I'm filled with rage

[Bfmamma]

Hi,
This is my first post so apologies for a ramble.
I don't even know why I'm posting. I feel full of rage and anxiety and it's just not taken seriously.
Maybe six months ago I spoke to them GP and she said it's normal, it's just grief. I don't think it is.
I get so angry. I can physically feel it running through me. It makes me want to rip my skin off. The other day it felt like that twitchy anxiety feelings all bubbling in my wrists. I get anxious too but mostly can ignore that but the rage is bloody awful.
I lost my mum after 2 other very scary moments with her. It was an awful time. I grew up with her being poorly too but kind of took it for granted as that's all I knew. She nearly died twice before dying in the space of 18 months. I told the GP this asking with how I was feeling and she said it was just grief and sent me a link for therapy. 1. I don't want to talk about what happened, I can't even think about it properly. 2. I feel it's not just grief.
I found out I was pregnant 2 days after we lost her after having a miscarriage the month before so everything was very intense very quickly.
I appreciate this is a ramble but I'm hoping just getting it out may give some kind of relief.

I think you do need some type of therapy to help you manage your overwhelming emotions OP.
What do you think it is if it is not just grief?

@Willyourselfforwardthank you. The thing is, I don't want to talk about it and go over it again. It was all ICU, major ops ( over the years) and very traumatic times.
I understand why it happened, how it happened etc.
When I get these waves (someyltimes for days on end) it's not anger about death. It could be the hob on the cooker won't stay lit for example.
Working things through in my head I actually feel it could be depression with anxiety and even PTSD. I've had bad bouts of anxiety every so often which I feel can contribute to it.

Could you have an assessment with a psychiatrist to see what they diagnose and recommend for treatment?

Repressed anger can cause depression. Find and express the anger and the depression will lift. Anxiety can also be a symptom of not letting yourself feel your feelings. It’s anxiety provoking to get filled up with all that energy that needs to be expelled.

You might be getting angry with things around you (like the cooker) as a defence against feeling your anger and grief.

You’ve got to feel it to heal it unfortunately.

Make sure you’ve got some support around you while you feel it though.

thing is, I don't want to talk about it and go over it again.

I understand why it happened, how it happened etc.

I understand this, 100%. There are different types of therapy, they don't all involve talking about the past or our feelings. It's worth finding a therapist with whom you have a rapport and respects your feelings on raking over things. You can find this on the NHS (although it has taken me several attempts to do so).

If you can afford it, I would look into grief & trauma therapy. Make sure you use a nationally registered & qualified therapist.

I don't think you need me to point out that anger is a natural stage of grief. How do you release it? Having a healthy outlet to express it is important.

Rage is also common during perimenopause. Is it possible that you're experiencing a double-whammy of the effects of grief & trauma with a huge hormonal change?

I'm so sorry for all you've been through by the way, and all you've lost. X

It sounds like you’ve been through a lot, all at once. It can be extra hard when two losses come close together, and hard to process difficult feelings in pregnancy as people may worry that their feelings affect the pregnancy (though professionals say not to worry about this) and may have hormones amplifying or adding to feelings.

I would let your midwife know how you are feeling, when you have one. And if you don’t feel ready to talk about it all at the moment, there are other methods of working through anger: exercise often helps- maybe just walks if you are pregnant or something in your comfort zone, yoga (a pregnancy version), meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, or even finding ways to physically vent your angry energy in a safe way- crushing cans for recycling, shredding paper, cleaning something that really needs it, kneading bread etc. Or write it all down, maybe in the form of letters, then safely burn the paper.

Sometimes this kind of thing seems to help the anger dissipate, it may leave you more in touch with the next layer of feelings like sadness underneath, but you can work through this too and feel more peaceful in the long run.

I’m not against talking therapies by any means, just trying to offer some other ideas to help you while you don’t feel like talking right now. You will find a way through it all somehow.

It probably is grief. But not "just" grief - "just" is so dismissive.

Rage is the word you have found to attach to the turmoil, boiling mass of emotions.

If you can face finding a therapist you could say that you don't want to talk about IT - about the death, the ICU, the death events, but could maybe talk about the feelings that you are now having, with a view to moving into the next stage of your life?

So sorry for all you’re going through OP
This sounds awful and could very well be PTSD like you say. Have you had therapy before? If you find the right person it can be brilliant, supportive and reassuring - they should ask what you want to achieve, what you’re comfortable talking about and how you’d like the sessions to go. The main thing is whether you trust them, so if you didn’t then you’d need to try someone else. They will be open to people meeting them to suss them out - I think it’s worth meeting a few and see who you like best. You might click with the first person you see and it seems you need a lot of support and tlc atm.
wishing you all the best with your pregnancy x

Thank you all for your replies. I should probably add more context.

