Emotional Permission After Psychological Abuse

You’re angry because they lied. Because they gaslit you. Because you stayed quiet to stay safe. Because they used your queerness against you.

Anger is not a sign you’ve failed at healing. It’s a sign that your self-worth is waking up.

You’re not broken for being angry. You’re angry because they lied, gaslit you, and used your queerness against you. This Riftr with Rick essay explores how anger becomes a form of healing — a way to reclaim your voice, your truth, and your peace.

You’re angry — and you should be.

For years, you’ve been told to be understanding, to forgive, to “rise above.” But beneath the calm exterior, a slow fire burns. It’s not bitterness; it’s recognition.

You’re angry because they lied. Because they gaslit you — made you question your own memories, your own sanity. You’re angry because you stayed quiet to stay safe, and the silence cost you something sacred. You’re angry because they used your queerness — your openness, your difference, your vulnerability — as a weapon instead of a window.

That anger isn’t something to suppress. It’s something to understand. Because anger, when seen clearly, is not destruction — it’s information. It tells you where your boundaries were crossed, where your truth was denied, where your selfhood deserves reclamation.

Many gay men and queer people carry unspoken anger. It’s the residue of years spent playing small, being “the bigger person,” or enduring microaggressions disguised as jokes. It’s the ache of being told to forgive before we’ve even been allowed to feel.

We learned early on that open anger was dangerous — that it made us “dramatic,” “aggressive,” “ungrateful.” So, we buried it. We turned anger inward, transforming it into anxiety, depression, or shame. We made peace our performance, even when injustice lived beneath our ribs.

But the truth is: your anger is a love story. It’s love for the parts of you that were mistreated, silenced, or ignored. It’s the body’s way of saying, “I deserved better.”

There’s a particular wound that comes when someone uses your queerness against you — when they twist your truth into ammunition. Maybe it was a parent’s cutting remark, a partner’s manipulation, or a friend’s betrayal disguised as “honesty.”

Each of these moments teaches the same lesson: you are safest when quiet. And so, you learn to withhold your voice — not just from others, but from yourself.

That’s why, years later, when anger starts to surface, it feels confusing or even shameful. You might tell yourself, “I should be over it.” But you can’t heal what you haven’t named. The unspoken becomes the unfinished.

To reclaim your wholeness, you must first reclaim your right to be angry.

Anger is not the opposite of love; it’s the guardian of it.

Healthy anger says, “That wasn’t okay.” It restores boundaries. It clears fog. It calls back the energy you spent trying to earn decency from those who refused to offer it.

When anger is unprocessed, it turns inward — into shame, guilt, or self-criticism. But when it’s honored, it becomes clarity. It becomes the fire that burns away illusion.

You’re not angry because you’re broken. You’re angry because you finally see the truth.

You don’t have to lash out to honor your anger. You just have to stop apologizing for it.

Here’s how to begin transforming anger into awareness:

Say the words you’ve been afraid to say: “I’m angry that they hurt me. I’m angry that I had to hide. I’m angry that I believed them.” Naming it breaks the spell of silence.

Where does anger live in you — the chest, the jaw, the gut? Notice without judgment. Let yourself feel it without fear. Emotions can’t harm you when you face them directly.

Letters never sent. Pages never shared. Write the truth, not for them, but for yourself — so the story no longer owns you.

Healing anger requires safety. Whether it’s a therapist, friend, or support group, share your truth with someone who won’t shrink from it. Being heard turns rage into release.

Your anger shows you where your lines are. Let it guide you toward relationships, spaces, and communities that honor your voice instead of silencing it.

When you finally allow yourself to be angry — truly, unapologetically angry — something shifts. The anger doesn’t consume you; it frees you.

You stop carrying responsibility for other people’s lies, cruelty, or cowardice. You stop performing forgiveness before you’re ready. You stop minimizing pain that was never small.

And in that space, peace doesn’t feel like avoidance anymore. It feels earned. It feels alive.

You are not defined by what they did — you’re defined by your courage to face it, to feel it, and to finally let it move through you.

