The goal should be to get the anger up and out so it can be put where it belongs – on the criminal who committed the crime. If we can do this, we can let go of the drugs, cigarettes, overeating, cutting, sick relationships, and all of the other mechanisms of self-hatred that we might have used in the past when we let the anger turn inward. Remember, when we punish ourselves for someone else’s crime, we continue the abuse on behalf of the abuser.
The perpetrator already stole the first part of our lives – we don’t intend to let him or her have the rest. When we live free and healthy lives that respect our right to be treated well, we finally end the abuse we learned to heap upon ourselves on the perpetrator's behalf. We do this by placing the anger where it belongs and expressing it in a way that does not harm ourselves or innocent bystanders. If this sounds too namby-pamby to you, consider that you can be as badass as you want with art, music, social commentary, protest, and activism – no one is asking you to hold back your feelings. Just don’t commit a crime on yourself or on others.
The main things we want everyone to know about a
survivor’s right to be angry:
· Incest survivors and their non-offending family members are deeply angry, whether or
not they are ready to acknowledge the anger.
· Anger is an important emotion that signals to us when we are being abused and gives us
energy to fight against the abuse. When we learn that our anger is futile, it tends to shut down our anger over time.
· Incest survivors can carry anger either as frozen feelings or as their only dominant
emotion. Both scenarios keep us “stuck,” unable to access other emotions that would be helpful in the healing process.
· Most of an incestuous family, also, is kept in a perpetual state of feelings that are
frozen by the perpetrator – intense feelings either are not allowed, or else they are the only feelings allowed in the house. Many times the perpetrator is the only person in the house allowed to be angry.
· Many incest survivors experience an angry person as frightening and potentially dangerous, which teaches them to repress their own anger. Sometimes the damage is too deep to acknowledge anger. The power of anger trapped deep inside becomes more terror layered on the terror generated by the perpetrator.
· Anger is energy in motion, as is every other emotion. We cannot stop our emotions, for they are a primal force, but we can learn from them and manage them in a productive way that becomes creative and empowering.
· Acknowledging the “stuck” anger and releasing it is essential before we can feel all of the
other feelings we need to feel in order to process the devastation of incest. Professional help often is a critical part of developing a productive relationship with our anger.
· We must let go of all expressions of anger that harm ourselves or innocent bystanders. We must weed out all of the rationalizations and put the shame and blame where it belongs – on the perpetrator.
· After the thunder and lightning, the world feels fresh and new.
not they are ready to acknowledge the anger.
· Anger is an important emotion that signals to us when we are being abused and gives us
energy to fight against the abuse. When we learn that our anger is futile, it tends to shut down our anger over time.
· Incest survivors can carry anger either as frozen feelings or as their only dominant
emotion. Both scenarios keep us “stuck,” unable to access other emotions that would be helpful in the healing process.
· Most of an incestuous family, also, is kept in a perpetual state of feelings that are
frozen by the perpetrator – intense feelings either are not allowed, or else they are the only feelings allowed in the house. Many times the perpetrator is the only person in the house allowed to be angry.
· Many incest survivors experience an angry person as frightening and potentially dangerous, which teaches them to repress their own anger. Sometimes the damage is too deep to acknowledge anger. The power of anger trapped deep inside becomes more terror layered on the terror generated by the perpetrator.
· Anger is energy in motion, as is every other emotion. We cannot stop our emotions, for they are a primal force, but we can learn from them and manage them in a productive way that becomes creative and empowering.
· Acknowledging the “stuck” anger and releasing it is essential before we can feel all of the
other feelings we need to feel in order to process the devastation of incest. Professional help often is a critical part of developing a productive relationship with our anger.
· We must let go of all expressions of anger that harm ourselves or innocent bystanders. We must weed out all of the rationalizations and put the shame and blame where it belongs – on the perpetrator.
· After the thunder and lightning, the world feels fresh and new.
