When Rage Is Really Grief: A Night I Almost Lost Myself

Casie Ellison
6 days ago
2 min read

Last night, I reached a version of myself I didn’t recognize—and honestly, didn’t want to.

I went into what I can only describe as rage, the kind that shakes your hands and makes your chest hot and tight under your skin. I threw my tarot cards. I ripped them. I bent my copper rods. I felt the urge to self-harm rise like a dark wave—but I didn’t act on it.

If you’ve ever been there, this is for you.

We don’t talk enough about rage in grief.

We talk about sadness. We talk about depression. We talk about healing and acceptance and “finding peace.”

But the kind of grief that sits in your bones for years?The kind filled with unanswered questions, injustices, and moments where life feels like it’s pushing you face-down into the dirt?

That grief turns into rage.

Not because we’re dangerous.Not because we’re bad.But because grief is energy with nowhere to go.

When you carry loss, trauma, injustice, exhaustion, fear, disappointment, betrayal, hope, anger, and confusion all in the same body—sometimes that body erupts.

Sometimes rage is what happens when the heart finally says:

“I cannot hold one more thing.”

Why these feelings happen

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Rage shows up when you have been too strong for too long.

It’s the overflow valve for every emotion you didn’t have time to process. Not weakness—release.

2. Rage comes from betrayal—especially when it’s from life itself.

When you keep trying, keep fighting, keep believing… and things still fall apart? Rage grows where hope has been bruised.

3. Rage is the body’s last line of self-protection.

Before depression takes you under, rage tries to burn a path out.

4. Rage comes from feeling unsupported, unseen, or unheard.

You were never meant to carry this much alone.

5. Rage is a symptom of love.

You can only hurt this deeply if you have loved deeply—your family, your mother, your children, your dreams, your sense of purpose.

The most important part of the story

I felt the urge to self-harm.

But I didn’t.

That moment—right there—is not small. It is not accidental. It is not luck.

It is strength.

It is awareness.

It is survival.

Grief survivors aren’t gentle and quiet all the time. Sometimes we survive because we grit our teeth and scream into the night until the storm inside us has somewhere—anywhere—to go.