Anger Is Changing My Personality

by Grace

Hi - I’m 16 and I live with my parents. For the past couple of months I’ve had anger and resentment bottled up inside me. It’s not healthy and I want to get rid of it as it’s affecting me day to day and changing my personality for the worst.

I used to have an okay relationship with my family. We were never close, yet we could get along. However, these past couple of months, I felt like the anger is making me hate my family. Usually if we have an argument I just listen and forget about it, however, nowadays I’m talking back and blowing things out of proportion.

Then afterwards, I’ll think about everything I said and feel guilty about it. I genuinely feel like if I didn’t exist, or disappeared, my brother and parents would live in peace. I feel miserable and often wish I could just die. I’m starting to feel like the outsider in my family and I can never really be the child that my parents want me to be, and this disappointment and hurt is fueling the anger and resentment inside of me.

I know that the anger has changed me because I always had a bright and optimistic personality. Now I don’t care about anything and dwell on the worst things in life. It’s also changing the way I act and communicate with others.

Nowadays, I hate my brother and find him annoying and bothersome, then feel guilty for feeling so as he’s just a 10 year old kid doing things that kids his age would normally do. I always speak to him harshly when he doesn’t deserve to be spoken to that way. I don’t want to be a bad sister for him. I want to be someone that he likes and trusts, not someone who always call him names, makes him upset and never says a good word to him.

I think the anger is caused by stress and hurt. My parents are constantly pushing me to get the best grades in all my tests and if I don’t get it, I get yelled at. I have important exams coming up and they remind me of this every day. They accuse me of not reviewing and tell me I don’t work hard enough.

If I fall asleep before 10:30 and don’t wake up before 5:00am every day, they tell me I don’t work hard enough and I will fail in life. It’s not just grades, every aspect of my life gets scrutinized and if not done to perfection, I get yelled at. I get told off at least twice a day for one thing or another. It may be simple things, like not tidying up after myself, but I get yelled up for a good 15 minutes.

In the past I could brush it off, but now I can’t and this is making me extremely tired of it all. Sometimes I don’t want to continue living. A bit dramatic, I know. I just want to know how to get rid of the anger and resentment inside of me so I can go back to being myself again.

Sorry, this is longer that I expected it to be and I tried to convey my feelings as best as possible. Thank you.