Archive for Freedom & Wholeness
Emotional Healing by Understanding Psychological Abuse
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- there is peace when the fog lifts
Every day I realize more and more that if the world is going to change at all, it is going to change through the emotional healing of the victims. I think that victims of emotional abuse and all the other forms of abuse that stem from emotional and psychological abuse including sexual abuse, domestic violence and spiritual abuse, make up the majority of the people in the world. We have a voice; it is time to take our voices back, to heal and to take our lives back. Abusers can only be truly stopped when victims heal. When the people that they have hurt, realize the truth and realize that we can overcome the pain, oppression and rejection we have lived with and finally take a stand against it in our own lives. When victims emotionally heal, we are strong enough to stand up to the abuse and we are no longer fooled by subtle manipulation. There will be a ripple effect and we will raise our own children differently then we ourselves were raised, and the abusers will lose some of their power because the psychological abuse, lies and manipulation highlighted in the points below, won’t work the same anymore. Read More→
Emotional Healing and Busting through Brainwashing
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Have you ever gone on a ride at the fair? I am talking about one of those scary ones like the roller coaster that flips upside down. I get this fear inside my belly, this wonderful horrible and yet irresistible fear. The fear is there because I am afraid the ride will crash, that when the roller coaster goes upside down the cart will just fly off and fall to the ground… but then I tell myself that this ride runs hundreds of times a day, thousands of times a week and it hasn’t crashed and I reassure myself that my fear is not real. So I take the risk…
Have you ever gone to a natural hot springs for a dip? I have been to several of them. In the winter, the steam rises into the chilly air; sometimes there is snow around the outside of the pool area. If there are people lounging and relaxing in the pool, I automatically trust that the steamy water is not going to burn me. If I dip my foot in the water, and it feels too hot, I know that it is just because my foot is cold. If the water WAS too hot, all those other people would not be in the water, so I just quickly get in, and suffer the few minutes that the water “feels” too hot.
But what would happen if the water was too hot? What if I got all the way in and I started to burn and scream… because it really was scalding hot. Continued….. Read More→
Rebuilding my Relationship with Me ~ Recovering from Dysfunctional
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- emotional healing from dysfunctional family
Sometimes I feel as though I can never go back far enough in order to tell you how I got myself out of the emotional mess that I was in. Today I have been thinking about some of the questions that I began to ask myself in the process of emotional healing and some of the ways that I began to wake up to the way that I was devalued in relationships. This relationship dysfunction was present in almost all of my adult relationships.
Here are the “fog busting” questions that I asked myself; continued… Read More→
The Deadly Side of Accountability
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- Contemplating Freedom
There are several really HOT topics when it comes to recovery. One of them is “accountability” I’m talking about the destructive practice of “self blame” that is disguised as the virtue of accountability. This week I posted the following update on the Emerging from Broken facebook page:
“Recovery started with me. That alone was a hard truth to swallow. I had to face the pain. I had to do the work. It didn’t seem fair ~ none of this was my fault in the first place which was ALSO a hard truth to swallow because for some reason I thought it WAS my fault. These were the stick points; the road blocks. The bottom line is that I am the only one that can “take my life back”.
When I posted this in EFB facebook, I was thinking the discussion would be about my statement “I am the only one that can take my life back”.
An awesome discussion started which quickly turned into a discussion about accountability. This happens frequently. I am talking about when people say “although I didn’t know better as a child I certainly knew better as an adult”. Accountability can be a nice way of saying “it was my own fault”. This is a topic I seem to be running into a lot this week and it is one that is very close to my heart because that kind of accountability almost killed me. Continued… Read More→
The Problem with Living One Day at a Time
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- living one day at a time
“One day at a time – this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone: and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.” Ida Scott Taylor
Isn’t this a lovely quote! I tried to base my life on this quote for many years and I spun my wheels. I beat myself up with it because I could not seem to achieve this “one day at a time” attitude and approach to life but I KNEW in my heart that there was some deep truth and wisdom within it.
But this wasn’t “enough” for me. I could not start there. I am convinced that the reason I struggled for so long was because I didn’t start my healing close enough to the beginning of where I got broken. I didn’t go far enough into the past.
