Making progress with my anger - what's my next step??

[SpiralOut]

I just posted this in one of my other threads, but I want advice so I'll post it here too, as its own thread. I've been struggling with anger issues and I'm finally getting somewhere.

 

I've been feeling stressed out with myself because I know that I complain too much about the ****ty things that people say and do to me. It makes me feel like a victim, and I don't want to be one, but for some reason I can't stop getting angry and complaining.

 

I think the reason I do this is because I spent most of my life being the "too nice" girl. You know, if someone is mean to you, you just give them the benefit of a doubt, or ignore it, or tell yourself they are just having a bad day and don't really mean it. I have another thread about my control freak mother and that's how I was taught to act with her. I couldn't be angry with her because if I did it, well doing that was wrong, because she is the mother and she is always right. If someone was a jerk consistently, then I would stay away. But if someone showed me the nice-mean-nice-mean behaviours, it really confused me. I would fall for the nice parts and ignore the meanness a lot of the time. Sometimes I would completely forget about certain mean things that a person would say to me, so that I could continue thinking they were nice!

 

I'm getting tired of doing that. I can't take it anymore. If someone upsets me or says something rude, I don't want to ignore it anymore. I keep remembering things that I brushed off, that I shouldn't have, and I'm pissed at myself. I still can't believe that I would literally FORGET entire conversations and things that happened. I'm talking about things that should have warned me to stay away from someone but instead I just continued to pretend we were friends. I feel foolish.

 

There must be some happy medium where I can be angry and acknowledge what happened, but still be able to move on from it and forget about it. I've just moved from one extreme to the other. I need to find a way to be more balanced but how do I do that?

 

ETA: I wonder if the reason I force myself to stay angry at someone is so that I don't get confused. Maybe I hold onto the anger in order to remember they are not to be trusted. It seems like whenever my anger at someone disappears, I just go ahead and give them another chance again.

Edited June 5, 2013 by SpiralOut