Anger at a Parent: Why Yours Is Not the Problem

Part 1 of 3 · Forgiving a parent who keeps hurting you

If you are the adult child of a parent who keeps hurting your family, and you have been quietly told that the anger is the problem, this piece is for you.

It is a Sunday afternoon. The service ended an hour ago, but the verse is still turning in your head. Not seven times, but seventy-seven. Your father is sitting three pews ahead of you. Last week you found out, again, what he has been doing. Your mother has already forgiven him. She cried for two days, and now she is asking what you want for lunch.

Someone leans over and says gently, "He is still your father." You nod. You already know.

Inside, quietly, your jaw is set in a way you do not remember setting. Inside, quietly, you are angry. Underneath the anger, you are guilty for being angry.

This piece is about that guilt, and what the anger is actually for.

The double bind you may have been carrying

There is a particular exhaustion that arrives in the therapy room with this shape of pain. Daughters more often name it out loud. Sons carry their own version, often more quietly, sometimes for years before they bring it into a room like this one.

Your body is telling you, clearly, that something is wrong. Your upbringing is telling you, just as clearly, that a good child forgives, does not stir up trouble, keeps the family whole. The faith you grew up with adds a third voice: forgive seventy-seven times. The aunties add a fourth: he is still your father. The silence of everyone else in the family adds a fifth.

You end up apologising inwardly for your own anger, as though it were the problem.

The anger is not what has gone wrong

I want to start here.

The anger is not what has gone wrong. The anger is what is telling you that something has gone wrong.

Anger in these situations is almost always protective. It is the body's way of refusing to absorb one more round of harm. It rises when the adults around you are not naming what you can see, and when you have been quietly assigned the job of carrying what nobody else in the room will carry. Anger, in this situation, is not a spiritual failure. It is a signal that a boundary has been crossed, often many times, and that the part of you that still remembers your own worth is, thankfully, awake.

As trauma psychotherapist Amanda Ann Gregory writes in Psychotherapy Networker, forgiveness, when it is forced, pressured, or prescribed by people in positions of perceived authority, can itself cause harm. It can suppress the anger a person legitimately needs to feel. It can quietly reinforce the message that the person who has been hurt, not the one who hurt them, is the one who needs to do more work. The religious and cultural language around forgiveness, she notes, can end up centring the interests of the offender rather than the person who has been hurt.

Psychotherapist Pete Walker, who has written extensively on complex trauma, frames anger in this kind of family terrain as the fight response. It is the body's active refusal to roll over, to fawn, to make oneself small in order to keep the peace. He treats it not as a problem to be eliminated, but as a part of the self that has been forced into hiding for too long, and is finally surfacing.

If you have been feeling as though your anger is the problem, I want to offer a different frame.

Your anger is the part of you that has not given up on the truth.

The guilt underneath the anger

Underneath the anger, there is usually guilt. Often louder than the anger itself.

The guilt sounds like this. I should be over this by now. I should be able to forgive. I am being cold. I am being unchristian. I am not being a good child. What kind of person holds this much anger against their own father?

What I want to offer, gently, is this. The guilt is not a more accurate voice than the anger. The guilt is the voice of what you were taught. It is not the voice of what is true. Your anger is older, in a way. It comes from the part of you that was there for the first time he did this, and for the second time, and for the most recent time. It has been quietly collecting the pattern the family will not name. It is doing you a service.

You do not have to act on the anger. You do not have to pick up the phone and shout at him. You do not have to send the message you have been drafting and redrafting. The first, most important piece of work is simply to stop arguing with the anger on the inside. To let it exist. To hear what it is telling you.

Listening to the anger this week

This week, if you notice the anger rising, try one quieter thing. Instead of asking, "What is wrong with me for feeling this?", ask, "What is this anger telling me?"

Let it name the pattern without editing it. Let it name what has cost you, what has repeated, what nobody else has been willing to say. You do not have to do anything with the answer today. You are just letting a part of you that has been shushed for a long time finally speak.

Often what comes through is quieter than you expected. This has happened too many times. I am tired. I do not want to be the one who keeps pretending.

That is not a bad child speaking. That is a person telling the truth.

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It is Sunday afternoon, still. The aunty is still leaning over. The verse is still turning. Your jaw is still set. This time, the anger is not the thing you are apologising for inside. It is the thing you are listening to.

Further reading

• Amanda Ann Gregory, trauma psychotherapist. Do I Have to Forgive to Heal? Examining the Role of Forgiveness in Trauma Recovery. Psychotherapy Networker, July/August 2025.
• Pete Walker, psychotherapist. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Azure Coyote Publishing, 2013. Further reading at pete-walker.com.

Crisis support and a note on this piece

This piece is educational and is not a substitute for psychotherapy. The territory it touches, family betrayal and long standing patterns of harm, is heavy, and it is worth working through with someone. If you are in crisis in Singapore, please reach out. Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) is available at 1767. The Institute of Mental Health 24-hour helpline is 6389 2222. In an emergency, call 999.

If any of this resonates and you would like a space to work through it, you are welcome to Book a Consultation or Explore Working Together.