I needed to grieve over the past. It was the self validation that I had never experienced before that began an important part of the healing process for me. I wonder if I had actually known any truth in my life, if I had actually had a healthy foundation, if I would have been able to actually apply or implement this quote.
I could not live in the present when so much darkness was still hanging around me, clinging to my heart and weighing me down. I was beneath the light. I was struggling even to breathe I was so smothered by the unresolved past.
I kept drifting back to the past, and feeling guilty about it. The past was like an unsolved murder mystery. We can’t just decide not to pursue the murderer. That would be dangerous. Some things just need to be resolved. I had things in the past that I needed to look at and deal with.
The future was therefore terrifying! I had no reason to believe that my future would be any better than my past, especially when I didn’t understand what the heck was wrong with me, why I wasn’t loveable, why I was so depressed and feeling like a failure while sometimes fooling the world with my bubbly personality and when I got older, fooling them with my lovely looking family and respectful children. WHY was I feeling so lost inside?
So that brings me to the present ~ (not to “today” but to the present the way I thought about it when I was trying to live by the One Day at A Time quote back when I was broken and struggling with depression, failure, and dissociative identity disorder.) How could I possibly live in the present and make it beautiful when deep down I was lost and sick? And I was consumed about not being able to create a beautiful present and worried that I would have NOTHING worth remembering. Round and round it went.
Trying to live by this quote was like being deeper in the denial that I was trying so hard not to live in. It was like being trapped in a tornado in slow motion. It was like being held under murky water unable to see who or what was holding me under.
Before I could stop struggling with the past, I had to acknowledge it for what it was.
Before I could stop dreading the future I had to understand the past ~ find the lies about me ~ the lies that formed the foundation of my belief system and then realize the truth about me.
Before I could live for today I had to have a clean foundation to build on. I couldn’t start with these neat little solution based quotes until I had actually caught up to the present day.
And that was the process.
Once I got my past sorted out I found it much easier to comprehend and even implement quotes like this one.
Please share your feelings about this subject.
Wishing you truth ~ for love will follow;
Darlene Ouimet
other myth busting posts:
Forgive the Abusers? ~ a bit of a rant
Before I Faced the Pain I had to Face the Lies
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- The Road Ahead
Something is happening here on Emerging from Broken. There is a depth of sharing and honesty that I didn’t expect. There is a community growing that I only hoped for. There is a profound expression of struggle and healing, all working towards the overall good and towards emotional recovery.
This post is the follow up to my last post ~ “Tomorrow I will Start to Face the Pain” . If you have not read it, I really recommend that you take the time to read it and the 50 some amazing comments that it has generated so far. There is something special there.
Some of those comments made my heart ache with pain and I wanted to touch each heart and convince each one that there is hope for emotional healing. It is possible. It is doable. This is curable! I feel your pain because I remember that pain myself.
~The pain of realizing that any kind of abuse including emotional abuse is rejection. I worked so hard all of my life to be this great person full of acceptance and rejection was my biggest fear, only to wake up one day and realize how rejected that I was all along. But that was not MY failure.
~The pain of realizing that my life was built on lies. But they were not MY lies.
~The pain of realizing that all of my efforts to avoid being alone, left me alone anyway, but then realizing that the journey is lonely because we have to go through it as individuals. All my life I tried to do life how someone else taught me to do it, but in reality, I had to find my way because there is only one of me. They took that from me for way too long.
~Realizing that I had been defined by someone else and then suddenly realizing that if I was not who I thought I was, then who was I? And being scared to death to find out who I might be. Which comes from the same fear of rejection and round and round it goes.
~I was so stuck in realizing that after the abuse I felt like no one ever loved me again ~ thinking the answer would be in finding someone to love me again, but in truth, I didn’t love me either. I didn’t know how. The abuse defined me. I wanted someone else to fix it just like someone else broke it. But I had to do it for me. I had to decide that I would love me. I had to find out how. I had to redefine me and in that new beginning, I was able to take my life back.
~Realizing that I never believed that MY abuse was really valid and therefore I was invalidated; first by them and then by me. But that was not my choice. That was what I learned to do. I wasn’t given a choice. But I have one now. I have one today.
