Dealing with Displaced Anger from Parents: Dealing with Parent's Anger

One of the hardest things to deal with from parents is displaced anger. Displaced anger is essentially when they grow angry with someone because they are really angry with another person or event. For example, when a parent figure has had a bad day at work they might come home and begin being mean and insulting their children. This guide will be attempting to give tools for children to deal with this issue.

Dealing With Displaced Anger From Parents: Understand That It Is Not Your Fault

This is important because it allows you to have self-esteem in the face of constantly being put down. This might seem truly obvious, but it is much less obvious when you are in these situations. The thing to keep reminding yourself is that the source of your parent's anger is not truly you, but situations they feel powerless to control. As such, they seek to take out their anger on situations they can control and this often means their children.

Dealing With Displaced Anger From Parents: Discuss the Matter With Your Siblings

Often your brother or sisters will hold very similar views of the situation and can act as a very good support network in cases like this. Furthermore, if they live outside of the home they can potentially offer a place to stay for a while when the next problem arises.

Dealing With Displaced Anger From Parents: Discuss the Matter With Your Parents

I have added this piece of advice, but in truth it is very often unsuccessful and can even worsen the situation overall. Often it takes a particularly momentous occasion for a parent to even begin listening, for example when they hit their child it often becomes undeniable. However, even if they are upset and apologize the situation will generally revert back to the same displaced anger within a month or two.

Dealing With Displaced Anger From Parents: If It Becomes Violent, Seek Outside Help

Violence is almost universally a line that once crossed changes the entire situation. As such, the only way to truly deal with violence is to get into contact with some kind of outside help. This does not necessarily mean getting in contact with the police or social services, but at least ring a councillor of some kind and get their view of the situation. Look for someone with professional qualifications and experience relating to families and anger issues. Oftentimes help will be publicly funded or delivered by volunteers and hence free. One of the difficult things in seeking outside help is actually doing it, rather than considering it and inevitably not doing it. If your parent/s are violent towards you then you absolutely must seek professional outside help of some kind without question.