Your anger is proof that you still believe in justice. And that belief? That’s your power.

This reflection draws on the healing work of Resmaa Menakem, Brené Brown, and Dr. Gabor Maté, who explore how anger can be a messenger of truth and a tool for transformation.

Grief isn’t just about what happened. It’s about the time you lost. The version of you that dimmed your light. The chances to feel safe that never came.

Grief says:

• I should have been protected.
• I shouldn’t have had to perform.
• I deserved tenderness.

This is where we start to say goodbye — not just to them, but to the illusions we clung to.

“Grief is a rebellion. It’s proof you were never meant to live that small.”

Grief isn’t just about loss — it’s about the time you lost, the version of you that dimmed your light, and the safety that never came. In this Riftr with Rick essay, explore the quiet grief queer people carry and how to honor what was missing with compassion and truth.

Grief isn’t only about death or endings. It’s about the empty spaces in between — the lost time, the unlived moments, the softer versions of ourselves we had to silence to survive.

It’s about the years we spent pretending, the parts of us that never got to feel free, and the safety that always seemed just out of reach.

For many gay men and queer people, grief is layered. It’s not just about what happened; it’s about what should have been — the ease we deserved but never knew, the love we wanted but couldn’t access, the self we buried to be accepted.

This kind of grief doesn’t scream. It lingers. It asks to be acknowledged, not solved.

When we think of grief, we picture funerals, heartbreak, endings we can name. But there’s another kind — quiet, invisible, often unspoken.

It’s the grief for a childhood that never felt safe.
The grief for friendships that ended when you came out.
The grief for years you spent toning yourself down to be tolerated.
The grief for all the joy you postponed until it felt “safe enough.”

This grief hides behind words like resilience and strength. You might not even call it grief — just fatigue, numbness, or nostalgia for something you can’t quite name. But your body remembers. Your soul remembers.

It’s not just sadness; it’s mourning the emotional time you lost trying to be okay.

Queer grief is unique because it’s both personal and collective. It’s the ache of being unseen, and the ache of watching generations before you live and love in fear.

You might grieve:

• The version of you that dimmed your light to stay safe.
• The love you delayed out of shame or danger.
• The years you spent apologizing for existing.
• The people you lost because you finally chose to stop apologizing.

For many of us, grief is tied to liberation — because every time we become more ourselves, we must release the selves we built to survive. That release can hurt. It can feel like breaking. But it’s also a kind of rebirth.

One of the heaviest griefs is realizing how much time you lost to fear.

You might mourn the teenage years spent hiding instead of exploring. The twenties spent overachieving instead of resting. The relationships that felt like safety but were really performance.

It’s okay to grieve the time that disappeared into silence. You’re not weak for wishing things had been different — you’re human.

And here’s the truth: grief is not about reclaiming the past; it’s about reclaiming yourself. When you grieve the time you lost, you open space to cherish the time you still have.

Grief asks for companionship, not correction. You don’t need to “get over” it — you need to witness it.

Here’s how to begin honoring the grief beneath the surface:

Write down the things you mourn that others might not understand — the safety, the innocence, the missed milestones. Naming gives shape to the unseen.

Tears, anger, numbness — all of it belongs. Grief moves when it’s allowed to exist.

The version of you that dimmed your light did so for a reason: to protect you. That self deserves compassion, not criticism.

Grieve what was missing by building what’s possible. Safe love, honest friendship, chosen family — these are how we reclaim the time we thought we lost.

Grief and joy aren’t opposites; they’re siblings. Every moment of joy honors the pain that once said you’d never feel it again.

When you give your grief permission to exist, it doesn’t drown you — it softens you.

You begin to see that your tears are not about weakness, but about love — love for the time you deserved, the person you could have been, and the life you’re still becoming.

You realize that the light you dimmed is still there, waiting. It was never gone — only hidden. And the more you let yourself grieve, the brighter it returns.

Because grief, at its core, isn’t just about endings. It’s about aliveness. It’s about remembering what mattered so deeply that losing it still moves you. And that movement — that ache — means your heart is still open.

