This Girl's Worth

Bitterness or Justified Anger? How to tell the Difference

We’re in the era of healing. We’re no longer making excuses for our toxic traits and behaviors. We have all experienced hurt or disappointment and it has probably left a scar deep down. So what happens as we try to go through life? We get worn out, frustrated, and we need to check ourselves.

In this past decade, I’ve been hurt a lot. I found myself wanting to release the frustration and anger and dedicating January to forgiving myself and others. It’s a period of reflection before I execute this year. One question that continued to pop up is whether or not my anger from my pain is bitterness or justified anger. That’s a tough one.

I’m in the process of nurturing myself all over again. I’m rewriting the narrative of the little girl who learned maladaptive ways with coping with life. There’s a little girl who didn’t realize how much control she had, how much she was worth, and how much she desired to be loved for all that she was. In asking people to love the little girl, I shrunk myself to elevate others in hopes they would see me and see all the good in me. What happened? People took advantage and challenged any sense of boundaries I tried to create. Eventually, I looked back on my years upset from how much I have been taken advantage of.

Though I am practicing setting boundaries and dismantling the embedded responses in my body and brain from my past, I know I’m not 100% healed. Some days, I breathe and simply accept that this is a journey that maybe doesn’t have a destination.

Part of this process of nurturing myself includes giving myself the space to feel painful feelings and to forgive the same thing a thousand times.

I’ll be honest, I don’t like it. If it were up to me, I want to have my moment, wipe my face, and forget the situation ever happened. Wounds do not heal just because you gave them their 15 minutes of fame, it’s what you choose to do in your time of healing that heals the heart, mind, and body. I know this, but I am still learning and accepting this.

The most essential question: How many times can I feel the same anger before I’m just sulking and bitter?

At some point, our justified anger becomes rumination. It’s a repetitive thought process that produces little to no fruit. It’s a cyclical thinking process.

I’m trying to figure out, what’s the line between justified anger and bitterness? I don’t have all of the answers, but I find the line is hair strand thin.

Definition according to my journey.

I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you need to give yourself time to be upset? Isn’t that what you were just talking about with nurturing yourself?

Yes, but here’s what I learned, there is a cut off point to feeling your anger. What? I know it seems contradictory, but just keep reading.

Your freedom lies in the fact that you don’t need to always control your feelings and you simply can’t control the impact of your experiences. So be, freely. This is your right as a human.

Your free will is you get to control what you do about your feelings. At any moment, you have the power to go from feeling to responding. Once you are aware of what’s going on and why, you can make conscious decisions.

This is entirely liberating and was a hallelujah moment for me. I didn’t have to want “closure” from anyone or anything, I could close it myself and make peace with my decisions. I didn’t have to stay mad at where life was, I could focus on building the future I want. I didn’t have to accept sleepless nights and anxiety, I could eliminate stressors in my life to experience true relaxation.

Are there still feelings when things pop up? Absolutely, but now I recognize them, acknowledge them, nurture myself, and make the decision, uncomfortable or not, to move forward.

Sure whatever anger we feel is justified, but when it starts to impact our quality of life, it has to go. That’s self love too! ❤️