Anger is friend.

Anger is legitimate; anger is important; anger is normal. 

And, anger is maybe my least favorite thing to feel and my hardest feeling to regulate. Your mileage may vary. 

Ironically, it’s because anger IS valid, legitimate, and important, that makes it so hard to regulate. 

Many trauma survivors experience this: we had to swallow our anger for so long, in so many settings where anger was a perfectly normal and adaptive response, that our nervous system is just kind of done holding it in. 

When my anger gets triggered, there’s part of me that’s almost offended when I try to reel it in. 

It’s that part of me that knows it goddamn well SHOULD be angry— and also knows that getting shut down year and year has not been helpful or healthy. 

Anger can be incredibly distracting. 

When we hook into our anger, which is very frequently wired directly into our “fight” trauma response, it can be difficult to think about literally anything else. 

(It is for me, anyway.) 

Anger is a tough one to regulate, because by its very nature it demands we DO something. 

The evolutionary purpose of anger is to spur us into taking action. 

The only reason why anger has survived as core human emotion is because it had survival value for the cave-people of eons ago: when a competing cave-person tried to infringe upon our territory, steal our resources, or drag away our cave-spouse by the hair, it was the cave-people who could get pissed about it and fight back that survived. 

Thus, every time we’re in the position of having to regulate our anger, we’re working against reflexes shaped by eons of evolution. 

That is to say: you’re not alone or “defective” if you struggle to regulate your anger. 

Add to all of that the fact that anger is very often misunderstood and shamed in our culture. 

Anger is often cited as “immature,” evidence someone doesn’t have their sh*t together— and there’s no denying that poorly managed anger has absolutely hurt MANY people reading this. 

Many survivors reading this very likely believe that they do not have “permission” to be angry- or they’ll be “in trouble” if they express their anger. 

Regulating anger involves the same skillset necessary to regulating any feeling in trauma recovery: we have to start by validating it before we can even hope to influence it. 

We cannot, cannot, cannot start from a place of, “I’m not allowed to get angry.” 

Or “I’m bad for being angry.” 

Or “My anger is pointless.” 

All of those represent bullsh*t attempts to shut down one of the most legitimate, useful emotional reactions we human beings experience. 

You know how I’m always telling you that trauma responses aren’t supposed to be “controlled,” but rather channeled? That is especially true for anger and the “fight” trauma response. 

You think you’re angry now? Keep trying to suppress and invalidate your anger. That’s a recipe to be low key rageful every day of your life. 

Validate your anger, ask questions of your anger, get to know your anger. Express your appreciation to your anger and your angry “parts.” Ask you “parts,” if your anger could speak, what would it say? What would it want, what would it need? 

I’ve said it before: the quality of our trauma recovery is the quality of our relationship with ourselves— especially those emotions and “parts” of ourselves we are uncomfortable with or have been conditioned to be ashamed of. 

Anger is friend. 

Treat it accordingly.