For Family, Friends, and Neighbors
Imagine you are a small child who is being hurt by someone who says they love you.
The hurt happens in secret and, because you are a child, you believe whatever reason you are given about why these things are being done to you, and why they must be secret. Because you are a magical being, you believe that all of the adults in your environment
are aware of these hurts, and that they must approve because they are allowing it to continue.
Or imagine, maybe, that you are at the point in your life where you are no longer so magical. Maybe you are big enough to understand that what is being done to you is wrong – that what is being done to you is monstrous – but you are powerless to stop it. Maybe the
other adults do know what is happening to you, but they are overwhelmed with their own addictions and life problems, and are not capable of helping you. Maybe they are just as frightened as you are. Even worse, maybe they are indifferent or they even hate you for it because they consider you their competition.
What do you do, in these cases? You do what 1 out of every 14 girls and one out of every 40 boys does: you survive. In the process of surviving, you teach yourself some pretty twisted stuff. You teach yourself that you do not deserve safety, that no one can see
you, and that you are not allowed to have a self.
You learn that help is not coming. Eventually, frustration gives way to anger, but anger is a dangerous emotion, and you tamp it down tight until it explodes like the dynamite it is – and the container for the blast is you.
Those of us who love an incest survivor (or survivors) have our work cut out for us. If we were involved in the family during the time the incest was occurring, then we have an
even steeper hill to climb, because we will have many of our own issues to work through. It is important to make a conscious and rapid effort to overcome any fear of angry people, if you have it.
Sometimes we take no time at all to feel angry about what has been done to our children, but feeling anger on behalf of ourselves for the wrongs done to us by the perpetrator can become quite a project. We can be so consumed with guilt at not having seen the incest happening that all we can feel is grief, remorse, and a desperate determination that our
children should fight to reclaim their lives and live happily. Feeling angry about the part of the crime that was an affront to ourselves is several degrees of separation away from our immediate piorities.
We must remind ourselves that we, too, were victims of many crimes– that our trust and love for the perpetrator was betrayed in a way almost too horrible to understand. Perpetrators often take special pains to play off of all the insecurities that we bring with us into the relationship and, with the special talent that most sociopaths have, are able to exploit all of our secret, darkest fears about our inadequacies. Often, the perpetrator carefully grooms the family never to be angry with him, setting up a pattern of emotional tyranny in which all are in fear of the perpetrator's moods and emotions at the expense of experiencing or even being aware of their own feelings. We call this particular dysfunction among the members of an incestuous family the "trance of incest."
Most parenting books contain strong admonitions against saying negative things to the children about the absent parent. In the case of incest, it can be actually quite liberating to say angry things to each other about the perpetrator. Voicing the anger can help children bring their anger to the surface so it can be dealt with. It helps children to witness a supportive adult's anger at the the wrongs done to them, as long as it is explained to the child that they themselves have done nothing wrong. Having the ability to express
anger toward the perpetrator as a unified group of survivors is extremely helpful and
empowering. Children who have been abused need to be freed from any unspoken pressure to retain illusions of goodness within the criminal, which in turn will help them still the voices within them that suggest that any of the abuse was somehow their fault.
If you are a non-offending parent, your survivor will be angry with you at times – and
justifiably so. We recommend working on the inevitability of your child’s anger toward you with your own therapist before it comes up - work on yourself so you can take it in the teeth
without flinching when it surfaces. Don’t rationalize. Don’t make excuses. Apologize, apologize, apologize. Draft a support person you can unload on when the survivor’s anger stings you.
Every survivor we have met has had a deep need to be validated about her right to be angry with the non-offending parent, and possibly other family members, as well. This is the time to trust in unconditional love with accountability – and the accountability here is your own.
If you accept accountability for your part of the trauma (and yes, you are at least partly responsible, if only for putting yourself in a relationship with a child molester and a sociopath), you will gain enormous healing for yourself. Attempting to rationalize away your own accountability can make you ill, and disturb the fragile new trust that is building between you and your survivor child as you journey together toward healing.