~Realizing and finally acknowledging that I was filled with guilt and shame and not knowing exactly what the heck to DO with it. But it wasn’t MY guilt and shame and realizing that was what got me to the next step in the process of letting it go.
~And the frozenness that goes along with all of it and seems to return with each new stage. That feeling of being immobilized; the fear of forward motion; all of that with its own history, each one of us with a slightly different story that the frozen is grounded in and has its roots in and everything even remotely related to any of the following things.
~ I told but was ignored
~ I didn’t tell because I was too scared of the consequences
~ I told and I suffered the consequences
~ I didn’t know there was anything to tell
AND the threads of steel wrapped around each one of these things, each memory, each event, each invalidation and ALL the conclusions that we came to ~ all of which need to be looked at, examined, cut and then healed such as:
~The belief that I am the one that wasted my life. That somehow I should have been able to get over all of this by myself; that somehow I am a failure because of what happened TO me. That somehow the abuse done to me has suddenly become my fault, and I lived my life as though it was my failure ~ that my whole life was my screw up. But HOW was I supposed to move forward with no guidance? HOW was I supposed to “get over it”?
~No one validated me so that I knew how to validate myself
~No one ever helped me move forward.
~No one encouraged me to be who I am but everyone “told me” who I was and that was a lie too. No one knew me. No one SAW ME.
~And I carried the failure that was not mine to carry. I lived the identity that they assigned me.
Running from me but not realizing that it is in the running back to me that I find my true self. Running from the truth because I believed the lies.
Running until I finally realized that the running was killing me. Realizing just one truth was enough to set me on the right path. And then running again because the fear of the unknown was just too scary to actually stop running to face it.
Round and Round it goes… like a whirlwind that I was trapped in. I had to somehow find a way to step out of it for mere moments at a time. Picture being inside of a small tornado that is spinning you around so fast that everything is a blur. Now picture stepping back just enough that you can SEE the spin in front of you, but you are not in it, just for one minute. That is how it began for me. And I began by just looking at one thing at a time for those moments when I could step back from the spin. As time went on, I learned to love myself and fill the void in me for myself. This was not quick OR easy but it was possible and it is possible.
And we do have a choice.
And we can overcome.
And we can take our lives back.
And we can leave the pain behind.
And we can live fully in real happiness and freedom.
………..And I know because I didn’t think I could do it either, but here I am.
Please share.
More little snapshots of truth;
Darlene Ouimet
Related posts: “Tomorrow I will Start to Face the Pain”
“But HOW do I recover? Emotional and other abuse”
and most of the other posts on this blog.. 
That ~ Makes Me Angry by Darlene Ouimet
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- Darlene Ouimet ~ on vacation!
Greetings from Beautiful Puerto Vallarta Mexico!
I have trouble with this topic. I didn’t feel anger the way that I understood anger to be. I saw others express their anger, and I couldn’t relate to that kind of feeling. I was afraid of anger. The few times that I got angry before my process of recovery, I remember quickly going from feeling anger to feeling powerless. I did not give myself the right to be angry. In my mind’s eye I see a spineless, droopy shell of a person, rather like a rag doll, void of any real emotion. Tossed about by the world and its people; everyone had more rights than I did, everyone was more important than I was, everyone had a right to their feelings except me.
That makes me angry.
I don’t remember ever being angry as a child. I did not have a temper. I was quiet. I was often labeled sullen. I was withdrawn. I had no confidence, no spark; I was afraid to be noticed.
I was afraid to be….
That makes me angry.
I remember as a young adult being told that there are only two emotions and all other emotions fall under the heading of one or the other. I was taught that there is only love and fear. Anger comes under the emotion of fear and I was taught that if I was angry to ask myself what I was afraid of. Because of this teaching, just when I might have gotten in touch with my anger for the first time in my life, I shut it down. The truth is that I was afraid of everything including life itself. Asking myself what I was afraid of was WAY too big a question.
That makes me angry.
Looking at things that way also puts the focus on what is wrong with me. For someone who knew her whole life that the reason I was how I was, was because something was wrong with me, was just heaping more guilt, blame and shame on myself. I needed to get to the root of the WHY I was so shut down, why I was so afraid, before I cut straight to the “get rid of it”. No one ever helped me with actually doing that. Everyone wants to skip the WHY steps.
