Saturday night, the Lovefraud reader “rriinnaa” posted the following under Heeding the Exploiter’s Earliest Warning:
I cant stop crying .. and I dont know what Im crying over ! Im crying over the happy-go-lucky joyful loving warm Rina.. the woman I once was .. THAT I POSSIBLY won’t be again ”¦. i want to be held and rocked until this pain goes away, but i have to work, i have to pay bills,i have to bring up my children ”¦ all the PROMISES HE MADE TO ME, “when you cry Rina, I will cry with you” ”¦.. “I would die for you Rina—¦. “such simple things make you happy Rina”.. “Rina, you are the light in my life—¦ “Rina, you are strong and I believe in you” .. AND AND AND AND AND AND AND .. oh my god AND I BELIEVED EVERYTHING HE EVER SAID TO ME”¦ I believed him .. he hated me because I was strong and he did everything in his power to crush that.. he didnt have that sense of fun, that wacky sense of humour, that friendliness that everyone fell in love with THAT WAS ME, THAT WAS THE GIRL HE MET”¦. and I have lost that girl i once was.. i want it back, i want to live and laugh and be happy .. he has turned me into his apprentice monster ”¦ oh my god !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TELL ME THERE IS KARMA.. TELL ME HE WILL HURT ONE DAY PLEASE TELL ME THAT HE FEELS .. yeah right ”¦”¦”¦I still can’t get it in my head THAT HE IS A SICK SOCIOPATH.. I STILL CANT BELIEVE I FELL IN LOVE WITH THAT THING ! IM GOING CRAZY .. i cant get my head around it .. i saw a psychologist.. it was the worst thing i could have done last week ..IS THERE A GROUP MEETING WHERE I CAN TALK TO REAL PEOPLE IN MELBOURNE ABOUT THIS MONSTER ????? can someone guide me to somewhere, someone that understands what I am going through ????????????????????
i am sorry”¦ i am ranting”¦. maybe i have finally gone over the edge ? nooooooo NO NO .. i never will. I will find the strength.. .again .. im up and down and my kids are suffering.. as much as I try to hide it ”¦”¦. they feel it, they see it and I HATE HIM FOR DOING THIS TO ME I HATE HIM ..
I remember feeling like this. In fact, when I read Rina’s message, I got that old tightening in my chest, that inability to breathe, that constantly-on-the-verge-of-tears feeling again.
I remember the rage, the hatred, the utter despair.
They’re normal reactions to the betrayal of a sociopath.
Why it’s so bad
We’ve all had romantic relationships end before. Why the end of a relationship with a sociopath so much worse?
First of all, the scale of the deception is beyond what most of us have ever experienced. These people don’t just lie about where they were last night. Their entire lives are lies—everything they ever did, every human relationship they ever had. In my case, as I started to unravel what was really going on, each day brought another fabrication, another betrayal. Recently, nine years after I left my sociopathic ex-husband, I discovered yet another lie. It never ends.
Then, the degree to which we were used is unbelievable. My ex-husband wanted a place to live, reliable sex and someone to finance his dreams of grandeur. All his love notes, his little gifts, and his forever promises, were designed to make me provide those things. It worked. Then, two and a half years later when I was used up, he moved on.
But perhaps the biggest reason why it’s so bad is because sociopaths steal our dreams and use them against us. In those heady early days of the relationship, as the sociopaths listen intently, we’re spilling our guts, telling them what we really want, what is really important to us, what we want out of life. We think they’re listening because they truly want everything that we want. In reality, they’re listening to discover the deepest places within us where they can set their hooks.
Sooner or later, it all collapses.
At that point, we lose our trust—trust in other people, trust in ourselves, trust if life itself. And as Karin Huffer writes in the Legal Abuse Syndrome, “the most profound loss is loss of trust.”
Dealing with the pain
We’re left with the emotional wreckage—along with very real problems like physical illness and injury, financial devastation, caring for children and legal issues. And all of it was caused by someone who supposedly loved us. What do we do?
The only way out of the pain is through it.
People often call and ask me how to cope. I suggest that you hold yourself together while dealing with the practical, financial and legal issues. Somehow, you have to keep your emotions in check so you can think and make decisions.
But after those concerns are handled, and you are alone, let it rip. Allow yourself to cry, yell and curse. Get physical—stomp your feet or twist towels. My personal favorite was envisioning my ex-husband’s face on a pillow, and punching the crap out of it. (For more information, read Releasing the pain inflicted by a sociopath.)
Why do we need to do this? Because emotions are physical. They are not intellectual concepts that will dissipate upon discussion. They are physical sensations, and must be dealt with physically. The tears, yelling and punching are the means by which the emotional pain is drained from the body.
What you’ll find is that there are layers and layers of pain—you’ll release some, and more will rise to the surface. So you do the exercise again. And again. And again.
Older, deeper pains
Then what you’ll find is that older pains—injuries not inflicted by the sociopath—will also rise to the surface. Perhaps they were injuries from your family of origin, or other relationships, or profound disappointments in your life.
