Sometimes Healing Begins With Anger

Anger after trauma is not always destructive. Sometimes it is the emotion that helps us recognize that something wrong was done to us, and that we deserved better.

We talk a great deal about forgiveness in trauma recovery.

We talk about letting go. Finding peace. Releasing resentment. Refusing to allow the person who hurt us to continue occupying space in our lives.

We talk much less about anger, and the role anger can sometimes play in healing.

Yet in my work with trauma survivors, particularly those who experienced sexual trauma early in life, I have come to believe that anger can play an important role in healing. Not because anger is the destination. Not because every survivor needs to experience it. And certainly not because anger should be used to hurt another person.

Anger can be important because sometimes it is the emotion that finally says:

What happened to me was wrong.

For a person who has spent years carrying blame and shame that never belonged to them, that realization can be profound.

When the Blame Goes to the Child

Children do not have an adult's understanding of power, sexuality, coercion, manipulation, or responsibility. When someone they depend upon, trust, love, fear, or look up to violates them, recognizing that person as responsible can be psychologically complicated.

For a child, there may be something less threatening about believing something is wrong with me than recognizing someone I love and depend upon is capable of hurting me.

And that belief can survive long after childhood ends.

Over the years, I have heard variations of the same questions again and again:

Why didn't I stop it?

Why didn't I tell someone?

Why did I go back?

Maybe it wasn't really that bad.

Maybe I somehow caused it.

The survivor grows older, but the shame remains.

And sometimes the compassion they struggle to extend to themselves is readily extended to the person who hurt them:

They had a difficult childhood.

They were traumatized too.

They didn't know any better.

I've forgiven them.

There may be truth in some of those statements. Understanding the history of the person who caused harm may eventually be meaningful. Forgiveness may also have an important place in someone's healing.

But neither understanding nor forgiveness changes responsibility.

And sometimes I find myself wondering: have you ever allowed yourself to be angry about what was done to you?

The Anger We Are Afraid to Feel

Many trauma survivors are deeply uncomfortable with anger.

That makes sense.

Some grew up in environments where anger meant danger. They saw anger become screaming, intimidation, cruelty, violence, retaliation, or abandonment. They may have learned very early that angry people hurt other people, or that expressing their own anger resulted in punishment, rejection, or further harm.

So they became very good at not being angry.

But anger and aggression are not the same thing.

Anger is an emotion. Aggression is a behavior.

Anger used to frighten, control, punish, or injure another person can certainly be destructive.

But anger does not have to become aggression.

Anger can be spoken.

It can be written.

It can be cried.

It can be felt privately.

It can become a boundary.

It can provide the energy to say no.

It can become motivation.

It can become the strength to protect ourselves differently today.

And sometimes anger simply allows us to acknowledge the magnitude of the hurt that was done.

What Lies Beneath the Anger

There is another reason anger can be so difficult for trauma survivors to access.

Sometimes feeling the anger means getting dangerously close to the pain.

To say I am angry about what happened to me may first require acknowledging:

It really happened.

It hurt me.

Someone I trusted betrayed me.

Someone who should have protected me failed to protect me.

I was powerless to stop something that should never have been happening in the first place.

That is an enormous amount of pain to encounter.

Minimizing can feel safer.

Self-blame can sometimes feel safer.

Even forgiveness can feel safer.

Because if I can explain what you did to me, excuse it, forgive you, or convince myself it wasn't really that bad, perhaps I don't have to fully encounter the devastating truth that someone hurt me, I could not stop it, and it mattered.

Anger can bring a survivor frighteningly close to that truth.

Which is why anger cannot be demanded.

It has to be safe enough to emerge.

Holding the Anger Until They Can

As a clinician, this is where the work has affected me deeply.

When you sit with someone week after week, hear their story, witness their pain, and come to care deeply about them, there are times when you recognize the injustice of what happened even when they cannot yet recognize it themselves.

There have been times when I have had to access my own anger and, in a sense, hold it for my clients until they are able to access theirs.

I don't mean expressing anger at them or telling them what they should feel. A therapist's feelings should never become another burden the client has to manage.

I mean holding internally the truth contained within that anger:

You were a child.

You should have been safe.

You should have been protected.

Someone crossed boundaries they had no right to cross.

You did not cause this.

This was not your responsibility.

Sometimes I can hold that truth before the person sitting across from me is ready to hold it.

My job is not to make someone angry.

My job is to make room for anger to be possible.

I don't have to participate in the minimization of what happened simply because the client still needs to minimize it in order to feel safe.

I can remain present.

I can refuse to blame the child they once were.

I can recognize the injustice even when they cannot yet name it.

And I can wait.

When Shame Begins to Move

This is one of the reasons I believe anger can be transformative.

Trauma often leaves people carrying emotions and responsibility that became attached to the self.

Shame says:

There is something wrong with me.

Anger can say:

Something wrong was done to me.

That distinction matters.

Instead of:

Why didn't I stop it?

there can eventually be:

Why didn't they stop?