That makes me angry.
I was not heard. I had no voice. I stopped trying; I gave up. I put myself behind everyone else. I got more and more depressed and had more and more emotional struggles. And I got blamed for them. I got more labels attached to me. Crazy, reactive and over reactive, incompetent, emotional, stupid, unwilling to forgive, holding grudges……
That makes me angry.
When I had to go on anti depressants because I couldn’t get out of bed anymore, some people acted like they finally had the PROOF that it was ME who had the problem all along. “See, she is crazy”…. I was embarrassed and ashamed at what I thought was my inability to cope with life. And actually with a medically treated depression, things got worse. My family looked down on me, as though now they had a right to treat me like I was “nothing”.
That makes me angry.
I was so compliant, I was so easily manipulated, so willing to do what they wanted, and yet I was so unimportant and so disposable. I was a good victim, a great victim actually; the PERFECT victim. And that wasn’t enough. Nothing I did was ever enough or good enough. And when I said enough, they said goodbye.
That makes me angry.
My anger (when I finally did get in touch with it) for the most part was for the life that I lost. It was about the fog that I lived in and was kept in and about the lies that we swallow and because we are groomed for the lies as children, it is easy for us to continue to be easily fooled. It is anger for you, for me, for the children and for the broken world.
But today I have my life back. I don’t live in that fog; in fact I am a “fog buster” now. I know the truth. I know that my anger is justified, I am not afraid of it anymore. I am not easily fooled anymore; I don’t believe those lies anymore!
I have hope for you for me and for the children and I rest in the knowledge that there is indeed hope.
Please share whatever is important to you to share and thank you for being part of this blog.
Exposing truth, one snapshot at a time;
Darlene Ouimet
As always, please feel welcome to share with us. I am on my way home in a couple of hours from now, and will answer the comments sometime tomorrow!
Related Posts: What is my Anger telling me?
I began to Feel Anger By Susan Kingsley-Smith
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- Susan Smith
I am pleased and excited to have guest blogger Susan Kingsley-Smith sharing a piece of her story with us today. Susan is my friend and fellow truth seeker, as well as the author of her own wonderful blog “A Journey” and I’m also blessed to have her as a frequent commenter here on Emerging from Broken. As always, please feel free to contribute by adding your own comments and feedback ~ Darlene Ouimet
I Began to Feel Anger by Susan Kingsley-Smith
I was not born an angry child. Yet as I grew and became a part of the bigger world this is how people would describe me. I often got comments like “you seem so angry” or I would be told to “stop being so angry” as others expected me to make them feel better by not having any feelings of my own.
As a teen-ager I took pride in not having any feelings, in being tough, unshakable. As an adult, the face the world saw was the one that smiled and said everything was fine but inside I felt dead and fake; I was going through the motions of life, but I was not living.
I’d learned from early on that my feelings didn’t count. The thing I remember the most about my feelings was that they didn’t matter. To anyone. I became invisible in an attempt to avoid being bullied and shamed for existing, for complaining about siblings that were cruel, for not liking being forced to stay indoors on a beautiful summer afternoon or shoved outside the morning after a blizzard in my thin winter coat and cloth gloves that were soaked and would freeze around my fingers. I had learned to silently tolerate being unheard, physically violated and to try to blend into the walls so no one could see me, to keep quiet, to deny that I was angry and accept that the abuse and neglect was my fault; that I was bad, dirty and ugly.
And throughout my journey as I turned to the common resources like the church or the mental health system for guidance – my history of abuse was not the issue, my anger was most often the focal point of many conversations. I was frequently admonished to “not let the sun go down on my anger” and to “forgive” those who had offended me by pastors and friends in the church. In the mental health system my anger was a “symptom” of a disease and would require lifetime medical management. And family and friends would tell me to just “get over it” and “why can’t you just be happy?
The result of all this “stuffing” of my feelings – my anger at the way others treated me – was that I began to use other ways of dealing with my feelings by “acting out” and “acting in”. This was the pattern of coping skills I’d developed to deal with my feelings since I was not allowed to express them appropriately. Acting out was typically those behaviors that could be classified as outward expressions of my pain; as a teen-ager acting out was running away, drinking, drugs; risky behaviors were common.