When you find these pains, you have struck gold. These are the pains that made you vulnerable to the sociopath in the first place. They too, must be released. When they are no longer buried within you, you will be able to move into a new life of peace, contentment and happiness.
It’s hard to believe this when you are in the midst of the trauma. But it is true—you can pass through the pain and come out the other side. The process is not pretty. A therapist, if you can find one who gets it, may be able to guide you, but you alone must do the work. And it will take time.
Many of us on Lovefraud have talked about how we’ve become stronger, wiser individuals after our run-ins with the sociopaths. This is how it happens. We persevere through the pain, and then we are set free.
ICAN:
If you feel you can’t scream and hit a pillow……due to triggering….
I agree, you must find something that allows decompression.
Have you tried looking in the mirror and connceting with yourself and really looking at you in the mirror, seeing the pain, anger and emotions….watching the tears fall and having a connected conversation with yourself…..
Turn up the radio so no one can hear you……and have a conversation with YOU.
Also, I found writing helps with letting steam out…..
There are times I write and write (type) as the tears stream, I don’t censor my writing, I just type as it hit’s my brain…..
I have over 3 thousand pages typed…..HEY….tha’ts a lot of steam ya?!
It also helps me to go back and read what I typed at times….a reminder of where I’ve come from…..and where I am at.
How do you go through this…..well….ya just do…..you keep putting one foot in front of the other and take baby steps…..expect the process, educate yourself, learn about yourself and allow the pain to process growth.
And know…..trust and have faith in YOU!
I know the enraged processing…..the wanting them to hurt as bad as you….the wanting them to suffer….IT”S NORMAL!!!!
And it will dissipate over time….
Please know…..It’ll come around to him when the universe decides……BUT IT WILL!!! THis is part of the faith you must have…..
Put your energy into YOU…..and just ‘know’ some things.
Remain strong…..and allow and connect to the process.
XXOO
EB
Thanks EB,
I’ve been so much “work” on myself, reading and learning about myself and the ex N/S and ALL of it..my part in it, my past and how it made me vulnerable and how I got hooked and could be dysfunctionally attracted to someone who ends up being the malignant abuser that he was only to teach me the almost life threatening lesson that I needed to learn.
It’s all so intellectual and in the head though. The working on me part, is different in a way. That part is emotional and I feel emotionally completely raw.
I haven’t done the looking in the mirror thing. I’m not sure how that would help me. It’s not the pain and suffering and crying that I have difficulty expressing, although that too, I end up bottling up until I’m alone in my room (most of the time). Sometimes it just randomly happens when I get triggered by something sad, and I’m learning to just let the tears flow.
I do write out my feelings. It does help to a degree. Once again though, with the writing sometimes words themselves trigger me and even the writing and reading process. The ex N/S was a master at verbal violence and verbal emotional abuse and wrote realms and realms of twisted blaming, insulting, name-calling, projecting bs. He liked to USE words a lot. It sickens me how even writing now, and certain words and turns of phrases can just set me off into a downward spiral.
I dunno…I know I sound so defeatist and negative tonight. I’m having a really bad time lately, after a holiday season in which I was drained and repeatedly triggered by an extended family member who visited for a week and who showed so many signs of classic Narcissism, he may as well have had a big “N” on his forehead. It really set me back having to deal with him in my midst constantly. I kept trying to get the heck away from him when he’d start crossing boundaries and sucking up all of the energy, but he’d actually FOLLOW me around!!!
Once again I am drained 🙁
Thanks for the support
We can’t hide from the triggers……this is part of the ‘work’ that must be done…..And it’s not pleasant….as you know…
This is where tears and anger connection helps….it’s a stage of grief….
It’as also about being in control…..making a decision NOT to give YOU up.
Use the mirror time as a conncetion time, a conversing time and do it regularly….whenever you feel intense emotions….
It really does help…..
You need to allow it and open the ‘flow’ lines……up.
Keep in mind….3 steps forward, one step back…..you are on the one step back curretnly……don’t be too hard on yourelf!!!
It’s a journey and you ARE healing!!!!
XXOO
I don’t even have a mirror in my room. I’m sitting here now crying my eyes out from what you wrote and I’m not even sure why. My first thought was “How am I hiding?” I am trying to take care of myself.
Then I thought about trying that mirror thing and it scares me, makes me sick to my stomach to think about doing it.
It reminds me so much of the twisted perceptions that the ex would pull on me, the brainwashing, the gaslighting and the his own mirroring/projecting of his dementedness onto me.
After doing all of that and interrogating me, raging, and tearing me apart getting me to “admit all of my flaws”, and I’d be left devastated and crying he’d be so cold. I would bring up how he would not show any caring or understanding, could not show empathy or warmth in the slightest and he’d look at me with such ice cold disgust and tell me that IT WAS ALL ME!!! That it was MY FACE. That there was something fundamentally WRONG with me why he couldn’t feel empathy toward me. That I DIDN”T SHOW hurt or pain the right away, so how could he possibly feel empathy toward me.