Some innocent spouses might fear that their children will reject them if they accept responsibility for their part of the dysfunctional situation. We never have met a survivor who was not ready to accept an apology from an innocent family member – in fact, we yearn for your expressions of validation, regret, and support. We are not crazy or wrong for being angry with you – most likely, you screwed up! Stop trying to talk us out of that conviction – you only will add to our sense of loss. Later, much later, you can talk to us about how you were victimized, also. This is not the time to make us hear about your trauma – we have spent too much energy already taking care of you emotionally. This is your turn to take care of us. In doing so, you will take an enormous step toward your own healing. Sooner or later, we not only will stop blaming each other, but we also will forgive each other, if the contrition is genuine.
If you harbor anger in your heart toward us because of the incest, we beg of you, get some professional help to work it through and do not bring it into your relationship with us. One of the most validating things you can do for us is to make sure we know that you do not blame us for any of the crimes committed against us. If you have transient anger that is brought on by your struggles to deepen your relationship by becoming more honest with us, by all means express it, but make sure it is clear that it is the struggle with communication or relationships skills that is irritating you at the moment. Keep any anger toward your us separate from your love and support for us, and resolve it as soon as you can – you cannot carry it in one hand and hold us with the other. We are uncannily attuned to how you feel, because we have been trained to always please the parent – do not add the burden of your anger to our already Herculean task of recovery.
Often survivors will fear the anger of the non-offending parent. Children do so many desperate things to survive a terrible situation, that we actually can feel as if we have betrayed the innocent parent. If you do your own recovery work well, you will be able to bring this into the open and relieve us of this one aspect of grief and discomfort. “Thank you,” say to us. “Thank you for doing whatever you felt you needed to do in that terrible situation, so that you would survive. I am so glad you are here with me now, and we can make it better together. Thank you for doing the best thing you could think to do, to save your yourself. You were so little, but you stayed brave. I love you. I’m so sorry you were faced with those impossible choices - it must have been so terrible.”
If you still are angry with us, read these next phrases until you have them memorized, then come to us, take our hands, look us in the eyes and say,“I am sorry these things happened to you. It was not your fault. A crime was committed against you. I am angry about the incest, and heartbroken, but I am not angry at you because you did nothing wrong. I am grateful that you survived this terrible thing. It was not your fault. I love you.”
All support people should read as much as they can about recovery from incest. When anger sweeps over us, try to provide a safe and understanding atmosphere for us to let off some of the pressure. People must have courage to allow someone to be angry in their presence - if you can tolerate our expressions of anger you are giving an enormous gift to a recovering person. Don’t judge our anger - let it flow. You can go to yard sales and buy up a lot of cheap pottery, then take us to the dump so we can break them all together. Go for a walk uphill and speak out the anger words with us. Be sure to take your cue from the us, though - we can experience platitudes and exercises as just another form of pressure to “be a certain way.”
Also, be flexible– your support might be needed at the most inconvenient times. Be ready to change your plans, let the soufflé fall, give up love-making, cancel social engagements - whatever it takes to let us know that you honor our right to be angry by making us your priority when we are ready to express our feelings. We never know what will bring up anger, and anger release episodes most often are spontaneous.
Support people must be alert for potential crisis: take seriously actions such as talk of suicide, attempts at violence toward ourselves or others, or substance abuse. Get professional advice about intervening in the situation, up to and including calling 9-1-1 if
we are engaging in destructive behavior. But fantasies of violence, beating up inanimate objects, other ways to get the anger up and out of our bodies will be helpful, if you can tolerate them. After the anger has passed, you can check on anything that seemed
particularly disturbing, such as “you don’t think you will really run the fucker down in your car, do you?” If you get a shaky laugh for a response, let it go. If you get a determined “fuck, yeah,” get some help with an intervention.