As I got older and those behaviors were no longer acceptable I turned more to becoming a care taker and trying to find value and worth in rescuing others and being so wrapped up in everyone else’s issues that I didn’t have to look at my own. Eventually though, I physically and emotionally shut down and could do no more.
My coping became more internalized in behaviors like depression, anxiety, dissociation; mostly anything that would simply allow me to check out to avoid the deep pain that I lived in for many years. I felt completely powerless to change how I was and I had no hope; I’d already been told that I had a disease and that I would be “sick” for the rest of my life; that this was the best I could hope for.
But it was when I finally began to put the pieces together and break through the lies that the abuse was my fault, that I deserved every bad thing that had happened to me, when I started realizing that my thoughts, my feelings, my choices, opinions, my dreams and desires DID matter that I began to see something happening in myself. I began to feel something besides an intense self-hatred. I began to feel anger.
And while it took some time to learn how to let the lid off the kettle bit by bit what I discovered is that by allowing myself to feel my anger I found the door to grief and the tears that would set me free from the anger and at the same time open the door to joy.
Susan Kingsley-Smith
Susan’s Bio: “I am a trauma survivor…but I no longer live only to survive. In 1992 after a lifetime of trauma’s ranging from physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect as a child to two violent marriages, I entered the mental health system seeking help where my lifelong history of trauma was dismissed. For over 15 years I was given a variety of “diagnosis”, numerous mind altering psychotropic drugs and a routine of weekly “talk” therapy. In the fall of 2007 I was abruptly taken off of the drugs I’d been prescribed all those years and began to reclaim both my mind and my life.
Today, I no longer accept any labels for myself and live the life of my choosing, following my dream and passion to share a message of healing and hope as I write and speak about this journey that has been my life.”
Susans blog; “A Journey” zebraspolkadotsandplaids
Fuel on the Fire: Anger by Shanyn Silinski
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I am excited to have guest post blogger Shanyn Silinski from “the Scarred Seeker” contributing to our Anger series while I am taking some time off to vacation in Mexico. Please share your thoughts and feedback about her take on the subject of Anger.
Darlene Ouimet ~ founder of Emerging from Broken
Fuel on the Fire: Anger by Shanyn Silinski
You may not guess from reading what I write or from knowing me now but I’ve got anger issues. I struggle, really struggle with being angry, becoming angry and what to do with that fire I hold in my hands.
For me there are three kinds of angry and like the real fires I used to fight each can be deadly, scarring and wounding to myself and to others. What kinds am I referring to?
Holding fire, throwing fire and hiding fire, holding anger, throwing anger and hiding anger. Much like their real counterparts, the fire of anger burns sometimes just on the surface and other times deep enough to reach the bone. Some fires are hot enough to render us down to ash and others barely singe the hair on our arms.
When I hold on to my anger whether it be old or new anger, it is like holding fire without gloves. It is hot and it burns. Burns me, hurts me, causes me to be in pain. Holding on to my anger doesn’t cause any pain to the one I’m angry at. It doesn’t even warm them up. I can be as righteously angry, unfairly angry, grudge holding call it up from the past furious or newly started.
When I throw my anger, like throwing around Molotov cocktails I cover everyone in flames, burning fuel and I hurt them. Scarring, burning, scorching and delivering pain I serve my anger as a slave. I’ve become that which abused me – a controlling person who needs to hurt. I’m throwing hurt around, anger around, and feeding the flames of myth. What have I become? That which hurt me, I’ve become the person and the people who scarred and scorched me. How does that honour my healing path? It doesn’t.
Hiding anger can be as sneaky and deadly as any fire because you don’t see it coming. When you are fighting a grass fire you have to watch your back. Fire can sneak up on you under the grass, under your own feet and when it gets a chance it engulfs you. Hiding anger, for me, is the one that preceeds the other two. Hiding anger is like putting fire in your coat pockets and then hanging up the jacket. The fire smolders, it waits quietly for a breath of air and WHOOMP!
Anger, like fire, requires three things to burn us: fuel, ignition source and air (oxygen). In a real fire each element is separate and independent, in people and in anger they can be all in one person, they can be interchangeable. That just makes the fire of anger even more deadly, scarring and harmful.
