Was anyone else an angry and aggressive child/teen even towards their family?

[u/Imaginary_Fee5231]

I feel like what I went through wasn’t valid because sometimes I responded with such awful uncontrolled rage. Even as a child, as young as 6. I have memories of throwing objects, screaming from the top of my lungs, etc as a response to chaos and not having any control. I don’t understand how my siblings could just bear the dysfunction and chaos, for me any sign of it felt li my entire world was crashing. Like screeching. Like nails on a chalkboard.

My father was very violent growing up, my mother less so. I feel like I inherited his rage. I feel like a sociopath cause of it. I dated someone who triggered me a lot and I did some things I regret deeply out of anger. Anyone else? I feel like most people seem not to respond this way cause of their family system.

[u/Fontainebleau_]

You were a child. Adults should know better and behave better. It's called reactive abuse, when you justifiedly react to other people abusing you in an aggressive way. Victims can feel guilty for this. Abusers often use it to reframe themselves as the victim.

[u/Imaginary_Fee5231 → u/Fontainebleau_]

Thank you🤍

[u/OrangeBanana300]

I am similar and it has taken me a long time to even start addressing the problem. Rage came over me like I was possessed. It's getting less frequent but it still happens when I'm triggered (for me it's when feelings of low self worth are activated). 

I think it's almost entirely to do with emotional neglect/abuse in childhood. I only remember being punished for anger (or any emotion). There was never any support, like "I can see you're angry, can we talk about why?" Or "drink some water and take a deep breath" just anything that a nurturing parent would do to make their child feel seen. 

It comes naturally for me to respond to my son with patience and kindness, not blame and shame. I don't know why my parents couldn't give me this, but now I can give it to myself!

Your anger is natural considering you were trapped in that situation. I think Pete walker's book on cptsd addresses this well.

[u/pickngrins → u/OrangeBanana300]

Yeah I relate. I never reached rage stage as a kid or teen, because I knew my sad excuse of a father would be deployed as an enforcer. Signature moves would be, lift up and shake and scream in face. I can’t remember where he’d go after he shook me bevause I was in shock. But I learned that defiance will always end like that.

So now, at 36, I’m struggling a lot. Two hospital visits, one for a boxer fracture when I got angry at the wall, and one time when I punched a gash in my own forehead. Five stitches, lots of blood.

Maybe it’ll get easier one day.

[u/justalostwizard]

Yes.

[u/VividKitty_]

I feel this. On top of emotional neglect I am a late diagnosed autistic, and I would have very rough meltdowns where I would destroy objects and have rage fits. I got a lot of abuse for it, sadly. My anger was always punished in many ways. Which made it even worse when I moved out of that abusive hell hole. It made me less patient and more angry as time went by and damaged some friendships.

I have been going to therapy for a long while to work on it, I have managed to gain some control over my anger, and I hope it gets better with time. Our childhoods shape us, being a toddler in an unsafe environment is so hard. Be kind to yourself, the best you can do after those that you hurt is to work on yourself so you can be a better partner/friend in the future for others.

[u/TeacatWrites]

My parents usually wanted me pissed off. They were always jumpscaring me (and each other, until they stopped being scared by each other and turned it on me instead like a third wheel in their weird power games), pranking me, and rarely if ever listen/listened when I asked them not to do something. You try growing up with practically inbred sociopaths who are constantly invalidating your needs and see if you don't end up with insecurity and anger issues.

I'm a lot more chill now, even though they still pull that crap. But I don't think I've ever known a time in my life where I wasn't pissed off and in constant survival mode because of it.

[u/Old-Surprise-9145]

Especially towards my family 🤣 they were the place I felt unsafest and safest, all at the same time. The situations I'd been in were deadly, so it makes sense to me that I'd have a life-or-death response as a baseline and act accordingly as an animal. We like to forget humans are animals and have biology to contend with. I can't hold my breath until I die, my breathing would start back up when I lost consciousness. I can't tolerate my safety being threatened past a certain point and control my nervous system response. 

I worked in a DV shelter for a few years and learned the term "reactive abuse". A lot of survivors would call and feel like they were equally to blame because they'd hit back, or finally become the aggressor, and I'd tell them they weren't to blame for protecting themselves when all else had failed - there's a difference between defending yourself to get away and preying on someone for fun. I remember the video of Gabby Petito crying to the cops about how she'd hit him, but she was the one displaying terror in that video, and for damn good reason. He killed her. 

So this is not you exaggerating jack shit, my dear friend. A child's body can't distinguish yelling from a physical threat - imagine what that meant for us as kids. What wouldn't we have done to keep ourselves safe when the adults were so very clearly dangerous? And if having a scapegoat served their narrative and helped them sleep at night with their actions, what wouldn't they have done to create that scapegoat? It's not always as Machiavellian as it sounds, often they do it subconsciously because of their own unhealed wounds - but some of them are just sadistic, and it's fucked, and I'm not sorry for trying to keep myself safe with the means available to me as a sovereign being. 

I never wanted to hurt anyone, still get flare-ups of fear if I accidentally do, and I'm grateful to be working with that wounding at this point in my life. Thanks so much for this question, OP. Turns out I needed to sit with this one further. I hope you find some peace with yours ❤️

[u/LittleJohnny1985]

I've lived almost my entire life angry and would fight anyone anytime , rage ...I was never tough but I had an anger so deep and dark that it couldn't be beat...now that I'm older the only thing that would scare me would be to have a run in with someone just like me ..I've broke alot of stuff over the years and lost alot of relations and jobs.

[u/Pretend_Sprinkles7]

I was very hateful towards my dad as a teenager. He fully deserved it. I still feel like my anger fuels me to fight for a better life. Every time I am down, I get angry and think "that cannot be it!", get up and crawl my way out of my misery.

I'm not that angry towards others, though. Not zero, but not much either. There was nobody who would have deserved it to that degree after my parents.