As my depression grew so did my anger. I was furious with the world. I saw it as unfair, unjust, and stupid. I never ran out of things to be angry about. I was frustrated by everything.
It was anger that I had suppressed, repressed, inhibited, and kept internalized for many years. I wallowed in it. It fueled my depression. I used it to pass my emotional pain onto others.
The anger gave me an immediate sense of purpose, a weird and sick sort of motivation. As depressed as I was I needed motivation, but I did not need what the anger gave me. It created a cycle of rage and defeatism in me.
The people I took this anger out on were the people who were closest to me. I would say things that I knew were wrong and inappropriate, but I could not help myself.
When I was not angry with other people, I was very angry with myself. It often led to very self destructive behaviors. That in turn led to more depression and anger.
People who have never had to deal with severe/major depression, have a hard time understanding how anger could be a symptom of depression. After all, when most people think of depression, they think of someone being very sad all the time. However, inappropriate anger is a symptom of depression, it is just not as well known as the other symptoms of major depression are.
My anger continued after I started getting treatment for my depression. It only ended when I realized that some of the things I was most angry about, were some of the very same things that were making me so depressed.
I was frustrated and angry and depressed, in part, because I felt I had no voice. I felt that people took advantage of me, or spoke to me in ways they should not have, or made decisions without my input. I know all I had to do was to speak up and let them know what I thought about things or how they were treating me, but that was an impossibility for me.
As a child, I was not taught that I had a voice. I was not taught that I was an equal to anyone. I was not taught that my opinions and choices were as valuable as anyone’s. So not speaking about what was on my mind became a habit. Then I would become angry about what was going on, and how I had no say so in what was going on.
Once I started to realize how my depression and anger were really just two sides of the same coin, I became ready to start finding my own voice. I started off slowly. Putting up a few boundaries here and there. As I built up confidence I became firmer in my boundary setting, letting other people know my opinion about things, and insisting that I have input into certain decisions.
The more confidence I built up in my own voice, the more my anger went away. There were things that I had been angry about that I felt for sure I was going to have to tackle head on to bring some closure to them. I learned that I did not have to do that with everything I was angry about. Once I learned a better way to deal with things now, it was as if my anger about past wrongs evaporated.
For now, for today, I am not angry. For now, for today, I do not get as angry and rage about things as I used to. For now, for today, I have peace, and a positive outlook on my life.