The anger that saved my life wasn’t the anger I felt in the moment of harm. It was the anger that came later – when I finally stopped making excuses and let myself see the patterns.

When I realised the manipulation wasn’t accidental. When I recognised the same dynamics across my entire life. When I understood that wounded people were passing their wounds onto me, and I’d been accepting it as love.

That anger – the one that cuts through denial and shows you the truth – that’s the anger I’d been taught to fear my entire life. And it was the only thing strong enough to set me free.

But I’d spent my whole life being taught that anger and aggression were the same thing.

When I showed even the slightest emotion – sadness, frustration, disappointment – I was told I was being horrible.

Not that my behaviour was inappropriate. That I was horrible. For having feelings.

So I learnt early that feelings make you a monster, anger makes you dangerous, and taking up space makes you unbearable.

I buried it. I made myself smaller and never trusted my emotions.

Suppression wasn’t something I chose – it was normal for me. It was how I survived. I thought fawning was kindness, and I thought silence was peace.

And when I became a mum, I doubled down. I told myself that I will never make my child feel the same way that I was made to feel. I will never be that angry, destructive force.

I thought I was protecting my son by suppressing my anger. I wasn’t. I was teaching him that his mother didn’t matter.

Before my son was born, I could get angry – but the moment I used a firm voice, it was labelled as aggression. I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t out of control. But I was told I was being aggressive, so I toned it down.

After he was born, I suppressed it entirely.

I was never aggressive. I was assertive – and the label was being used to control me.

There’s a difference between expressing anger and being aggressive. Between having needs and violating boundaries.

I was someone who deserved to take up space.

But I made myself quiet – because I had been taught these things were the same, and I became so focused on not being the problem that I erased myself completely.

Photo credit: Frankie Mish

When Suppressed Anger Becomes Self-Destruction

I didn’t suppress all my emotions. But I sure tried.

I’d learnt early that showing any emotion – pain or anger – invited punishment. Tears were met with ‘stop it’ and raised voices. And anger was proof that I was horrible.

So I kept it all locked away.

I left an abusive relationship. Stayed in a refuge. Didn’t sleep for four years. My nervous system was in constant hypervigilance that never switched off.

And then came a crisis that nearly destroyed me. Impossible decisions. Unbearable circumstances. The weight of it all was crushing.

That’s when the pain finally spilled out.

Not because it was safe to express. But because I physically couldn’t contain it anymore. The pressure was too great.

But anger? I still kept that contained.

People already knew they could walk all over me. Even when I was hurt, even when I was drowning, I would never truly push back. I would never say enough.

I became passive-aggressive. Resentful. Withdrawn. I would burst out crying, react – but inevitably let them win. I would disappear instead of confronting them.

The anger was controlling me – precisely because I refused to acknowledge it.

It didn’t disappear because I suppressed it. It just went underground, driving my behaviour from the shadows. Poisoning my relationships. Eating away at my sense of self.

I became a ghost. Present but not really there. Accommodating everyone whilst abandoning myself.

And that cruel inner voice that berated me with insults? It wasn’t even mine. It was the voice of other people – just amplified louder in my head.

Suppressed anger doesn’t protect you. It destroys you.

Photo credit: Anastasia Shelepova

My Body Was Warning Me

My body had been trying to tell me the entire time.

Sharp, prickly needles would envelop my shoulders when someone crossed the line.

A weighted feeling would compress me flat when I was being manipulated.

Tension would rise, shoulders would lift, and I’d become guarded.

My nervous system was telling me: this isn’t safe. This is not okay. Get out.

But I’d been taught to ignore those signals. To override them and to treat them as proof that I was too sensitive, too reactive and too much.

I had overridden them for so long that my body thought feeling unsafe was the baseline.

Every time those needles pricked, my body was saying: This is a boundary violation. Respond.

And every time, I pushed it down. Talked myself out of it and would convince myself that I was the one overreacting.

I was feeling protective anger in real-time – the kind that’s supposed to mobilise you, to help you assert yourself, and keep you safe.

But I couldn’t hear it. Because I’d been taught that listening to it made me a horrible person.

When others’ nervous systems felt threatened, they went into fight and they would escalate, push, and dominate to feel safe. Their anger was a weapon – used to establish control and force compliance.

And I would collapse. Accommodate. Absorb whatever they threw at me.

Their anger was allowed. Mine wasn’t.

So I kept ignoring my body’s alarm system. And the people who needed me to be silent kept benefiting from my suppression.

Now, I sense manipulation instantly. I have developed what I call a crucible literacy – the ability to discern truth beyond deception, born of my own trials by fire.

Photo credit: Krakograff Textures

The Breaking Point: What the Anger Showed Me

Before I came out, I had been doing the work – learning about nervous systems, understanding patterns, and building capacity to sit with discomfort.

After I came out, the dynamics that I’d been navigating for years suddenly became impossible to ignore.

It felt like smashing through ten brick walls at once.

Each realisation more devastating than the last.

This wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was deliberate. The moves were calculated. And the manipulation was intentional.

My trauma was being weaponised. Things I’d shared vulnerably were being used as tools for control.

My kindness – my ability to see through people’s pain – was being exploited. I was told that I couldn’t call out harmful behaviour because I had recognised the same patterns in other people. As if seeing a pattern meant that I had to accept it.

