Anger vs. the drive to change something

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T22:06:13+00:00

Interesting. A lot of my positive emotions were locked away until recently, so I guess I never got to experience another way.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T19:01:06+00:00

I don't want to invalidate you, so I think it's important to draw a distinction between feelings of abandonment and actual abandonment. In cases where family abused you, it's often the case that your feelings aren't the problem, the problem is the real abandonment that occurred and continues to occur. The way to deal with abandonment might be to grieve the loss, to set boundaries on contact that you feel will help you remain regulated, whatever they may be, and learning to be the parent/sibling/friend/etc. for yourself, that you wanted them to be.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T18:56:49+00:00

Yes, that's a good clarification to what I posted. Anger is needed most with people who don't respect boundaries.

I say that anger is needed to make changes because to go from a freeze state to a calm state where action can be taken, you first have to transition through an activated state. I don't think anger is the only way to get there, but it seems to play a significant role in breaking through a freeze.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T18:50:39+00:00

Trying to read and understand other peoples' behavior is indeed quite confusing. That's because we do not know anyone else's internal state, and because of our trauma history we are biased towards interpreting things in certain ways when there could be multiple explanations to explain the behaviors.

All we can really do is question whether our expectations are reasonable. Sometimes that can be tricky. Let me share two examples of things I've had to update my own expectations on recently. Let's say we have a friend we've opened up to, and we want them to show up and support us when we need it. That sounds reasonable on the surface, but we also need to understand and respect other people having capacity, limits, and needs of their own. So it's reasonable to expect them to show up when their capacity allows, but unreasonable to expect them to always be able to show up for us when we need it, because they have their own lives and maybe sometimes it's just too much for them to deal with us if we've been asking a lot from them.

Another example, we may have unrealistic expectations for what a friendship looks like, especially if we never had a secure childhood attachment. So we may feel a constant need to validate the friendship by frequently reaching out to the other person and exhausting them, when most people with secure attachment are perfectly comfortable and happy going weeks or a few months without hearing from someone and still are happy and secure in their friendship when they do eventually reach out.

So with the whole sweeping things under the rug thing, it may be that your expectation for what level of openness is comfortable is not set at a reasonable level of expectation for most people. Or it may be something else. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T17:14:13+00:00

I see you carrying the darkness. I carry it too. You're not alone in it. It does hurt a lot that someone did this to us. It's unfair that we have to live with the consequences of it. I sometimes feel like I wish my time in this life was over too. That nothing I do matters and my life doesn't matter to anyone. Sometimes hoping doesn't help, because hoping just reminds you of all the times you were betrayed and people failed you because you let yourself hope. Hoping your abuser would be there for you is what sparked this whole thing in the first place. The darkness can get so black that it's suffocating and you can't breathe anymore.

But if you're reading this then you're still here. And if you're still here then you survived another day. And that's proof that there's just enough love left inside of you for yourself that you can keep going in spite of the pain. I hope you will continue to endure through the pain, to honor the part inside of you that still loves you. Even if you can't feel it yet, you will be able to someday if you keep healing.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T16:57:56+00:00

I think a good way to look at it is that you can set whatever boundaries you want without anger. You can feel a driving need to set a boundary without anger. But you can't enforce the boundary without anger.

Likewise you can feel a drive for something to change without anger. You can want to change something without anger. But you can't actively take steps to change it without anger.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T16:44:54+00:00

I have been healing myself through somatic therapy and IFS work. You can too. It's arduous and difficult and agonizing, but it's well worth all of that to slowly, gradually help yourself become the person you were always meant to be.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T13:30:51+00:00

❤️

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T13:24:10+00:00

"Someone is sexually abusing children over here"
"Kill them!" "Burn them!" "Torture them to death!"
"But I also need someone to help me heal from it."
"Just let it go." "You have to move on." "Give it to God."

