Can anger/rage be completely unconscious?

Hi!
I
'm sorry, I am sure this question already has been asked before so it's also ok to send me the link.

What I am interested in is: can feelings of anger really be unconsious to 100% so that one does not even feel the smallest piece of anger?

I try to brake down the facts in a nutshell:
- my father always raged against me when I was ill or did not feel well. He wasn't able to deal with others people helplessness. He then got much more ill than I was so that my mother had to take care for him and not for me
- the most positive thing I can remember is that my father gave me a parrot when I was 6 years old. I loved this bird, he was hand-tame and could talk some words I teached him. Once a day my father came into my room and talked to the bird and played with him. It was a good moment because he did not rage against me as he usually does. But I also cried and asked my mom why my father played with the bird and not with me. He tended to either ignore me or to rage against me.

This week I told my therapist about that and he said "oh you must have been very angry at your bird." My answer was quick like a shot: "of course not, I loved my bird and never was angry at him!".

Ok, the fact is: since I nearly lost my parrot last year (not the parrot of my childhood, an other one) because he was ill and nobody knew why I have a very stiff & painfull elbow and shoulder. When I drove home after therapy I thought: "oh my god, probably it's unconscious rage against my parrot why I am in pain". On a conscious level I really love my birds, they're like children for me. And how could I be angry at such a l lovely, helpless and sick parrot? And at the other hand I know that my parrot became all the attention and love from my father I wished for and that being ill was always a very critical and dangerous thing.

It was not the first time my parrots got seriously ill. But at this time I was very vulnarable and suffering from a very bad psycho-drug withdrawal. And I also had to make a very difficult decicion, resisting the advice of the veterinarian what could have killed my bird (fortunately still very alive, even without heart-medication what would have meant I had to give the medication on a daily basis at the same time. But I listened to my gut feeling).

So there must be completely unconscious rage & fear of making the wrong decicion that caused me pain (ans is still causing me).

Does this make sense or are these bad side-effects of too much psychoalaysis blaming rage against a pet for my pain ?

 

I think for me anger often shows up as a lesser emotion. For example, I might feel stressed or annoyed when what I really feel is anger. Or sometimes it will even show up as guilt or something similar. For example I might think, "I am sorry to inconvenience you." When the hidden emotion is actually "I am angry you are making a big deal out of a minor request."
I have also come to realize that there are things that "don't bother me at all" that actually do bother me.
If there is something that would make most people angry and you do not feel anything at all, I think that means that chances are high that you are repressing anger.
Sometimes the logical target of our anger has not actually done anything wrong. My brother was the favorite and got a larger amount of my parent’s time and money than I did. From one perspective it is his fault I did not get more time and money from my parents. From another perspective, he did not really do anything wrong, so it seems wrong to be mad at him.
So then repression of emotions kicks in.

 

So true! Today I talked to a friend about this anger-issue and he told me a similar example .... seems very logical to me! It's much more easy to be angry at the person who obviously got something we also needed instead of being angry at mother or father or somebody we depended on! It's really a tricky situation: because being mad at somebody who is "innocent" seems to be unfair. An being angry at important persons (like persons) is dangerous. So one has to repress the anger to some extend. A bit of a double-bind situation

 

'An being angry at important persons (like persons) is dangerous' that explains my relationship with my mum!! I have been working on my unconscious anger - its my mum and her powerless view of women!!

 

Right on. Here is Dr. Sarno, in Healing Back Pain at p. 45, discussing his personal TMS equivalent of heartburn:

"I have learned that heartburn means that I'm angry about something and don't know it. So I think about what might be causing the condition, and when I come up with the answer the heartburn disappears. It is remarkable how well buried the anger usually is. Generally for me it is something about which I am annoyed but have no idea how much it has angered me. Sometimes it is something that is so loaded emotionally, I don't come up with the answer for a long time." (Emphasis added.)