When anger cannot be expressed outwardly, it must be redirected within.  Anger's intention is always the same; to seek a target.  So if anger cannot be expressed externally, it will seek an inner target.  Unfortunately, there is only one such inner target---

yourself.

   Anger directed at the self is  called guilt.

THE RANGE OF GUILT

   Guilt ranges in intensity from feeling sorry, apologetic, ashamed, regretful or rueful to bemoaning and lamenting one's fate, to feeling resentful, bitter, remorseful, or conscious stricken, to feeling contrite, at fault, culpable, reprehensible, punishable, or deserving of condemnation.

   Guilt comes from swallowing your hurt and anger because you feel expressing your feelings would confirm that you are a bad person.  Sometimes you feel guilty over  being angry about someone else's injury of you.  Other times you feel guilty about hurt you actually have caused to others.

   Most of the time when you hurt others by expressing your anger, however, you did so to break free of their influence and control to express what you  needed to express , which you should have been doing all along. Had you insisted on being free and truthful in the first place, rather than holding back your feelings out of fear or weakness, you would have avoided the need to turn your anger inward, that is, you would not feel guilt.

           In the world of emotions whatever causes you to withhold your feelings owns you.  There is nothing so powerful as being controlled by your own inhibitions.  To some extent you are taunted by some secret feeling you are afraid of admitting.  You may not even be aware of what the feeling is, but it makes you doubt your self-worth and fear looking closely.  Everyone has some such doubts. 

   You don't need to have done anything bad to believe that you are bad.  When you are unsure of yourself, you can easily compile a wealth of negative evidence to bear witness against your own character.  You are both judge and jury.  Your conscience testifies unopposed in favor of the victim of your crimes, and the rules of evidence are over ruled by your low self-esteem.  As a result it takes recalling only one negative act to conclude you are bad.

   It's not the evidence you provide that proves your guilt-worthiness, but how you feel about yourself that leads you to be punished to relieve your guilt, to set matters straight so you can be free to act again without the painful burden of being unforgiven and unforgivable.

   Your tendency to exaggerate your feelings of low self worth whenever you do something wrong and reinforce them with the recollection of old unconfessed transgressions is a self-deprecatory path you've been taking for years.  It is altogether too easy to torture yourself when you do something wrong or when you hold in your anger.

   Inwardly, directed anger makes up the majority of the feelings you don't express.  Like the pattern of other stored feelings, the way you feel guilty falls into 3 distinct patterns depending on how old the feeling is.  The immnediate reaction of have a guilty conscience comes from your doing or saying something hurtful or morally wrong right now.  Feeling self-deprecation over being angry is the emotional debt of recently accumulated feelings.  Finally, feeling ashamed of who or what you are and where you came from is typical of the guilt of remote emotional debt.

Taken from "Emotionally Free", page 242 by author David Viscott