The hurt happens in secret and, because you are a child, you believe whatever reason you are given about why these things are being done to you, and why they must be secret. Because you are a magical being, you believe that all of the adults in your environment
are aware of these hurts, and that they must approve because they are allowing it to continue.
Or imagine, maybe, that you are at the point in your life where you are no longer so magical. Maybe you are big enough to understand that what is being done to you is wrong – that what is being done to you is monstrous – but you are powerless to stop it. Maybe the
other adults do know what is happening to you, but they are overwhelmed with their own addictions and life problems, and are not capable of helping you. Maybe they are just as frightened as you are. Even worse, maybe they are indifferent or they even hate you for it because they consider you their competition.
What do you do, in these cases? You do what 1 out of every 14 girls and one out of every 40 boys does: you survive. In the process of surviving, you teach yourself some pretty twisted stuff. You teach yourself that you do not deserve safety, that no one can see
you, and that you are not allowed to have a self.
You learn that help is not coming. Eventually, frustration gives way to anger, but anger is a dangerous emotion, and you tamp it down tight until it explodes like the dynamite it is – and the container for the blast is you.
Those of us who love an incest survivor (or survivors) have our work cut out for us. If we were involved in the family during the time the incest was occurring, then we have an
even steeper hill to climb, because we will have many of our own issues to work through. It is important to make a conscious and rapid effort to overcome any fear of angry people, if you have it.
Sometimes we take no time at all to feel angry about what has been done to our children, but feeling anger on behalf of ourselves for the wrongs done to us by the perpetrator can become quite a project. We can be so consumed with guilt at not having seen the incest happening that all we can feel is grief, remorse, and a desperate determination that our
children should fight to reclaim their lives and live happily. Feeling angry about the part of the crime that was an affront to ourselves is several degrees of separation away from our immediate piorities.
We must remind ourselves that we, too, were victims of many crimes– that our trust and love for the perpetrator was betrayed in a way almost too horrible to understand. Perpetrators often take special pains to play off of all the insecurities that we bring with us into the relationship and, with the special talent that most sociopaths have, are able to exploit all of our secret, darkest fears about our inadequacies. Often, the perpetrator carefully grooms the family never to be angry with him, setting up a pattern of emotional tyranny in which all are in fear of the perpetrator's moods and emotions at the expense of experiencing or even being aware of their own feelings. We call this particular dysfunction among the members of an incestuous family the "trance of incest."
Most parenting books contain strong admonitions against saying negative things to the children about the absent parent. In the case of incest, it can be actually quite liberating to say angry things to each other about the perpetrator. Voicing the anger can help children bring their anger to the surface so it can be dealt with. It helps children to witness a supportive adult's anger at the the wrongs done to them, as long as it is explained to the child that they themselves have done nothing wrong. Having the ability to express
anger toward the perpetrator as a unified group of survivors is extremely helpful and
empowering. Children who have been abused need to be freed from any unspoken pressure to retain illusions of goodness within the criminal, which in turn will help them still the voices within them that suggest that any of the abuse was somehow their fault.
If you are a non-offending parent, your survivor will be angry with you at times – and
justifiably so. We recommend working on the inevitability of your child’s anger toward you with your own therapist before it comes up - work on yourself so you can take it in the teeth
without flinching when it surfaces. Don’t rationalize. Don’t make excuses. Apologize, apologize, apologize. Draft a support person you can unload on when the survivor’s anger stings you.
Every survivor we have met has had a deep need to be validated about her right to be angry with the non-offending parent, and possibly other family members, as well. This is the time to trust in unconditional love with accountability – and the accountability here is your own.
If you accept accountability for your part of the trauma (and yes, you are at least partly responsible, if only for putting yourself in a relationship with a child molester and a sociopath), you will gain enormous healing for yourself. Attempting to rationalize away your own accountability can make you ill, and disturb the fragile new trust that is building between you and your survivor child as you journey together toward healing.
