that was the self-protective anger of a child who knew that what was happening to her was wrong.
Over the years there were a lot of external influences that tried to get me to repress that anger, to placate my father, to get along and play nice. I bottled it up and stopped letting myself feel it. I forgot about it for a very long time.
It wasn't until I started digging into this stuff in therapy and getting flashes of this intense powerless frustrated anger, like reliving an emotional memory, that I even remembered that I'd felt that way, so often and for so long.
I think I have to work on not judging that child for her anger, being proud of her for standing up for herself and telling her that she was absolutely allowed to defend herself rather than resenting her for not being more "mature" and "composed."
Current adult me has, I believe, lost touch with that very healthy response of self-protective anger.
In a way I think I'm the opposite of you, for it is my anger towards my mother that I have yet to allow myself to feel. She failed to protect me and at times was emotionally damaging in her own way, but I could not allow myself to be angry at her because I needed there to be one parent I could trust and look up to. My therapist has noted that any time a criticism of her comes up I am quick to make excuses, defend her, rationalize her behavior, and explain why the problem was really me.