Can this be done without demonizing?

I had t this morning, and we talked a lot about last week and how to handle those tips of situations in the future. One thing that we did was discuss imagery user in attempts to lessen anxiety and hard emotional responses. She gave me an image to think about but it was so full of anger and hate that she denied it right away saying that I wasn't angry enough for that image, yet.

I found this very strange as I don't understand why I would be angry ever. Yes this was a terrible thing that they've done, but that doesn't make them bad people. I've done bad things too, and I would hope that those things don't elect me for a lightning bolt to the face or any other many punishing things that one could imagine.

My question is why does she want me to get mad at both the situation and the assailants? Can this trauma work be done with the idea that they are people just as I am, and though their actions were regrettably hurtful, the deserve help and not punishment? Do we always, to get better ourselves, need to make monsters of those who have hurt us?

My therapy hasn't demonised my abusers. They gave their own histories, but, having said that, I'm not in therapy to emphasis with them.

I haven't demonized anyone. But I have been able to start letting them take responsibility for their actions rather than blaming myself. And yes, it makes me angry that their decisions took away from me and my life. I am very angry at them. But anger doesn't equal demonization.

I need "other"--- I am angry at my dad for the things he has done (and those things he didn't but should have--like pay my mom child support) I don't think I can forgive someone who has zero remorse.

I have no idea why, but I keep a minimal relationship with him. He always hurts me, again and again I don't know why I try at all.

Agreed that I don't demonize him---he made his own bed.

I'm angry at people who have hurt me, but as time goes by my anger lessens and I move on. I try to keep negative, hurtful people out of my life.......I have no desire to be brought down to their level.

I have no desire to be brought down to the level of the abusers.. it's hard not to hate them at times when they are absolutely dripping with hatred. But I'm a better person than them (obviously!) and I'm working on it.

I think it's entirely possible to be angry without hate or demonizing. I am slowly learning this - I've never allowed myself to feel or express anger, because I equated anger with drunken rage or passive-aggressive guilt tripping. I was never able to make the distinction between feelings of anger and the actions others took when they were feeling what I thought was anger. I was terrified of anger because I didn't want to be like them. I was afraid that if I let myself feel anger, I would act as they did. I'm discovering that I CAN let myself feel anger at situations or people and not have it consume me or act in ways that I find inappropriate or frightening. I can feel the anger, acknowledge it, talk about it, rather than keep it pushed down and not recognized. For me, allowing myself to feel the anger was a necessary step, because it's something I had denied myself. I needed to be authentic about my feelings and process them, before I could move forward in to healing.

I only hate one person. I never thought I would be happy to hear about a person's death...but I will be relieved to hear about his.

I am very angry about what he did to me. He's not a demon though. He's a person with good and bad traits, just like everyone else. I'm sure something awful happened to him to cause him to do the things that he did. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't be angry at what happened to me.

I get where you are coming from; and like you i'd like to overcome without feeding into the monster that I could. T is very open about her disdain for a certain person in my life. She thinks he didn't do what he was supposed to do to protect me and she says that she can see the scars that his choices have left on me. However, she know that while disappointed in the way things went, I just don't hold that anger for him. At first she implied that I just wasn't ready to 'process' it; but it wasn't long before she admitted that she in fact was the one who was not ready to forgive him for what he'd done (her words). I think that it is a very possible but unusual to take this route. Good luck holding on to whatever choice you make on how you want to process things.

This post might be triggering, I'm not sure. Don't read it if you feel like you might be easily triggered, just to be sure.

My father made my childhood a living nightmare of fear and brutality, and I know that it damaged me in very significant ways, ways which I may never be able to fix. I still feel intense anger when I think about it, but not anger at him. I feel like I had my childhood and my innocence stolen from me and completely destroyed. I feel anger at what happened to me and the consequences of it, and I grieve the child that was lost in those darkened days, the child I was and the man I feel I should have grown to be. I feel like it turned me into a monster. However much anger I feel about it though, I do not harbor hate for him. I know he was a very troubled man himself. I know that now that he has turned his life around over the last few years, he feels immense guilt for what he did. I cannot hate the man. I am a grudge bearing person by nature, I have a hard time letting any perceived or actual slight go. And yet I cannot hold a grudge against the one who hurt me most.

