Anger at Parents in Adulthood: 4 Steps to Release it

Anger at parents in adulthood can hold us back in multiple ways. If we carry unprocessed anger and resentment, these materials of our psyche can make us sick physically and emotionally. We may blame ourselves for not being able to move forward in life, forgetting that we are angry because we were once hurt. Here are four steps we can take to release our anger at our parents in adulthood. 

This post is on a tremendously difficult, sensitive, but important topic: How we can release, let go of our anger at our parents in adulthood.

This is about the pain of having a childhood where our needs are not met, the anger we hold towards our parents, and what we can do about it.

It is particularly relevant if you have been through childhood trauma— caused either by neglect, abuse, or other toxic family dynamics.

This is important if you were born as an emotionally sensitive and intense child, into a family that did not understand you.

You will need this work if you are struggling with the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, personality disintegration, or Complex Trauma.

There is no comprehensive list of the possible ways in which a child can be left bottling resentment toward their parents. The causes of life-long anger that some of us hold against our parents could be due to any of the following:

• Physical or emotional neglect. Your parents may not be intentionally abusive but were affected by their own vulnerabilities or limited emotional capacity.

• Physical, mental, or sexual abuse.

• Failure of our parent to protect/ defend you from the bully, abuse or anger from another parent.

• Your parents did not attend to you emotionally. They may be physically there but emotionally neglectful.

• Your parent is controlling and deprives you of the opportunity to learn and grow at your own pace.

• Your family scapegoated you as the problematic person.

• They are constantly critical of you.

For those of us who experience such pain and carry it into our adult life, the consequences can be devastating.  Consciously or unconsciously, we may –

• Be unable to move on from our past and fail to build a happy present reality for ourselves

• Be emotionally unavailable as adults and therefore are unable to sustain intimate relationships.

• Harbour insecurities into adulthood about whether we deserve to be loved or nurtured, and sabotage opportunities we get.

• Find ourselves at times responding similarly as parents to our children and therefore perpetuate the cycle of emotional pain.

How can we break free from the shackles of a troubling emotional past, especially when the triggers (the parents) are still part of our present life?

The strategies listed below are aimed at helping us let go of resentment and reclaim our lives.

However, there is no one-size-fits-all prescribed way. Each relationship is different and involves a myriad of complex factors. Please take away what might be useful and discard the rest

The goal here is not for us to harbour self-pity or to blame anyone, but simply to validate some of the painful experiences, and to look at what we can do now to release some of these emotional poisons that you may have carried for far too long.

Times spent with our close family members, especially parents, are often the worst triggers for our intense negative emotions. Sometimes we wonder why we are triggered by them even when they now live far away from us, and can no longer influence our lives. Even when we have successfully walked away and built a life outside of our home when in contact we can immediately revert back to feeling powerless and frustrated like we are five-year-old again, or that we start behaving like a raging, uncontrollable teenager.

Even when we are living in independent adult bodies, we can feel caged by these strong emotional turmoils. Releasing anger at parents in adulthood is a different task to if we were a child.

Not everyone is blessed with patient, loving, and attentive parents.  Yes, some parents are abusive and neglectful, yet there are many parents who even with the best intention, fail to meet the needs of naturally emotionally intense and sensitive children. Often, our parents did the best out of what they knew. Their limited capacity often finds its root in the limited parenting that they had.

In cases where our upbringing had been abusive, neglectful, or lacking in some ways, we may experience unease and even disgust when we interact with our parents. If there had not been a history of real emotional closeness, the interests that they now show in our lives can feel phoney. Blocked by their defences and our frustration, there can be little authenticity. Even if we love each other enormously deep down, real closeness may seem inaccessible.

Intellectually, we know that our parents cannot change who they are; Rationally, we know that the past is in the past. On many levels, we have forgiven them.  However, these do not change the emotional reality that is raw, heavy, reactive, uncontrollable and full of rage. Although we cannot go back in time to alter the actual reality, we do have the power to change our inner reality. This involves not just an intellectual shift but an emotional soul shift.

