Hey Pax,
I understand what you're talking about. You're me about 20 years ago -- angry, competitive, fearful, bitter, stressed 24/7 in one way or another. Pi$$ed off at what had been done to me, seeing the world as dangerous, seeing everything in black and white only.
I don't have any sage advice. I don't have any idea how I got from there to here. I can just look at the fossil record:
--I dealt with my anger and grief by finding a GOOD therapist who worked for ME, and taking a few sessions. Not a lifetime track. Just a little help, from time to time, someone to listen to me roar and perhaps offer a few strategies for Doing One Thing Differently This Week. I resisted this for a long time, and at first I felt like I was caving. Now I realize how utterly juvenile and stupid that thinking was. This wasn't about THEM any more. This was a contractor I was hiring in the renovation of me.
--I came to see that I was allowing "them" to "win" by not helping myself. I looked at people in my life who seemed so calm, together, resilient, relaxed, and while I hated them for it, I had to admit that I wanted that for myself -- badly. I had to want it so badly that I was willing to do whatever it took to squeegee off all the sh*t that had landed on me in childhood and get to work on myself. The thought that doing nothing, and continuing to stomp angrily through my life, was somehow more honorable than getting better.....was about as rational as sticking myself in the neck with a fork and saying "I'll show YOU people!" That had to go, and eventually it did.
--Dispensing with my misplaced pride long enough to start reading, learning about ACoA behavior, seeing that I wasn't the only one who'd ever suffered like this, all that helped. It was all part of the renovation project which, as a reminder, I was doing for me and nobody else. It's not touchy-feely. It's doing what it takes to get the job done.
--Getting some help from reading no-nonsense hardass people like Byron Katie, who finally got through to me with the question "Who would you be if you didn't have all this pain to think/talk about?" and like Martha Beck, who writes great books (like The Joy Diet) and articles like these:
Martha Beck: Yes, It Was Awful...Now Please Shut Up
You spit out the word compassion like it's something distasteful. There's a world of difference between being asked to have compassion for the alcoholics in our lives, and having compassion for ourselves and what we've been through. Until you're willing to do the latter, you won't get far. You're a person deserving of tenderness - from you.
The good news is that I didn't turn into a soft, fluffy, new-age purple spangly bunny rabbit. I turned into a real woman with a clear head and compassion for herself......but also with muscles and a big stick, lest the world decide to try to do this to her again.
Wishing you the same.