Some innocent spouses might fear that their children will reject them if they accept responsibility for their part of the dysfunctional situation. We never have met a survivor who was not ready to accept an apology from an innocent family member – in fact, we yearn for your expressions of validation, regret, and support. We are not crazy or wrong for being angry with you – most likely, you screwed up! Stop trying to talk us out of that conviction – you only will add to our sense of loss. Later, much later, you can talk to us about how you were victimized, also. This is not the time to make us hear about your trauma – we have spent too much energy already taking care of you emotionally. This is your turn to take care of us. In doing so, you will take an enormous step toward your own healing. Sooner or later, we not only will stop blaming each other, but we also will forgive each other, if the contrition is genuine.
If you harbor anger in your heart toward us because of the incest, we beg of you, get some professional help to work it through and do not bring it into your relationship with us. One of the most validating things you can do for us is to make sure we know that you do not blame us for any of the crimes committed against us. If you have transient anger that is brought on by your struggles to deepen your relationship by becoming more honest with us, by all means express it, but make sure it is clear that it is the struggle with communication or relationships skills that is irritating you at the moment. Keep any anger toward your us separate from your love and support for us, and resolve it as soon as you can – you cannot carry it in one hand and hold us with the other. We are uncannily attuned to how you feel, because we have been trained to always please the parent – do not add the burden of your anger to our already Herculean task of recovery.
Often survivors will fear the anger of the non-offending parent. Children do so many desperate things to survive a terrible situation, that we actually can feel as if we have betrayed the innocent parent. If you do your own recovery work well, you will be able to bring this into the open and relieve us of this one aspect of grief and discomfort. “Thank you,” say to us. “Thank you for doing whatever you felt you needed to do in that terrible situation, so that you would survive. I am so glad you are here with me now, and we can make it better together. Thank you for doing the best thing you could think to do, to save your yourself. You were so little, but you stayed brave. I love you. I’m so sorry you were faced with those impossible choices - it must have been so terrible.”
If you still are angry with us, read these next phrases until you have them memorized, then come to us, take our hands, look us in the eyes and say,“I am sorry these things happened to you. It was not your fault. A crime was committed against you. I am angry about the incest, and heartbroken, but I am not angry at you because you did nothing wrong. I am grateful that you survived this terrible thing. It was not your fault. I love you.”
All support people should read as much as they can about recovery from incest. When anger sweeps over us, try to provide a safe and understanding atmosphere for us to let off some of the pressure. People must have courage to allow someone to be angry in their presence - if you can tolerate our expressions of anger you are giving an enormous gift to a recovering person. Don’t judge our anger - let it flow. You can go to yard sales and buy up a lot of cheap pottery, then take us to the dump so we can break them all together. Go for a walk uphill and speak out the anger words with us. Be sure to take your cue from the us, though - we can experience platitudes and exercises as just another form of pressure to “be a certain way.”
Also, be flexible– your support might be needed at the most inconvenient times. Be ready to change your plans, let the soufflé fall, give up love-making, cancel social engagements - whatever it takes to let us know that you honor our right to be angry by making us your priority when we are ready to express our feelings. We never know what will bring up anger, and anger release episodes most often are spontaneous.
Support people must be alert for potential crisis: take seriously actions such as talk of suicide, attempts at violence toward ourselves or others, or substance abuse. Get professional advice about intervening in the situation, up to and including calling 9-1-1 if
we are engaging in destructive behavior. But fantasies of violence, beating up inanimate objects, other ways to get the anger up and out of our bodies will be helpful, if you can tolerate them. After the anger has passed, you can check on anything that seemed
particularly disturbing, such as “you don’t think you will really run the fucker down in your car, do you?” If you get a shaky laugh for a response, let it go. If you get a determined “fuck, yeah,” get some help with an intervention.
