What Growing Up Around Anger Does to the Nervous System
Growing up around anger changes the way the body moves through the world long after childhood ends.
Trigger Warning: This personal essay contains discussions of childhood trauma, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, physical violence, and nervous system triggers.
The other night, My husband and I were sitting on the couch watching Wentworth. I was tired, curled up under a blanket with my legs tucked underneath me, half-paying attention while the glow from the television filled the room blue.
And then a mother started screaming at her daughter.
Not arguing.
Humiliating her.
Calling her useless. Fat. Ugly. Dumb.
Hitting her while other people stood there watching.
I felt it straight away.
My stomach tightened so suddenly it almost hurt. I could feel my jaw locking, my teeth pressed together so hard I had to consciously relax them. My chest started burning the way it does when something old gets dragged to the surface too quickly.
I just sat there staring at the television trying not to cry in front of my husband.
My eyes started watering and I remember rubbing at one of them quickly, pretending something had gotten into it. I kept looking away from the screen because I couldn’t handle watching it for too long.
Every time the mother raised her voice, I could feel the lump in my throat getting thicker.
And the worst part was how familiar it felt.
The way a room changes when someone’s anger fills it completely. How your whole body stiffens before your mind has even caught up. The way you stop thinking about what you want to say and start thinking about survival instead.
Watching that scene felt like my body being dragged backwards through time.
Suddenly I was young again, standing in the kitchen watching my mother’s face. Trying to work out what mood she was in before I spoke. Wondering how far things were going to go this time. Whether she would scream at me, humiliate me, beat me, or make me feel so small I would spend the rest of the night hiding in my bedroom closet trying not to cry too loudly.
I don’t think people realize how much the body remembers.
You can leave the house.
You can grow up.
You can build an entirely different life.
And still, one tone of voice can pull something ancient out of you.
I think that’s what hit me the hardest the other night.
Not just that it upset me.
But that my body reacted the way it did.
I could feel myself sinking into the couch without meaning to. My shoulders pulling inward slightly. My breathing getting shallow.
And sitting there, pretending to focus on the television while trying not to cry, I remember thinking:
this still lives in me.
Even after years of therapy, somatic work, and trying to heal the little girl inside me, some part of my body still reacts like I’m back in that house again.
In my nervous system.
In my body.
In the instinct to make myself smaller when anger enters the room.
It’s always there.
For years, I thought healing would eventually mean becoming untouched by it all.
Like one day someone could scream in my face and it wouldn’t phase me anymore.
But healing doesn’t work like that.
Healing is sitting there with watery eyes and a tight throat and recognizing what’s happening instead of shaming yourself for it.
It’s understanding that your body learned these responses for a reason.
That the little girl inside you who once had to survive those moments is still trying to protect you now, even if she doesn’t need to anymore.
And honestly, there’s something deeply heartbreaking about that.
The fact that some part of me still expects danger in raised voices.
That some part of me still hears anger and immediately starts searching for the safest place to put myself.
I used to think that made me weak.
Now know it just means I survived something my body never fully forgot.
And maybe healing isn’t about erasing those reactions.
Maybe it’s about learning how to hold yourself gently when they rise back to the surface.
Because that little girl deserved gentleness too.
Not humiliation.
Not fear.
And definitely not the feeling that love could disappear the second someone became angry enough to take it away.
Healing isn’t about never being triggered again. Sometimes it’s just learning how to hold yourself more gently when those old wounds rise back to the surface.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your experience.
Have you ever had a moment where your body reacted to something that caught you off guard?
Debra 💛
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P.S. The 5-Minute Safety Check card deck I created came from years of trying to learn how to write about difficult experiences without completely overwhelming myself afterwards. If you’re navigating trauma, memory, or emotionally heavy writing, I made it with people like us in mind.
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Debra King is a writer, poet, and trauma-informed creative with training in somatic therapy, exploring emotional healing, chronic pain, childhood trauma, and the hard work of rebuilding yourself after survival. Beautiful Things Grow Here is her space for personal essays, poetry, and honest reflections on the body, grief, healing, and becoming softer with yourself.
I knew a person who had an abusive father. The word abusive was never used, but all of the behavior was abusive… emotionally, psychologically, physically, spiritually. I heard things like “his illness makes him mean” or “he was an angry man”. It breaks my heart how anyone has to do mental gymnastics to protect themselves from the reality of abuse, especially innocent children. Hearing other family members speak, the father was abusive to his siblings in childhood. The father had an abusive father himself. So, so sad that cycles get passed down and the children pay for the father's sins.
This is a magnificent truth. In my work as a trauma therapist, the biggest myth I see people chase is the idea that 'healing' means becoming entirely untouched or unbothered by old triggers. But the nervous system map runs deep. True healing is exactly the shift you beautifully detailed here: moving from the automatic instinct of survival into the conscious practice of holding your younger self gently when the past echoes. Beautifully written.