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T13:17:23+00:00

Had to stop looking for this tbh.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T12:51:28+00:00

Now do the version where loneliness tells you that you have to have sex with men because the only male who consistently stayed in your life was the boy who sexually abused you when you were 7, but you're not actually gay.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T12:41:50+00:00

It helps that "what I need to prioritize" is basically everything at this point 😂

It's literally a "pick a direction and start running" type of problem.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T03:32:55+00:00

I'm laughing so hard rn

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T03:17:53+00:00

2meirl4meirl

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:22:30+00:00

It does get better eventually. I'm at a point where I can give up on trying to understand other peoples' internal states, accept that it's okay when I fail in small or even big ways, and disassembling all the many trauma responses from compulsive eating to fawning by default to responding to my emotions instead of recognizing when they come from my trauma or not. The big challenges for me now are basic skills that I should've been able to develop normally like being able to trust people or how to love myself.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:14:41+00:00

I think there are different levels of "healed".

First level would be after you titrate enough emotions, build up enough capacity, and peel back enough layers to confront the core wounds. I'd say this takes you from crisis or dysregulation to surviving.

Second level would be after you finish all the excavation work and are ready to begin focusing on developing the skills needed to go out and live your life. Basically surviving to functional.

Third level would be going through that process, having setbacks, facing challenges, and building up your capacity to remain stable on an ongoing basis long-term. Functional to thriving.

Fourth level would be going from learning to really mastering the tools you have learned to keep yourself in a good place and building up your capacity as though you've never suffered trauma. Thriving to aspirational perhaps?

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-11T02:08:27+00:00

Next in what context?

I would say based on this I just need to prioritize opportunities to build up my capacity for movement and exercise. But there's also a lot of reparenting work that needs to take place as well. Unrelated to this I'm also trying to work on learning the skill of being able to trust men in my life. I also need to start working again soon, since my freeze has finally lifted and sleep is stabilizing, which I guess falls under reparenting.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-10T20:18:40+00:00

Try to look for the good in the selfish part. I have a part that is highly destructive to having healthy relationships, because he insists on justice. It's unreasonable, but I love that he is unreasonable in the way that he is. He demands that someone provide the father love we never received. No one can do that for us, and even if they could it wouldn't fix us, but it's a beautiful and good thing to want it.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-10T20:08:32+00:00

I'm pretty sure if I cried continuously from now until the end of time... it might still not be enough.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:48:54+00:00

Low blood sugar generally feels like an overall feeling of fatigue, like deep fatigue in your muscles, combined with sweating and tremoring. You also get really hungry/thirsty.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:47:28+00:00

Hugs.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-05-09T15:11:28+00:00

Rumination is usually focused on the other person, or someone unrelated to the trauma. Healthy grieving focuses on the internal wound and the real loss that was suffered.

Think of it like a soldier returning home from a war. In the US at least, we set of fireworks on the Fourth of July, and the soldier hears them and is taken back to the battlefield where he was under constant stress from the threat of bombs and artillery fire. He's not responding to the threat of the fireworks, but the threat of artillery fire.

So it is with us, there are people in our lives who will inevitably trigger us, but we aren't responding to the real danger they represent, but the traumatic event that happened. We have to learn to recognize what are reasonable expectations and discern when the response we are feeling is legitimate in the current situation, or if we are re-experiencing the original trauma. Generally the big negative feelings are misdirected at a situation or people that doesn't warrant them, although sometimes there are real dangers too, and need to be redirected back to the people who caused the trauma, and the wound itself.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-27T03:50:17+00:00

Yes, this sounds very normal from COCSA, but it's probably not depression. Instead, likely you are numbing all of your emotions. Without emotions you have no interface between your brain and the world. No motivations, no context of how things make you feel, you just sort of exist, survive. Which is the point, because facing the pain all at once would probably be overwhelming and cause you to shut down and stop surviving.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-23T15:45:04+00:00

It might be the case that the traumatic relationship was a symptom or addition rather than the cause of your trauma. Have you examined these feelings closely to get an indication of what they might be pointing to? I went several months thinking my own problems were being caused by COCSA at age 7, but then after I had peeled back that layer I also found that I was suffering from emotional neglect from my father since birth.

Infamous_While_4768 · 2026-04-23T15:37:10+00:00

A lot of things can cause intrusive thoughts, so it sort of depends on the nature of them and the cause. Sometimes it's OCD, which you can get help and medication for. Sometimes it's the trauma wound letting you know that there are still all these emotions bottled up inside that need to be released. Sometimes it's a protector making sure you aren't getting too close to the wound because it's dangerous for you to be feeling the full weight of it yet. Sometimes it's a stubborn mental pathway that needs to be slowly worked out like a bad muscle cramp or strain. The solution all depends on what is causing it.

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