And this is not an easy or obvious process. Here are the steps we can take to release anger at our parents in adulthood.

 

 

Anger at Parents in Adulthood-  4 Steps to Release it

Releasing Anger Step 1: Grieving

It may come as a surprise, but the first and the most important step towards emotional freedom is actually to get in touch with our grief.

Because grieving involves pain, our default position is to run away. This is usually unconscious, but we would do anything just to avoid the deep pain of not having the childhood that we have always wanted. Rather, we use things like comfort eating, excessive drinking, self-medicating, and all sorts of sensation seeking and emotional- numbing behaviours to mask our deep longing for love, safety and belongingness.

This mourning process involves allowing ourselves to feel very sorry, and sad, for not having the ‘what might have been’. Often, people confuse this with self-pity or as a passive acceptance of defeat. Yet the opposite is true, for nothing is more heroic than facing reality head-on.

Even with what they knew best, our parents’ limited capacities mean that they were not able to protect us from the abrasion of bullies, celebrate our gifts, honour our intuition, or cherish our sensitivities.

Grieving is also not about blaming but simply acknowledging the tragic nature of events. If anger comes up in this process of releasing our anger at parents, we shall honour that too. Such anger is a healthy, appropriate response to an unjust situation — no children should have to go through such pain and loneliness.

Our pains and insults were real, but these wounds are only toxic if they remain invisible. Once we have exposed them, acknowledged them, and call them for what they are, they gradually cease to have power over us.

Although we can never completely stop feeling sad for our lost childhood, the intensity of our pain and anger will gradually cease. The whole point of releasing your anger at parents in adulthood is not so that everything will be perfect, but that we will feel lighter, more congruent to our truths, and more at peace. In truth, grief is the best medicine for our pain; It is a poignant and sacred process that offers true liberation in the end.

‘ In mindful grief, we become the landing strip that allows any feelings to arrive. Some crash, some land softly. Some harm is, but none harm us in a lasting way. We remain as they taxi away. We can trust that we will survive.’ – David Richo

2. Releasing Anger Step 2: Taking the Matter Into Your Own Hands

Alongside grieving, to truly release our anger towards our parents, we ought to embrace, nurse, and comfort the lost child that is inside of all of us. Love may not come naturally, especially if we had limited experience of it in our childhood. However, it is in our human potential to learn to take care of ourselves in a way that we have never been cared for before.

We may seek wisdom and guidance from therapists and spiritual teachers, from having loving adult friends and partners in our lives, and from loving others and gradually transferring that love onto ourselves.

Ultimately, we must learn to be our own best parents. This means we love ourselves fully – embracing both the good and the bad, not just our kindness but also our rage.

Remember, you are a survivor for being here today. You deserve to live without heavy emotional baggage.

Perhaps you can take the hand of the little ones inside of you, and love her with all your heart. You can be that parent she never had, and tell her how much you see, hear, and love her. You may say to her: ‘I know that things are really difficult, and I am sorry.’

When you first get a glimpse of this ultimate and all-encompassing love, it is so compelling that it can bring tears to your eyes.  And because you know what it is like to live without love, you do not take it for granted but cherish each and every single moment of it. Although the old insults and loneliness had left a scar, you no longer need to walk around with an open wound.

3. Releasing Anger Step 3: Seeing Reality as it is

At some point on this path to release our anger at our parents, we will notice a subtle but profound internal shift: We start to see the reality as it is now, and our parents as they are now. The more we grieve and let go of our version of the idealised parents, the more we can be open to the present.

When you are at this juncture of your journey to release your anger at your parents, you begin to see your parents’ vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and humanness.  This insight may bring about a temporary wave of sadness, as you must now fully acknowledge their limitations and their impact on you. However, this sadness and grief no longer feel threatening. This time, the sadness has a poignant but serene quality; you are grieving not just for yourself, but for the impermanent and imperfect nature of humanity itself.