Baby turned 1 last month so no midwife or anything. I did speak to the midwives and HV and it's all been swept away as I have a supportive husband.
My mum was born with heart disease. She had a pacemaker fitted in her 40s and a defib fitted late 40/early 50s. With smaller procedures in-between.
Long story short she kind of dropped off the radar with some treatment then COVID happened.
18 months before she died she went into kidney failure, put on emergency dialysis in icu and it was very touch and go for a while. A year later she had a bleed on the brain - again touch a go and due to complications there was no treatment, just wait and see. Then when it all happened, she had sepsis.
I struggled after but the rage kicked in bad after baby was born. I asked for help and got nowhere. Then it clicked that it could be post partum rage. Except I'm now over a year in and I hasn't stopped.

I've had really anxious blips. Eg, I found the start of the ukraine/Russia extremely hard and this was before all of the above. After the kidney failure I struggled with anxiety until she died. Now I get it from time to time but not as bad.

I can not explain how strong the rage is. When I say I want to rip off my skin I literally want to rip the skin from my scalp down. It feels like that would be the only release. Obviously I know it's not. When the rage subsided, I feel guilty, overwhelmed, tired, like I'm done.

I know some of this is grief, I just think that's part of it. I find speaking about it very hard. The feelings I feel make me feel like I'm crazy.

You're not crazy.

Are you able to identify specifically what you're so angry about? We can make assumptions, and I'm not being nosy, but an important aspect of therapy is being able to name your feelings and identify where they spring from.

Does the rage come from the loss of you mother and baby? Or do you feel your mum was let down? Or that you weren't properly supported?

Could you be angry with your mum for leaving you (anger isn't always rational)?

Anger can also be other feelings in disguise, like anxiety or fear. I've found that anger is an emotion which makes me feel powerful when I'm not, when I've had no control over the things happening. It can also be defensive, helping protect us from other feelings of desperate loss.

This page has a good description of the ways anger can serve to protect us:
https://griefdirectory.org/anger-in-grief/

I understand that calling it anger when you say rage may come across as minimising. Please know I'm not, I appreciate the intensity of what you've described, the overwhelming, sheer rage. One of the reasons I liked the above link was that it acknowledged intense rage.

From what you've said, I think the rage you feel is serving to protect you from being overwhelmed by grief, especially because you've said how difficult you find it to speak about.

I think you need to find a qualified therapist who's experienced in grief & trauma counselling. Someone who will help you feel safe enough to process these intense feeling in such a way that they won't swamp you, and won't pressure you to speak about anything until you're ready.

Can you stretch financially to paying for private therapy? NHS therapy are limited by number of sessions and i think you need to be working with someone long-term. From what you've said, and my own experiences with grief & trauma, it takes more time than the NHS allows for to get to a place where you can start to safely deal with the intensity of your feelings.

It might also be worth looking up complicated grief. X

I agree with others, therapy would help you but I also understand that the thought of rehashing everything, knowing that the outcome will still be the same, is unbearable. I'm reminded of working with someone (from MN) who knew there was something wrong but simply couldn't find the words to describe it. So we didn't - we just asked the subconscious to let 'it' go, because it was actively working against her happiness. It worked. To this day I never knew what 'it' was and I didn't need to.

@Leafy3thank you. I can't pinpoint anything that I'm angry at. I feel it most when I'm overwhelmed. For example baby is being a pain in the bum going to sleep and I've been at it and hour. It's obviously not babies fault but I'm overwhelmed and overstimulated at that point. It might be too much noise going on or I'm juggling jobs. It feels more to me that it's when I'm failing rather than it being powerful.
Unfortunately we can't afford private therapy but I will look through your link. Thank you

t I'm overwhelmed and overstimulated at that point. It might be too much noise going on or I'm juggling jobs

This makes me wonder if you could be neurodivergent too? It might be worth exploring ADHD and ASD in women and seeing if any of it resonates.

I know how difficult it is to afford private therapy, but I would urge two things:

1. that you make it a financial priority - take it from being a nice-to-have, want-to-do-but-cant-afford-it to "we need to find a way to afford it"
2. search therapists in your area or online, like many services costs vary and therapist may offer concessions.

Where my parents live there's a local charity which provides free therapy, irrespective of income, and over double the number of sessions available on the NHS.

Another way to look at it would be what do you want to achieve right now?
If it's a way to let go of, or manage / cope with, the rage you feel in a frustrating or overwhelming moment then NHS CBT could actually help.

The therapist would need to know a bit about your history but just what you've told us here and they'll respect your desire not to go into all that. Meanwhile, they can help you to cope better with what is which is directly impacting you most at the moment.

This approach could also help you feel more confident about therapy in the future, because you're tackling it in bitesize chunks and learning things which will help you cope if / when you do decide its time to properly process your grief.

Finally, @Bfmamma you're not mad or crazy and you have no need to feel ashamed or guilty. What you're describing are normal reactions to serious trauma, loss, and the sleep deprivation that comes with parenting an infant. 💐

@Leafy3thank you. I think I will look in to what you have suggested and see what happens. Thank your world

@Leafy3sorry, I meant thanks for your words! Thanks for your world seems a bit deep and cryptic!

Really wishing you all the best @Bfmamma
It takes time to recover from events like those you've lived through but you will recover.