I Grew Up Thinking Anger Was Normal.

How the anger we grow up with quietly shapes the way we speak, react, and love.

Growing up around anger

I recently had a conversation with a friend about anger, and it stayed with me long after we stopped talking. It made me realize how much anger has shaped not only my family, but also the emotional atmosphere of my childhood. The truth is that anger was never something rare or shocking to me. It was everywhere. I grew up witnessing so many fights and arguments that they became part of life. My parents fought. My uncle and cousins fought. Even my neighborhood seemed to live inside a constant state of irritation and noise. Almost every day passed with someone yelling, cursing, or arguing. When you live in an environment like that for a long time, it begins to feel normal. In fact, I used to think the unusual people were the ones who did not fight or curse each other but were the ones who somehow stayed calm.

The strange power of anger

There is also something strangely tempting about anger when you grow up around it. In the heat of the moment, it can feel powerful to raise your voice, to use harsh words, or to make the other person feel smaller than you. It can feel like you have won something. It can feel satisfying, at least for a moment, to believe that with words alone, you have defeated the other person. But what I understand now is that this feeling is temporary and deceptive. It may feel powerful in the moment, but it leaves behind a kind of poison. It does not create peace. It does not create safety. It does not create love. You may win the conversation but lose something far more important: the relationship.

The arguments in my family

My parents argued often, and many of those arguments were filled with cursing and mean words, not only toward each other, but sometimes toward me and my brother. Most of the time, my mother was already exhausted from work and by the time she came home, anything could irritate her, especially my father’s careless habits and his gambling addiction. She would say cruel things to him, and sometimes he would fight back with even harsher words. Other times he would stay quiet. I never really knew whether that silence meant he knew he was wrong or whether he was simply too tired to say anything at all. But I know now that silence does not mean the wound disappears. Those words remained inside him, because I would feel them later when they came out toward me. Sometimes that happened when I did something wrong and other times when I had not done anything wrong at all.

The words we carry from childhood

As a child, I did not even understand many of the words my father shouted at me. I only knew they were not loving words. I knew instinctively that those were not the kinds of words you say to someone if you want closeness with them. Somewhere deep inside, even before I had language for it, I think I made a quiet decision that I wanted to grow up speaking differently. I wanted to use gentle words. I wanted to stay away from people who constantly cursed or spoke with negativity. I did not fully know how to do that yet, but I think the desire had already begun.

The silence between my father and brother

The relationship between my brother and my father is still very tense. My brother is angry with our father, and our father has not really tried to repair that relationship, even though they live in the same house and their rooms are next to each other. If one of them needs something from the other, they often spoke through me. I am the only line of communication standing between two people who no longer know how to speak to each other. To tell you how deep this disconnection is, one time I told my brother to call our dad, and my brother told me he did not even have our dad’s number saved on his phone. It said so much in such a small way. They are not capable of communicating anymore. I know they both suffer. My brother suffers, and my father suffers too. I do not think either one of them wants to remain trapped in this silence and anger, but they do not know how to move beyond it.

Choosing a different way

I remember something else from childhood that helps me understand anger even more clearly now. Whenever I was outside playing and got hurt such as, if I fell down or injured myself, the first thing my father often did was yell at me and call me clumsy. Because of that, I learned to hide my injuries. I did not hide them because of the physical pain. I hid them because I did not want the pain by his words. Years later, I noticed that I had carried some of that energy inside me too. There were a few times when I repeated almost the exact same tone or reaction toward my brother. I heard my father’s voice coming through me. That realization was painful, but it was also important. It showed me that anger is not only an emotion; sometimes it is an inheritance. Sometimes it moves through families like a habit, passed down from one hurt person to another.

But that was also the moment I began to practice awareness more seriously. I started paying attention to my speech, especially in moments when someone I loved made a mistake. I made a quiet commitment to change the pattern. Instead of criticizing my brother when he did something wrong or got hurt, I began trying to respond with care. Recently he had two car accidents in one month. He was physically fine, but the car was severely damaged. Both times I helped him deal with the insurance and tried to calm his mind. I told him to be careful next time, but I did not attack him. I did not shame him. And what I noticed in those moments was that our bond grew stronger. Love often becomes stronger not when life is easy, but when difficulty appears and we choose tenderness instead of blame.

Sometimes the anger we inherit is not the anger we have to pass on.