And then the bigger picture emerged. This was a dynamic that had repeated with different people across my entire life. My compliance had been cultivated since childhood.

The people who were supposed to love me only loved what I could do for them. My tenacity. My loyalty. My ability to absorb their pain whilst setting aside my own.

And I was furious.

The anger wasn’t just an emotion anymore.

It showed me what I’d been too enmeshed to see. The patterns I had been too conditioned to recognise. The severity of what had been done – and what I had allowed.

The Rage

I had become embodied enough to move without reacting. I chose myself, and I chose my son.

But I was still under the illusion. Still processing. And still not fully grasping the enormity of what had happened.

The full weight of the anger came months later.

When I finally stopped moving long enough to feel it all.

It was a psychological earthquake.

Rage. Grief. Betrayal. Confusion. Shame. Relief mixed with unbearable pain.

And it still comes in waves – even now.

I was furious at the loss – the missed life, the missed opportunities, the years I’d never get back. The loss of relationships I thought I had – and those I missed out on entirely.

Furious at the audacity – that the people closest to me caused harm and still won’t face it. That they shattered my nervous system for personal gain and did not care about the consequences.

Furious at the cruelty – not just the actions themselves, but the fact that some of them genuinely believed they were helping, whilst others knew exactly what they were doing and chose it anyway.

I was furious at the embarrassment – the ego death of realising how long I’d been complicit in my own annihilation.

But mostly I was angry at myself.

For caring about people who only loved me for what I could do for them. For giving my life away. For being an extension of others instead of a whole person.

Because if they truly loved me, they would have wanted my happiness. They didn’t. They wanted my loyalty, my tenacity, my ability to see through their wounds and to show them compassion whilst they continued to harm me.

I wasn’t just angry at one situation. I was angry at multiple people across my entire life. At the systems of enmeshment, power, and control that had shaped me. At the guilt, the manipulation, the reality-altering, and the constant erosion of my sense of self.

For staying silent when I should have stood up for myself. For giving my power away to people who never deserved it.

And even though I’d been conditioned that way since birth – even though I was doing the best I could with what I knew – the shame of realising how long I’d participated in my own annihilation was crushing.

It wasn’t my fault. But it was my responsibility to make it right.

No one was coming to save me. No one was going to give me permission to choose myself. No one was going to hand me back the power I’d given away.

I had to take it back.

And the anger – the rage I’d suppressed for so long – became the fuel for choosing myself. For refusing to live one more day in a life that wasn’t mine. For setting boundaries I should have set years ago. And for walking away from dynamics that required my self-abandonment.

The rage didn’t destroy me. It set me on my path.

Photo credit: Guy Yama

What Anger Actually Is

Anger isn’t one thing. It’s a spectrum of information that evolves as your awareness grows.

Suppressed anger becomes self-destruction. It goes underground, poisons your relationships, eats away at your sense of self. You become passive-aggressive, resentful, withdrawn. A ghost.

Explosive anger becomes a weapon. It dominates, controls, forces compliance. It’s what people use when their nervous system feels threatened and they need to establish power over others to feel safe.

Protective anger in real-time is your alarm system. The prickly needles. The weighted feeling. Your body trying to tell you: This is a boundary violation. This isn’t safe. Do something.

Throat and chest rage is your voice returning. The pressure. The scream you’ve been swallowing. All the words you weren’t allowed to say. This is the anger that’s been locked in your body, and when it finally moves, the energy feels overwhelming and liberating in the same movement.

Clarifying anger shows you the patterns. When you finally stop ignoring the signals and let yourself see what’s actually happening. This is the anger that cuts through denial and shows you the truth.

Delayed rage processes the enormity of what happened. The psychological earthquake. The grief, betrayal, loss, and shame all tangled together. This is the anger that comes when you’re finally safe enough to feel it.

Embodied assertive anger is power reclaimed. The pressure in your shoulder blades. The strength. The ability to feel fury and still choose your response. This is the anger that says: I matter, and I will never abandon myself again.

If you’ve been taught that anger makes you a bad person, you’ve been taught to ignore the alarm system that tells you when you’re in danger.

Anger isn’t the problem.

Not listening to it is.

Photo credit: Saulius Sutkus

The Fierce Boundary

I still care about them. I wish them healing. And they can stay the fuck away from me.

Because understanding someone’s wounds doesn’t mean accepting their harm. Compassion doesn’t require my presence. I can see their full humanity whilst refusing to sacrifice my own.

I will not abandon myself to accommodate anyone’s dysfunction ever again.

And I’ll keep fighting. For me. For my son. For anyone who has had their autonomy taken from them.

The rage didn’t destroy me. It fuelled my purpose.

It taught me how to stay in my body when everything was yelling at me to leave it. How to feel the full force of fury and still choose my response. How to see people’s humanity whilst refusing to sacrifice my own.

It showed me why trauma-informed work matters – why understanding nervous systems, boundaries, and manipulation patterns can literally save lives.

I was conditioned to believe anger made me horrible. It didn’t. The absence of anger made me a ghost.

The anger didn’t destroy me. It saved my life.

This is my story of reclaiming anger. As a trauma-informed nervous system coach, I share this not as a model of perfection, but as a map of the terrain. Your anger will have its own signature, its own timeline, its own path back to you. What matters is that you learn to listen.

Anna Roters

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