Once you have fully grieved and have learned to take care of your inner wounds, you are now able to relate to your parents as they are now with no unconscious agenda. You can stay open to the experience itself. When such a shift happens, you feel free. Like a heavyweight being lifted off your shoulders, you are no longer trapped by the unexplainable compulsion to alter the past or present reality. You can finally stop looking for, asking, and tirelessly seeking the perfection that never existed.

Releasing Anger Step 4: Relating To Them With New Strength

With the strength of a self-assured adult, you now have the power to change the way you react to and interact with your parents.

If we continue to interact with our family members with the psyche of a wounded child, we inadvertently engineer the situation so that we are treated like one. In contrast, we can be grounded in our reality as a self-sustained adults, break away from the negative communication cycle and start an adult-to-adult conversation.

As a child, you could not escape the family home, but as an adult, you have the ability to speak up, walk away, and minimise contact.

At first, doing so feels uncomfortable. Your parents are likely to resist the change by criticizing or guilt-tripping you. But you can find a way to tell them you need to be treated with respect, and they can no longer influence important decisions in your life. More importantly, you need to believe in your ability to stand on your own two feet.

Sometimes, when you interrupt the longstanding and dysfunctional cycle of communication, change inevitably happens within the family system.  For example, when you start being assertive about what you can and cannot give, others will have to find a way to renegotiate boundaries with us and to respect your basic rights.

Whilst your family members may or may not react in the way you have wished for, at least, you know that you have done your part. And that is all you can do.

***

In grieving, we allow our fantasies and idealisations to die off, just like the butterfly that sheds its cocoon. When we choose to face reality head-on and stay present to what is, we are ready to perceive the goodness that is right in front of us.

“To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.” –Tao Te Ching

Now is the Time to Release Your Anger at Parents in Adulthood

Intellectually, we knew that our parents would never be the loving, attentive and sensitive people that we had needed them to be.

Emotionally, we have been hurt and let down again and again.

And yet we keep trying. We compulsively seek what we would not get, and then we blame ourselves for the pain that occurs afterwards.

To grieve for what we never had can drive us into a deep depression.

For a while, we are plunged into the deep end of disbelief.

Even after all these years, we cannot believe that we still had not given up.

One day, we reach a point of desolate sadness.

It might be a particularly painful interaction or something that they said or do, that finally break us open.

This is the moment at which we are being initiated to walk the bridge of grief.

This is a bridge of inner mourning, full of mini-deaths and letting-go.

As we step onto the bridge, we drop- one after another— false expectations, fantasy, and hopes.

We watch them sink into the water and get splintered into pieces by the rapid river beneath our feet.

As we watch them go, we let them go.

As we walk on the bridge of grief,

one layer after another we shed our skin.

 We feel ourselves becoming lighter and lighter.

As all shedding goes, this walk is not without pain.

This shedding pain is our growing pain.

Our instinctive reaction is to be afraid of it—

We may feel an urge to run back to the haven of our own shore.

If we do, however, we fall back into the inferno of disappointment and resentment.

Therefore, the task now, my dear friend, is to walk on.

One step after each other, tenderly, tenderly, but stoically and courageously.

Keep your heart open, even in hell.

 The temptation is to close your heart and to run back to the false haven of numbness, emptiness, repression and denial.

The instruction is not to keep your heart open- allow the grief, the resentment, and the despair to enter you. Let them come into your heart fully and completely.

Let them wash through you.

You may feel disorientated, empty, depressed- but these feelings will pass.

And when they do, liberation is waiting for you, alongside bursts of life energy.

All that you have longed for, but are afraid of owning- emotional freedom, spiritual maturity, the capacity to love and be in the world, emotional resilience- are waiting for you on the other side of this bridge.

 Painful as it might be, it is a worthy endeavour.

When it comes to true forgiveness and liberation,

there is no other journey more worthy than the bridge of grief.

So walk on, soldier, walk on.

Once we are able to integrate our past into the present, we will mature from a child-like mind to having a much more full and realistic vision of reality.

We can embrace both the good and the bad.

We can be both the anger and the compassion.

So walk on, soldier, walk on.