My personal fuel can be something as simple and complex as unresolved feelings from recent or distant events. Fires can burn out of control when there is a large fuel load. When we have a lot of dry, burnable materials stacked up we are just a fire waiting to happen. Emotionally we also stack up lots of fuel and it’s just waiting for a spark.
Sparks! Flashes! Steel wool and a battery, matches, BBQ lighters or lightning – sources of ignition. A quick flash that can cause things to explode or a small spark that starts a slow burn.
No fire will burn, no anger will burn, without AIR! Anger, like a fire, needs to breathe, it needs air to keep it burning. Air is simple, oxygen is simple – we keep talking, we keep shouting, screaming, yelling, hitting and we keep pumping the air into the fire. We burn hotter and hotter, we burn deeper and deeper. The anger which burns those around us will like a fire consume us as well.
There is a simple way to extinguish a fire: remove one of the three key elements. Remove the fuel, the ignition or the air source. Simply said, very hard to actually do! What is the best way to stop a fire? Two ways – controlled burns to reduce fuel load and fire prevention. Stop fires before they start, have prescribed burns to reduce the fuel load which would create an inferno. Who is doing your fire control? How do you do controlled burns?
Controlled burns are venting, therapy, writing, art and keeping the fuel load from stacking up, keeping the anger from building up. Keeping the air circulating, controlling the ignition sources (and those can be hard to manage!) and stop stacking up fuel. We can prevent fires, prevent burning scarring anger from consuming us by preventing those fires, those raging emotional and physical infernos from getting out of control. Smoke detectors in our homes detect the early signs of fire – smoke. We can do the same with anger – when we are ready.
You cannot control your anger until you know it, understand it and can face it. We can still be angry – anger is a natural response to certain kinds of danger, certain kinds of injustices. Controlling our anger so it is a vent which safely lets the pressure off. Finding ways to release that anger can be positive and healing, it can clean our wounds and cauterize the cuts, it can be a warning and it can be a signal.
I know I have anger issues – I’ve had them as long as I can remember. I know I’ve got challenges with my fuel load and I’m a deadly ignition source and I can hear myself sometimes adding air to the fire building it higher and hotter. But I know my anger now and it doesn’t control me. I have flare ups, explosions and yeah sometimes I get caught making Molotov cocktails. I can recognize that in me, just like I recognized the fires when I wore the turnout gear of a fire fighter. I’m working really hard to not burn everything down when I’m feeling angry. It lurks there, though, below the surface. At least I know it is there and for me that is over half the battle.
Shanyn Silinski
Shanyn Silinski is an outspoken survivor who writes, creates and lives life as fully as she can with her husband, son and the animals on their small ranch in Manitoba. The author of a number of blogs, a book of poetry with two more in the works, Shanyn also sculpts, scrapbooks and loves having fun with photography. Visit Shanyn’s blog “the Scarred Seeker”
Related Posts: Emotional Abuse and Anger by Carla Dippel
Related Post: Memoirs of a Mad Survivor by Patty Hite
Memoirs of a Mad Survivor by Patty Hite
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- Patty Hite
I am pleased to have guest blogger Patty Hite from the website Overcoming Sexual Abuse writing for Emerging from Broken today. We are continuing with a series of posts on the subject of anger in relation to abuse. As always on this blog, please feel welcome to post your comments, thoughts and contributions.
~ Darlene Ouimet, founder of Emerging from Broken
Memoirs of a Mad Survivor by Patty Hite
I am a Mad Survivor. Not crazy mad, just angry. And not insanely angry to where I view life and everyday thru gray colored lenses, with bitterness and uncontrollable rage. For the most part, I am fulfilled and overflowing with love for myself and life. I wake up happy and I go to bed happy. I am free from nightmares and flashbacks that used to be so painful that I thought having a knife in my heart would feel better.
I am proud to confess that I am angry about abuse. All abuse. I was sexually abused as a child and sexually, physically and emotionally abused when I married Satan (that’s what I call my ex). Most of what I know about abuse was shown to me by him. In fact, when I read or hear the word abuser, I picture him as the perfect example of what an abuser is. This is why I have devoted my life to healing and it is why I do everything I can to tell others about the dangers and damage abuse causes, as well as help those who want to heal. It is why I am angry. But it is a healthy and justifiable anger that is constantly on my heart and in my mind.
