It finally dawned on me that love and anger are not mutually exclusive. I can hear some people saying, “Duh!” but it was a light bulb moment for me. I never even realized that I had believed on a deep level that anger meant someone didn’t love me. Throughout my childhood I knew that my parents didn’t love me because they were always angry at me.
Only be seeing my own relationship with my kids did it occur to me that love and anger can exist at the same time. Being angry with my kids doesn’t make me love them any less. Could it be that the same was true for my parents? Is it possible that my parents actually loved me? It’s not only possible; its far more likely than the impression I took away from my childhood.
Its no news flash that I was deathly afraid of anger for most of my life. What’s new is the understanding of why I feared it so much. To my subconscious mind, anger meant the ultimate rejection, the withdrawal of love. The ramifications of this are staggering.
If anger does not mean that someone no longer loves me, then I made a lot of false assumptions in my relationships. The whole landscape of my past as I remember it is distorted, inaccurate. I’m not talking about the abuse. That was real. Most of my relationships though were not abusive. I was a skilled people-pleaser with a particular talent for preventing or soothing outbursts of anger.
Unfortunately, I never had a real relationship with anyone because I was so busy making sure they were happy. As my heart has healed and I’ve opened to love, memories have come back to me in a different life. The truth is that I have been loved a great deal in my life. I just wasn’t able to receive it because I was so busy making sure no one got mad at me. How sad that I ended romances and friendships the first time anger reared its head, so sure that love had died. I walked away from people who loved me, never feeling how much they cared.
Only be seeing my own relationship with my kids did it occur to me that love and anger can exist at the same time. Being angry with my kids doesn’t make me love them any less. Could it be that the same was true for my parents? Is it possible that my parents actually loved me? It’s not only possible; its far more likely than the impression I took away from my childhood.
Its no news flash that I was deathly afraid of anger for most of my life. What’s new is the understanding of why I feared it so much. To my subconscious mind, anger meant the ultimate rejection, the withdrawal of love. The ramifications of this are staggering.
If anger does not mean that someone no longer loves me, then I made a lot of false assumptions in my relationships. The whole landscape of my past as I remember it is distorted, inaccurate. I’m not talking about the abuse. That was real. Most of my relationships though were not abusive. I was a skilled people-pleaser with a particular talent for preventing or soothing outbursts of anger.
Unfortunately, I never had a real relationship with anyone because I was so busy making sure they were happy. As my heart has healed and I’ve opened to love, memories have come back to me in a different life. The truth is that I have been loved a great deal in my life. I just wasn’t able to receive it because I was so busy making sure no one got mad at me. How sad that I ended romances and friendships the first time anger reared its head, so sure that love had died. I walked away from people who loved me, never feeling how much they cared.