It’s OK To Feel Anger Towards Your Parent At Any Age

In case you need to hear it from a professional who’s been helping people heal their trauma for more than 20 years:

It’s OK to feel anger towards your parent.

At any age, and at any stage of healing, whether your parent is living or not, feeling anger towards your parent is OK.

And if you need to hear it from a parent, I’ll say it again. My kids are encouraged to feel anger towards me at any age, whether I’m living or not. Anger at me is OK.

I was talking to one of my best friends recently, and they were talking through some deep childhood stuff. Then in the middle of it, they said “I can’t believe I’m still blaming my mom after this many decades. I know she tried her best.”

“Woah” I said. “That’s a lot of pressure you’re putting on yourself right now. In this moment of feeling through what you experienced as a kid so that you can heal from it, you’re not allowed to feel any blame or anger?”

We all have many parts.

You are multitudes. In the language of Internal Family Systems, you have many parts. If a part of you is angry at your parent, I encourage you to give that part respect and let it know you are listening.

I’m like my friend. At times, I’ve repressed my own anger and not wanted to feel it. But feeling that anger and listening to what it had to say has been necessary to my healing.

Cutting off anger slows down healing, just like cutting off any part of yourself slows down healing.

I’ve got many parts. I’ll share a few.

• A part of me is angry at my parent, feeling that I shouldn’t have been treated that way.

• A part feels the sadness of wanting something from my parent that I didn’t get.

• A part of me worries about feeling anger towards my parent because I am afraid my anger will harm them, even if they never hear about it.

• A part of me worries about feeling anger at my parent because if I feel the anger, I’ll have to confront them, and I don’t know if I want to.

• A part of me believes that everything that was painful in my childhood and since is my fault. (On the positive side, if I single handedly fucked up my own childhood and destroyed my whole family’s happiness, then perhaps I can also single handedly fix my broken self and everything and everyone will be OK.)

• A part of me just doesn’t want to feel any of this and prefers to ….(grab a substance, scroll, focus on another person or just space out).

What I now know about my own healing is that in order to heal, I need to listen to, hear and feel what EACH part is holding.

The angry part needs me to fully listen. And after I listen, I get to decide what, if anything, I do next.

Cutting off anger or forcing forgiveness is not the move.

In a healing group I was part of, I talked about my anger and sadness about a situation from my childhood. I felt lots of love and understanding from folks in the group. It was the kind of space where people were sharing deeply, and getting vulnerable.

After the group, a well meaning member approached me and said: “it might help you to forgive.”

I felt defensiveness and a spike of shame. I know she meant well, but her suggestion to skip past anger and fast forward to forgiveness activated the parts of me that are uncomfortable with my own anger.

I remember a moment when I was about 21 years old and the minister of my parents’ church asked me how I was doing. I tried to answer him honestly, thinking he actually wanted to know and that maybe he could be helpful. I tested the waters and said that some things were painful in my family.

He said “Oh, you’re at the perfect age to be blaming your parents.”

Yikes.

He had labeled my anger and sadness as immature. I felt shame, some anger at him, and a note to not share more.

If I could, I'd tell that 21-year-old Annie to find another listener.

I can imagine what the minister was feeling. It would be more comfortable for him, because of his own stuff, if my angry or sad parts would be quiet.

But the angry part needs to be felt, and you deserve to talk to people who can help you listen to it.

When I’m talking to someone who starts feeling their anger towards a parent or caregiver, and then suddenly pulls back and says “I know they did their best” I encourage them to acknowledge both.

“A part of you is reminding us that they did their best. Got it. Does that part have concerns about you listening to the one holding anger? Just right now? Not so that it can take over, but just so we can listen and help it?”

The angry part won’t be fooled. If you tell it you’re listening just so that it will stop being angry, it’s gonna see right through that.

You gotta truly listen to your anger.

It’s really helpful to have a trustworthy healer or friend available to hold the anger with you.

If someone is uncomfortable with your anger at your parent, it’s not because there’s anything wrong with you or your anger. It’s because they’ve got their own stuff that’s freaking them out. Keep looking for another listener.

I’m a parent. My kids are in their late teens and early 20’s. If they were feeling brave enough to complain about me to someone, I really hope that person would say “tell me more. that sucks that she (insert whatever hurtful or harmful thing I did or said or did not do or did not say). I get why you’re angry.”

And if the first person they tell gives them a response like “maybe you should try to forgive her.” or “Oh you’re at the perfect age to blame your parents”

….it hurts my heart to imagine that…I hope my kid will keep trying to find a listener who has the capacity to listen.

I’m available to hear my kids’ anger towards me, but I also know it helps to process it with other people too. And they deserve that.

People worry that if they blame their parents, they will be stuck at blaming their parents forever, and they won’t take responsibility for their own life.

Often I think it works the other way. When I block my anger, it doesn’t go away. When I allow myself to feel it fully hear what it has to say, my capacity for healing grows.

My anger is there to protect me. So when I really appreciate it and hear it out completely, it tends to naturally soften.

Not chill out and calm down and shut up, but truly soften and put down it’s sword and shield.

My anger gets to trust that I will pay attention when it shows up.

I will ask “what are you trying to tell me?” and my anger will breathe a sigh of relief.

Annie Schuessler Zam helps trauma survivors with healing and nervous system regulation in San Francisco and online everywhere through Brainspotting and Internal Family Systems informed coaching. She is the creator of Rebel Therapist Podcast where practitioners tell their own personal stories of healing.