I am angry at every adult who harms a child. I am angry because they chose to do it. And no, I don’t care if they were drunk, drugged or a child of abuse themselves. They chose it. They thought about how and they knew when. They watched that child’s every move. They knew the weakness in that child and they knew what tactic to use in order to abuse them. Should they use force or should they manipulate the child with love and affection? Should they threaten the child or should they blame the child? Yes, I am angry. I didn’t deserve it and neither did you.
I get angry when those who should be supportive and comforting, tell us to forgive, forget and put it behind us. I also get angry when these same family and friends tell us to not get angry. Why can’t I be angry? I was abused! I was beaten and forced to have sex. It was so traumatic for me that I had to leave my body in order to survive. I spent most of my life in fear and learning how to love myself. Yet, I should not be angry about it and at the ones who did it?
The same people who don’t want to hear about my abuse are the same ones who try to stop me from being angry. It’s because of THEIR fear, that they try to stop us from being angry. Fear of exposure, fear of losing control over us, fear of rocking their boat. They feel safe as long as they can keep us in a child frame of mind, under their control. What about how I feel? Why can’t I feel safe? What I don’t understand is why our loved ones aren’t angry. Why aren’t they angry that I was abused?
I’m sure some of you who are reading this are wondering why I am still angry after all the years I’ve spent in healing from abuse. (30 years to be exact) And some of you are wondering if I am really healthy, since I talk about anger and the importance of being angry at our abusers. How can I say I have forgiven my abusers but still be angry at them?
It is because of healing, that I am able to be angry. I spent most of my life obeying the same false beliefs that you listened to. “Put anger aside and move on.” Healing from abuse doesn’t mean forgetting and it doesn’t mean excusing the abuse and it doesn’t mean that we stop being angry. Trying to stop my anger about abuse is like trying to stop a moving train with my body. It can’t happen and it will never happen. I choose to remain angry about every man, woman and child who has, is or will be abused. It’s the nature of the beast, the nature of a Mad Survivor.
I know, I am stepping on some toes, because we were taught that anger should not be expressed, it is not lady- like and anger will eat us up. Yet, anger is an emotion that we need to express. We need to get angry about our abuse, about our abusers, about those who didn’t protect us and at those who tell us to stuff our anger. It’s the only way that internal boundaries will surround us to protect and guard us from future abuse. It’s like a fence that has signs posted “ Do Not Touch or You Will Be Prosecuted” “Warning: No Abuse Allowed” “Warning: I Hit Back.”
This is a list of things I USED to get angry about before healing: The cashier for talking too much and taking too long. (She isn’t being paid to talk!) The little boy who let his dog pee in my yard. (I don’t let my dog pee in your yard, why are you letting your dog pee in mine?) The guy in the mustang who has his music up loud. (Where’s the cops when you need them?) The butcher who took another customer before me ( I was here first!) The couple in church who didn’t tithe (God’s gonna get them).
Silly things. I mean, come on! If I wasn’t such a nice girl, I could have slapped these people without thinking twice. If I would have told my friends about them, they would have encouraged me and told me that I had every right to be angry and upset. Yet, when it comes to something as devastating as abuse, we are told to not be angry because it will eat us up inside. And we listen to these people. Why? Most of the time we don’t even question it, we just obey because it has been so ingrained in us that anger is a bad thing.
My question to every Survivor is this: Is love a bad thing? What about compassion, sadness, or joy? They are all emotions. Are we supposed to pick and choose certain ones and discard the others? Should we toss love aside and not cry or jump around with joy? It makes no sense to me to use some and squash another. Because of this, I will continue to express my anger. It is my emotion, it is my right and I am giving myself permission to do so. It is said that anger is the backbone of healing. I say, anger is my backbone.
Patty Hite
Patty Hite is one of four facilitators of Overcoming Sexual Abuse. A survivor of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, Patty has been tenaciously pursuing her healing for over thirty years. She’s a passionate advocate for all survivors and dedicates her life to inspiring emotional wholeness in others. As a former victim of spousal abuse, she’s delighted to find true love with her husband of five years. She’s blessed with four children and five grandchildren.
