I recently did a webinar on loving yourself when another person is angry and, surprisingly, I received questions on how to love yourself when YOU are the one who is angry. I’ve previously written numerous articles on how to take loving care of yourself with others’ anger, but not with your own anger.

Camille asked:

How do I stop being angry over a broken childhood, an alcoholic father, and a mother who stayed with my drinking father?

Anger (as opposed to outrage, which is the loving adult’s response to injustice and is a call to take loving action on your own or others’ behalf) indicates that there are ways Camille is abandoning herself. It’s easy for her to look to the past for the source of her anger, but her anger is actually current. Her inner child is angry at her for how she is treating herself that is like how her parents treated her and treated themselves. Is she judging herself? Is she ignoring responsibility for her feelings? Is she turning to addictions as her father turned to alcohol? Is she making others responsible for her well-being and then blaming them when they don’t do what she wants? If she is abandoning herself in any of these ways, then her anger is about how she is treating herself.