Instead of:

Why didn't I protect myself?

there can be:

Why wasn't I protected?

Instead of:

What is wrong with me?

there can finally be:

Why did someone do that to me?

These may appear to be small changes in language, but psychologically they can represent something enormous.

Responsibility is beginning to move.

The shame that has been carried inward is beginning to be questioned.

And the person may begin to look at the child they once were with compassion rather than accusation.

The Rush Toward Forgiveness

I think we need to be particularly careful about the way we talk about forgiveness with trauma survivors.

Our culture often treats forgiveness as evidence that someone has healed.

The person who says, I forgive them is seen as strong, evolved, compassionate, or spiritually mature.

The person who remains angry may be told they are bitter, stuck, resentful, or allowing the perpetrator to "win."

That can create tremendous pressure to forgive before someone is ready.

But forgiveness that comes before acknowledgment can sometimes become another way of moving away from the injury.

Before I forgive you, perhaps there needs to be room for:

You hurt me.

You betrayed me.

You took something you had no right to take.

I was a child.

I deserved protection.

It was not my fault.

I am angry that this happened to me.

Forgiveness cannot substitute for acknowledgment.

And forgiveness should never require minimizing the harm or redistributing responsibility back onto the person who was harmed.

Perhaps one of the most important questions isn't:

Have you forgiven the person who hurt you?

Perhaps it is:

Have you stopped blaming yourself for what they did?

Anger Can Become Strength

Anger contains energy.

When it is acknowledged rather than feared or weaponized, that energy can become motivation.

It can help someone establish boundaries they once believed they had no right to have.

It can help them recognize mistreatment in current relationships.

It can give them the strength to leave situations that repeat old patterns.

It can help them say no.

It can help them recognize that protecting themselves is not selfish.

It can allow them to protect the adult they are today in ways the child they once were could not protect themselves.

And sometimes anger provides enough strength to finally turn toward the pain and say:

This mattered.

What happened to me mattered.

The child I was mattered.

There is tremendous grief in those realizations.

But there can also be tremendous power.

My Anger Saved My Life

This understanding of anger is not something I have learned only from sitting in the therapist's chair.

It is personal for me as well.

In the book I am currently writing, I share more of my own story and the role anger played in my survival. I have come to understand that, at a critical point in my life, my anger saved my life.

For a long time, I understood anger primarily as something dangerous, something that could hurt people, destroy relationships, or consume us if we allowed ourselves to feel too much of it.

What I eventually came to understand was that anger can also be protective.

Sometimes anger is the part of us that knows we have been hurt before the rest of us is ready to acknowledge it.

It is the part that says:

Enough.

There are times when sadness leaves us collapsed beneath the weight of what has happened. Shame tells us we deserve it. Fear tells us not to move. Hopelessness tells us there is no way out.

But anger can rise up and say:

No.

For me, that no mattered.

My anger gave me access to something I desperately needed: the belief that my life was worth fighting for.

That is part of why I feel so strongly about making room for anger in trauma recovery. I know professionally what I have witnessed it do in the lives of people I have had the privilege of working with.

But I also know personally what it can do.

I know that anger does not always destroy.

Sometimes it protects.

Sometimes it creates a boundary where there wasn't one before.

Sometimes it gives us the energy to move when fear has kept us frozen.

Sometimes it reminds us that something precious has been violated.

And sometimes, when we have lost sight of our own worth, anger fights for us until we are able to fight for ourselves.

I am still writing that story. There are parts of it I am not ready to tell here, because they belong in the book and because I want to tell them with the care they deserve.

But I can say this:

My anger saved my life.

And perhaps that is one of the reasons I have such respect for anger today, not as an emotion to glorify, and certainly not as permission to harm others, but as an emotion worth listening to.

Anger Is Not the Destination

None of this means that every trauma survivor must become angry in order to heal.

There is no emotional checklist for trauma recovery.

Some people may experience enormous anger. Others may experience very little. Some may encounter it briefly, while for others it may come and go over many years.

The goal is not anger.

And the goal certainly isn't to exchange a lifetime of shame for a lifetime of rage.

The goal is freedom.

Freedom to experience emotions without fearing them.

Freedom to recognize what happened without minimizing it.

Freedom to place responsibility where it belongs.

Freedom to grieve.

Freedom to establish boundaries.

And freedom to decide for oneself what forgiveness means, or whether forgiveness is necessary at all.

For some survivors, forgiveness may eventually become deeply meaningful.

For others, it may not.

A survivor does not owe forgiveness to the person who harmed them in order to heal.

But they do deserve the opportunity to tell the truth about what happened.

Sometimes anger is part of that truth.

About the Author

Lexi Ellis, MA, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor who works with individuals navigating trauma, shame, self-worth, relationships, and the process of healing. Her work is grounded in the belief that healing requires space for the full range of human emotion, including the emotions we have been taught to fear or suppress.

She is currently writing a book that draws from both her professional experience and her own story, including the powerful role anger played in her survival and healing.