How to Survive With Anger

It is very common for rape survivors to feel angry at some point after they are sexually assaulted. Often this anger leads to the destruction of parts of the rape survivor's life. Relationships are destroyed, eating disorders are developed, and the survivor's life is torn apart by the overwhelming anger. Here is a place to explore anger and hopefully find some solutions to overcome it.

Nancy Venable Rainn describes finding the pair of underwear that she was wearing when she was raped, and her subsequent experience with anger, "I stood up slowly, as if not to wake the forces that I had unwrapped, and went to the kitchen for a baking sheet, a can of lighter fluid, a box of long kitchen matches, and a soup spoon. I put the newspaper and its contents on the tray and slipped down the stairs and out the back hallway door. I carried everything outside to a corner of the garden near the pond where the ducks were gliding on the dark, still water. I placed the wood and the underpants on top of the newspaper, doused them with lighter fluid, and struck a match. I watched what happened.

Then I imagined the worst thing I have ever imagined: the man who had raped me burning up alive. I imagined his screams of agony, his hideous pain. I saw the fat under his dirty skin crackling in the flames. A terrible pleasure consumed me. "Die," I said, over and over.

Until this moment, I had not allowed myself to feel my hatred. Now my body felt huge and powerful. It felt good to be a monster, very good. My mind-all thoughts and feelings-seemed to vanish into the pleasure of the pain I gave him. His pain, my pleasure made a perfect desolation. I relished it...I thought I was fine now that I had killed my underpants."

"My anger had already contributed to a growing distance in my marriage. When I withdrew sexually, Tim was faced with a strain of guilt by association. Was he somehow accountable for the sins of his gender? How could we engage while I was so withdrawn unless he initiated the seduction? Was that pressure? What is the relationship between erotic aggression and rape? Had the line moved? Would he overstep? He became trapped in one of those undecodable logical fallacies: A man harmed the woman I love. I am a man. Therefore, I ....

I could give Tim no help. My anger was easily triggered in those days, and my instinct was to withdraw, to resist his affection, in fact to fear it."

-Patricia Weaver Francisco

Ever scream at a loved one when you're not really mad at them? Ever pick a fight with someone just because you need to be angry...you need to yell? There have been many times for me when I have yelled at my boyfriend or a family member, and they have done nothing wrong. Misdirected anger has been a real problem in my relationships, because many times I don't realize that it's misdirected, and the person I'm yelling at has no idea what they did. It takes a lot of effort to be aware of how I'm feeling and whether my anger is justified or misdirected.

"What felt [safe] was to tell her how furious I was that the rapist had driven me to a shrink. It was his fault I was falling apart. I told Helen that my rape was 'worse than death,' and that I felt the rapist had destroyed my life, that I could never rebuild it. 'Never, never,' I said. I hate him with my entire being. I wanted to see him dead. I wanted to kill him myself. I had never expressed my rage to another human being this directly. It was no longer deflected onto someone or something else in my life. It was the rapist I hated that night."

-Nancy Venable Rainn

I have experienced this. I believe that it is a stage that you must go through in order to heal. Suddenly one night when I was doing the Courage to Heal, I was overcome with rage towards my attacker. It was crippling at the time, but I believe that it was a healing experience. Allowing myself to hate the person I should have hated from the start, instead of myself or other people, was the first step towards forgiving myself.

"I inherited these hurtful, evil spirited monsters and their slimy, perverted companions from my abusive, tyrannical father. It is painful to witness hate and anger explode from me, hurting those closest to me. The words and emotions that came out of my mouth seemed beyond my control, coming from deep inside, exploding at their will - not mine.

As I recognize these ugly parts of myself, I see that although they are inside, they are NOT me. I need not fight, react to them or give them power. Thank goodness I am learning to recognize the triggers and how to stop before I explode."

-Linda Ness

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