There was a caregiver when I was very very young who abused me in the CSA kind of way, who I also feel like stole my innocence and twisted my soul. I have not seen, heard from or heard about this person since I was about 5 years old. I used to hate this person with a burning passion, though I no longer do. When I was younger I used to fantasize about tracking them down and ending their life. Now that I'm older I very, very rarely even give them a second of thought.

When I tell T about serious things she tends to offer some kind of explanation. Some time I misinterpret this for her making excuses for them.
I am angry at two people big time. Not 24/7 but a lot of the time. No idea what I will feel in a years time.

See my feelings towards what happened to me are being questioned by my t. She is saying that I'm not ready to feel angry or upset about what happened, and I need to learn to reorganize my thoughts about the events. Even learning to call it abuse instead of "events". She is encouraging me to place blame onto them as I was just a child and had no ability to escape the situations (though I don't think this is true at all). She wants me to "find my anger and place it on the correct people." The thing is her wording is turning these people (my... abusers) into terrible people. She deems them as "bad" and it hurts to hear her say things like that about them because they were/are not bad people. At one point they were friends. I have a lot of empathy, but also pity, for them because I can't imagine what a life must have looked like to allow these thoughts to enter their heads. I get upset when I think about the bad things that might have happened to them to create these impulses and drives.

I listened to a podcast about a young boy who was addicted to child pornography. I really empathized for the boy and was so proud of his strength and courage to come out into the world and attempt to get help for the disturbing thoughts he was having. But he was met with much hesitation and fear on many levels. I have to wonder how my abusers (hate this) would have faired if they had felt able to get help. I've always felt throughout my childhood (and I indeed remember it as something that I held onto as a child going through these difficult times) that they were sick and in need of attention. I have always felt a bit of responsibility to them, as well as to myself, that if I would have just told someone, said something to anyone instead of just sitting and enduring it, they could get the help that they needed and they wouldn't be in such pain (and I wouldn't be in such pain).

So, no, I don't keep them in my life. When I see her out living her life (the second is dead) I am struck with terrible confusion as I enjoy the fact that she has friends, and she is able to be out in the world in a somewhat normal way, but I have terrible body memories and get physically ill. My therapist says that "a part of [me], that remains little in many if not most ways, must feel terribly frightened and anxious for the impending pain that seeing them meant when [I] was young; while the adult, here-and-now, part of [me] is trying desperately to calm her by letting her know that she is not in danger now while attempting to rid [myself] of the self of failure towards not getting her help." I hope that that makes sense.

I don't feel that it is necessary to be angry, I don't think that it's necessary to deem some as bad people. In fact I think it worries me that she does this because it only adds to the idea that I am bad because I also have done bad things, though not to that extent by any stretch of the imagination. Why can't this be done peacefully?

Anger is a necessary and healthy sign in my opinion. You sound very afraid and inhibited in some ways describing your reaction to your abuser and like you're still invested in rationalizing the experience to an extent (all of which is par for the course).

I don't believe anyone needs to be demonized. I'm sure Hitler was nice to many many people. Very little in this life is all or nothing. But accepting the reality that some people act badly enough to tip the scales of judgement in favor of calling them bad is, I think, necessary, and particularly hard for those who have been abused.

If someone molested you, they did a very very bad thing. A horrible thing with far reaching consequences that you have had to suffer with. Anger shows that you value yourself and understand they violated you. The anger comes from an awareness of your boundaries and worth.

It's not the same as or necessary to demonize as to have a realistic angry reaction to being wronged when you were vulnerable. And that's a process that takes some long hard work for many people who've been abused.

Keep in mind, feeling and expressing anger and other powerful emotions doesn't mean living in those feelings forever: once you get to that place, process those feelings, they settle. You feel better, you make meaning of what happened, put it in perspective and go on healthier. You don't dwell in anger all the time.