Still feeling. Still reaching. Still capable of light.

This reflection draws on grief work and trauma healing by Francis Weller, David Kessler, and Megan Devine, who write about grief as a sacred and transformative process.

From a young age, many queer people are taught to:

• Keep the peace
• Be easy to love
• Hide the big feelings

But unexpressed emotion doesn’t disappear. It just turns inward. Anxiety. Depression. Numbness.

You’re not too much. You’re too contained.

What were you told about anger or grief growing up? How did that shape the way you process pain now?

You were told your feelings were too loud, too much, too sensitive — so you silenced them. “Why We Suppress It” explores how queer people learn to hide emotion to stay safe, and how to reclaim your right to feel without apology.

You learned early that your feelings made people uncomfortable.

Maybe they told you to “toughen up,” “calm down,” or “stop being dramatic.” Maybe they rolled their eyes when you cried or laughed too loudly. Maybe they punished your honesty — not with words, but with silence.

So, you adapted. You swallowed tears mid-sentence. You learned to smile instead of speak. You became careful with your emotions — measured, even muted.

That’s how emotional suppression begins. Not out of weakness, but out of wisdom. Out of a body and heart that realized: it’s safer to hide than to feel.

We don’t silence ourselves because we want to — we do it because it keeps us safe.

As children, we read the room before we knew how to read words. We noticed who got comforted and who got scolded. We learned that some emotions were welcome — joy, gratitude, composure — while others, like anger or grief, were punished or ignored.

Each time we were told to “stop crying,” “man up,” or “don’t make a scene,” we got the message: your emotions are too much.

Over time, that message becomes internalized. You stop needing anyone else to silence you — you do it yourself.

For many gay men, emotional suppression takes on an extra layer of complexity. We don’t just hide our feelings; we learn to hide ourselves.

Growing up queer often meant monitoring every expression — too soft, too sensitive, too visible. So we became masters of containment. We learned to laugh off insults, to stay polite when hurt, to carry pain with a smile.

And because vulnerability was often met with shame, we equated emotional expression with danger.
We built identities around control — always put-together, never messy. We traded authenticity for acceptance, and it worked… until it didn’t.

Because no matter how well you suppress emotion, it doesn’t disappear — it waits.

Emotions that don’t find expression find storage. They settle in the body — in the shoulders, the jaw, the gut. They turn into tension, fatigue, anxiety, or a vague sense of numbness.

You might notice it in subtle ways:

• You can’t cry, even when you want to.
• You stay busy to avoid silence.
• You tell yourself, “It’s fine,” even when it’s not.
• You flinch at your own vulnerability.

Suppression is self-protection turned inward. But protection without release becomes a cage. The longer we hold back our feelings, the more disconnected we become from the truth that could set us free.

Learning to feel again isn’t about losing control — it’s about building safety around expression. Here’s how you can begin:

Remember who first told you your feelings were “too much.” Not to blame them, but to understand where the story started.

If expression feels unsafe around others, start alone. Cry in the car. Write in a journal. Speak your truth out loud, even if no one’s listening. You’re re-teaching your body that it’s safe to feel.

Feelings aren’t chaos — they’re signals. Anger says, a boundary was crossed. Sadness says, I lost something important. Fear says, I need protection. Listen before you judge.

Not everyone can meet your feelings — but someone can. Therapy, chosen family, trusted friends. Healing happens in reflection.

Each time you express an emotion honestly, even quietly, you reclaim a piece of yourself that once had to hide.

They told you your feelings were too loud.
But what they really meant was: your honesty made them face what they couldn’t handle.

The truth is, your sensitivity was never a flaw — it was evidence of life. It meant you were connected, awake, capable of love.

Now, the work is to stop mistaking suppression for strength. Real strength is feeling deeply and surviving it. Real strength is reclaiming the voice you learned to silence.

Because somewhere beneath all that restraint, your emotions are still waiting — patient, powerful, ready to be heard again.

This reflection draws inspiration from the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, Susan David, and Brené Brown, who write about emotional repression, authenticity, and the courage to feel.