Can love and anger co-exist?

The answer to this is perhaps only if you are involved in emotionally intelligent and mature relationships I guess (and with yourself!).

Growing up it was not safe to be angry. Dad could not deal with Mum’s angry outbursts or pent up childhood trauma, he would walk away and then we would carry the messages back and forward when Mum gave him the silent treatment.. Its interesting that in my last relationship that tactic.. cut off, withdraw, then be issued with ‘ultimatums’ for how I needed to change (not how the other person would try to understand work together with me towards a helpful resolution) was used on me and sent me immediately into my abandonment trauma.. In that state where I felt it would be impossible to stand the withdrawal of ‘love’ (affection, appreciation, attention) I would do anything to get that back and in the end I ransomed myself.

There have been varieties of revisiting this too with this issue with Scott and money.. I was reading a daily meditation on managing neediness today in one of Tian Dayton’s books during my morning time of meditation, prayer and quiet reflection this morning and in it she speaks of being able to sit with ourselves and hold what is going on rather than force it on the other person. At the moment Scott’s desperation to get free means I had to stop talking for a short while too.. He is not listening to reason and I cannot help him right now, I am struggling to pay my own bills which is not a situation that I perhaps ‘should’ be placed in but I put myself there in the need to not be as alone which now makes no sense much but there you go…

Having all of that anger burst out of me at my brother’s ‘control’ over my inheritance (which could be ‘protection’ in his eyes as an older sibling) really was challenging.. In the past if I was angry or felt angry I was told I was ‘bad’ in some way, one day my brother even threatened to leave when I expressed some anger and called me a loose cannon and maybe I become too loud when angry just as I fear it bursting out and destroying or obliterating something.. I find it a bit hard to regulate in that situation due to past issues obviously.

It helped me to read a while back on a book on the intimacy struggle that adult children of neglect and addiction go through that. Many adult children who grew up in volatile houses can fear anger will obliterate love or that if they love someone its not good to be angry with them (having perhaps witnessed too painfully first hand where violence or physical or emotional abuse may have taken their own family members) which is just not doable come to think of it as we all have different needs and limits and ranges of power and control. Negotiating these in any relationship is tough and is made tougher if you are on different ends of the narcissism/empathy spectrum.

There can also be historical or ancestral anger and frustration we carry, I have most definately experienced a lot of that in my own life.

Getting to know what we are angry about and why, coming to examine if its a reasonable thing to feel as a result of a certain expectation of how we our others ‘should’ be, feel, perceive, or react is important and essential recovery work. Being able to set a boundary or voice the need for a time out helps, especially if one or other partner has anxious attachment issues linked to abandonment of their true self in the past is helpful. Being able to say “I am sorry but I am feeling really triggered right now and need to take some space to feel this through, I will reconnect with you later” that would have helped me a lot in that past relationship but in the end he wanted his will and his way,, me not to have period pain ever (it hurt him), not to be still sad over my loss of my Dad (triggered by his own father’s illness) me not to be close to his Mum (when she had hurt him too much by leaving him as a child due to being abused). I do get why he needed to cut off but in that space intimacy was then not possible and to make me bad and wrong was just not fair but it came out of his own limits and blind spots.

I count myself so lucky now to have a therapist as well as others in my life who allow me to have my anger… In the past anger at therapists ended things for me, in fact I have been asked by therapists or told they cannot work with me or would rather refer me to someone else when I reacted in some ways, one CST therapist grabbed both my wrists once and would not let me go.. I was having a reaction to invasive dental treatment then also having triggered massive head trauma.

Today I know I need to find relationships where it is okay for me to be human and vulnerable and experience a full spectrum of human emotions, where empathy is shown.. I may not end a relationship due to lack of empathy but I will most certainly limit it and begin to set boundaries around it now.

My anger has been working its way to the surface for some time now to be integrated. Kat said to me a while ago in therapy she believed it was ‘working its way out’. On Tuesday after being run ragged trying to help my sister in that toxic old pattern I ended up developing a blood blister on my right index finger.. The gardener was due and I promised to drop the clothing off to her, but I could not do when I said I would due to forgetting his day had changed.. I got too busy and anxious and stressed and while pruning near the garage this big black and blue welt came up on my finger which was so painful, this stopped me up short.. Mum had these all over her hands towards the end of her life running this way and that trying to help my sister in her mental illness, overextending herself to help in other situations..

Later, I was able to debrief about it with a family friend who encouraged me to take self care..today it that welt has gone down to a small hardened dot on that finger.. Knifing the chopping board yesterday when angry I felt the constriction… I am more aware now of how and when I tighten in my body as that natural impulse of ‘No’ and an organic boundary rises up and of where and why I feel angry as well as my fears around expressing it. I am learning to listen to myself more and to my fear of abandonment less too when triggered and feeling over extended or uncomfortable in certain situations. And I can even love myself through the anger now rather than shaming or blaming myself and others for it.