My trauma history has left me very sensitive to injustice; that is a form of anger, but it is righteous or moral outrage not necessarily aggressive in nature. In other words, it is focused on the actions not the person and on justice and not revenge. I have had to basically give up this idea though because there is simply no way for me to ever address the various things that have happened. And as I have processed more of the trauma, I'm able to let go and put my energy toward building a good life.

Anger is a very healthy emotion. I was just reading about how it is closely connected to a sense of a strong self. In our culture, anger is the least acceptable emotion so we are mostly taught to suppress it, pretend it doesn't exist, some of us were probably even punished for having anger. So it is all the more difficult to be able to even recognize it, let alone have healthy ways of expressing it. Problem is, anger is still there anyway and will cause problems if not allowed the place it deserves. If this means that for a temporary period of time you go into a rage that is directed at people who caused harm, I see that as perhaps difficult to feel okay about, but not bad; in fact, it would seem to be honest about what the situation has produced. As long as acting out or fixation doesn't happen, I see it as perhaps an even necessary stage in some people recovering from trauma.

Anger is not about either punishment or making monsters. Anger is a feeling of something having been taken from us and we want it back. Not being angry when something is taken from us is akin to accepting that it is all right to take things from us.

Most people think that anger is about "doing" something to the other person, yelling at them, hating them, punching their lights out or holes in doors/the wall instead. Anger is our feeling and is for us to let us know what is going on with us. Insisting that one does not feel anger or not being aware of one's anger is a loss of one's self and, often, hiding behind the fear of what we think anger is (the yelling, screaming, punching, punishment, etc.). We don't want to be like we imagine so we conveniently just. . .aren't.

Anger is not to make us fearful or aggressive, it is to help us engage with another and help orient us. It is a very necessary emotion. Anger helps us with our self respect and shows us where our boundaries are/should be.

If my husband were to point at the last doughnut in the box after I had just eaten 3 in a row and say, "You going to eat that?" what could happen there?

I could hear criticism: he thinks I eat too much
I could hear a challenge: he thinks I have eaten more than my fair share
I could hear a simple yes/no question

Until therapy, I rarely heard yes/no questions for what they were: a request for information.

Either of the first two suppositions can be met with anger or shame. BUT, the first thing one should do in ANY conversation with another is make sure we have heard the situation correctly.

"I hear you saying you think I eat too much".
"I hear you saying you think I have eaten more than my fair share."
"Yes, I was going to eat that doughnut. Why, did you want it?"

If my husband replies, "Yes, I think you are a fat slob!" The next move is not to say, "Oh, okay, I'm sorry! I'll try to do better in the future" and tears

A response of, "Yes, you ate two of my doughnuts, you pig!" may get an "Oh! I'm sorry, I did not realize, let me go buy you two more" but there should not be any guilt, as long as you are speaking truly and did not realize and are able to make good on having taken two of someone else's doughnuts. But I would add a good boundary in there, "In the future, I would appreciate it if you would not call me names. When you call me names, I don't care as much about whether you get your share of the doughnuts or not."

Our anger is about us, not the other person. My husband being angry about his doughnuts being eaten is not about me! So, whether I am 125 pounds overweight or not (I am :-) is not on the table there and does not have to be focused on, just the "problem" of his doughnuts disappearing. His gratuitous "I think you are a fat slob" comment about what I am eating, only deserves my anger and boundary setting -- I was happy eating the doughnuts and my size/weight is not his concern. If I feel guilty eating the doughnuts, my anger is even greater, he is not helping me with his comment, he is deliberately hurting me with his own negative feelings about me. I NEVER deserve to be called ugly names. He would get an immediate, "Do not call me ugly names. I refuse to be around you if you do not speak to me with respect."

Situations happen. Only people (including our selves) can elicit feelings of anger in us. But our anger is ours and is not about the other person. Our anger is about who we are, what we want for ourselves and how we view ourselves and our world.

Good poll question. I picked #2 but wrestled between all of the options, mostly #2 and #4.. I'm mostly not angry, and mostly do not keep people in my life who have hurt me, but there's really no "as a rule" for me. Also it really depends on the degree of hurt, as some hurts simply come part and parcel with the territory of loving others.