You’re Allowed to Be Mad About What Happened to You
There is a weird expectation that once you understand why something happened, you’re supposed to stop being angry about it.
Like if you can explain it, you should be over it.
You understand their childhood.
You understand their trauma.
You understand the circumstances.
You understand that they were doing the best they could with what they had.
You understand that maybe they didn’t intend to hurt you.
You understand that holding onto anger isn’t good for you.
You understand that you need to “let it go.”
Cool.
You can understand all of that and still be fucking pissed.
Seriously.
You are allowed to be mad about what happened to you.
Understanding doesn't erase impact.
This is one of the things I wish more people understood about healing.
You can develop an incredible amount of insight into why someone treated you the way they did and still acknowledge that their behavior hurt you.
Those two things can exist at the same time.
Maybe your parent was emotionally unavailable because their parent was emotionally unavailable.
Maybe your partner treated you poorly because they had never learned how to communicate in a healthy relationship.
Maybe the person who hurt you was struggling with their own shit.
Maybe they genuinely didn’t know any better.
Maybe they didn’t mean to hurt you.
And maybe you still got hurt.
Their reasons can explain the behavior.
They don’t magically undo the consequences.
And sometimes anger is actually telling you something important.
Anger gets a pretty bad reputation.
We’re taught to be afraid of it. Suppress it. Manage it. Get rid of it.
And yes, there are absolutely unhealthy ways to express anger.
But anger itself isn’t inherently bad.
Sometimes anger is your brain finally recognizing:
“Wait a fucking minute. That wasn’t okay.”
Anger can show up when a boundary was crossed.
When something was taken from you.
When you weren’t protected.
When you weren’t believed.
When you were blamed for something that wasn’t your fault.
When you spent years minimizing something because admitting how much it hurt felt too overwhelming.
Sometimes you couldn’t be angry when it was happening because you were too busy surviving it.
And then you finally get somewhere safe enough to feel it.
And suddenly you’re pissed.
That’s not necessarily a sign that you’re going backward.
Sometimes it’s a sign that you’re finally able to acknowledge what happened.
You don't have to force a silver lining.
This one is a little ironic coming from a therapist whose practice is literally called Mess to Meaning, so let me clarify. 😂
I absolutely believe in making meaning from what we’ve been through.
But making meaning is not the same thing as finding a silver lining.
Meaning-making isn’t:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“It made me stronger.”
“I’m grateful for the trauma because it made me who I am.”
“It was actually a blessing in disguise.”
Nope.
Sometimes something terrible happened because something terrible happened.
You don’t have to turn your pain into an inspirational quote before you’re allowed to heal from it.
And you don’t have to be grateful for what happened to you just because you’ve learned something from it.
You can eventually decide, “This experience changed me, and I want to decide what I do with that change.”
That’s meaning.
The meaning comes from what you make of your experience. It doesn’t require you to make the experience itself meaningful.
There is a difference.
You can take something awful and build something worthwhile from it without pretending you wanted the awful thing in the first place.
You can grow without being grateful that you were hurt.
You can find purpose without deciding the pain was necessary.
You can make meaning without minimizing the mess.
And honestly, that’s kind of the whole damn point.
Acceptance isn't the same thing as approval.
This gets confused a lot in therapy.
Acceptance doesn’t mean:
“I’m okay with what happened.”
It means:
“This happened. I can’t change the fact that it happened. And I’m going to stop fighting reality long enough to figure out what I want to do with my life now.”
You can accept that something happened and still think it was completely fucking unfair.
You can accept that someone may never apologize and still wish they would.
You can accept that you can’t change the past and still grieve the childhood, relationship, career, family, or version of yourself you deserved.
Acceptance is not forgiveness.
Acceptance is not reconciliation.
Acceptance is not approval.
And acceptance definitely isn’t pretending you don’t care anymore.
You can heal and still be angry.
Healing isn’t a straight line where you eventually arrive at some magical destination where nothing bothers you anymore.
Sometimes healing looks like feeling sad.
Sometimes it looks like setting boundaries.
Sometimes it looks like finally saying, “No, actually. I’m not doing that anymore.”
Sometimes it looks like crying over something you thought you’d already dealt with.
And sometimes?
It looks like being really fucking angry.
The goal isn’t necessarily to never feel anger again.
The goal is to be able to feel it without letting it run your entire life.
There’s a difference between:
“I’m angry about what happened to me.”
and
“My anger gets to determine everything I do from here forward.”
You can acknowledge the anger without handing it the steering wheel.
You can listen to what it’s trying to tell you.
You can decide what boundaries need to exist because of it.
You can grieve what you didn’t get.
You can protect yourself differently now.
And eventually, maybe the anger becomes quieter.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Either way, you don’t have to shame yourself for having it.
So if you’re angry right now…
Maybe you don’t need to get rid of it.
Maybe you need to listen to it.
Ask yourself:
What am I actually angry about?
Not the polished therapy answer.
The real answer.
What did I lose?
What wasn’t fair?
What should have happened instead?
What did I need that I didn’t get?
What boundary was crossed?
What am I still grieving?
What do I wish someone had said?
What do I wish someone had done?
And maybe, underneath all that anger, there is a part of you that is finally saying:
“That wasn’t okay. I deserved better.”
Listen to that part.
Because maybe the anger isn’t the problem.
Maybe the problem was that for a very long time, you weren’t allowed to have it.
And now you’re finally safe enough to say:
“Yeah. I’m fucking mad.”
Good.
You get to be.
You don’t have to stay there forever.
But you don’t have to rush yourself out of it, either.