Now, to look at my face in a mirror would bring the monstrosity of that back to me.
Thanks for reminding me that I AM healing. I feel like I’ve gone way back and am about to fall completely apart again 🙁
ican, if you’re still dealing with this, here are some ideas to help you understand what’s happening and manage it.
As you said, you’ve been doing a lot of intellectual work, which is great. You’ve been setting up a framework to “allow” yourself to finally connect the dots emotionally and react normally. (You couldn’t react freely when you were in these situations.)
You’re having the reactions that you’ve postponed until you could feel them safely. When the lid comes off deferred anger, it can be huge. And in your case, you’ve not only got the S’s behavior, you’re dealing with abuse from your past, and probably that abuse caused you to tolerate situations all your life that you never would have tolerated if you hadn’t already been trained to endure disrespectful or hurtful or exploitive behavior. So, in other words, if you start reacting normally with outrage and resistance (even in retrospect), you have lots of things that weren’t previously dealt with.
The good news is that this overwhelming period doesn’t last long. You’ll continue to be angry for a while, really angry, but you won’t feel like it’s like a raging river that’s carrying you along. You’re already connecting it to triggering events. But later it will settle down enough that you can really sort through the causes, event by event. This may sound like no fun, but actually it’s pretty satisfying to place anger where it belongs. More about that later.
Right now, you’re associating these big feelings with certain events, recent ones that make you feel furious. This is righteous anger. This is important, becaues until we get to righteous anger, we tend to suffer from general resentment and general anxiety that tend to make us react to anything that looks like those events (PSTD). Righteous anger pinpoints the exact cause, and enables us to say, “This was wrong. This was abuse. I hate what happened. I reject it. I reject the person, his behavior and what happened to me. I was treated badly, and this is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
You say it is leading you to violent revenge fantasies. We all go through this. In your mind, you’re fighting back or killing the person. Any therapist will tell you that homicidal fantasies are not unhealthy, unless you do something about it. I would say homicidal fantasies are a lot healthier than blaming yourself or trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Don’t worry about whether you’re allowed to have them, or whether they make you a bad person. It’s actually a rational response to being severely harmed (though it’s not legal anymore to kill people to make sure they don’t hurt you or anyone else again). The fantasies will pass as you find other ways to deal with personal threats.
But in the meantime, some of the funniest and liveliest conversations we’ve had here at LoveFraud have been about our revenge fantasies. If you want to share them, no one will even blink, and it might make you feel less isolated with these feelings.
Another thing about anger is that it enables us to finally judge the other person and his behavior in terms of what it meant to us. We drop any philosophical and objective perspective, and it gets personal. This is personal. There has been a lot of discussion here about evil. My definition of evil is something that is bad for me. In that definition, this was evil for you, and that person was a bad, bad person. If you’re ready to start pointing fingers and naming names, this is the time to do it. (Not necessarily to their faces, because it would be better to wait until you cool down, and consider the right way to do it.) This is also the time to recognize that this person is responsible for their behavior. It had nothing to do with you. This was a bad person, doing bad things, and it was your bad luck to be at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.
As far as managing these feelings, especially in the beginning, Erin has given you some good ideas. But here are a few more. This level of anger is physical. In fact, anger always has a physical component, because it prepares your body to act in its own defense, whether that is fighting or running away. It also narrows the mind to focus on the threat, so that you see almost nothing else, until you deal with hit.
If the threat’s not in front of you right now, what do you do with all this fiery energy? Walk. If you’re athletic, run or do whatever you do to work out. If you’re not feeling well, and don’t have a lot of physical strength, organize your closet or cook or clean your hairbrush or do anything that makes you feel like you’re doing something. Men, who usually access anger more easily that women because of their testosterone, have always used anger as a fuel to accomplish things.
I wrote through my recovery, like Erin did. This is a good time for writing, but again, use the anger. Anger also fuels insight. You see through things. Start writing exactly what you’re angry about. Start little sections with “This was wrong.” Tell the story. Then say what was wrong about it. If you don’t know how to start that, any section can begin with “He had no right…” He didn’t.
This will help you in more than one way. It will clarify for you, in a way that will be helpful moving forward, what you think is appropriate treatment of any human being, but more specifically you. This healing process is going to raise your standards about that, and also inspire you to defend yourself more effectively and build better boundaries.
As far as the other people in your life go, especially the family you’re living with, the best thing you can do, if you’re feeling irritable or explosive, is warn them off. Tell them that you’re not good company right now, and you’d be grateful if they’d give you some space. Or that you’re working through some old resentments, and you don’t want them to be caught in the crossfire. Or if it’s someone you have major anger issues with, you can tell them that you’re rethinking some of your history together, and you’ll get back with them when you have decided how you feel about it. But right now, you don’t want to talk to them.
If you haven’t read my articles on anger, my name is on the author’s list on the left hand column. I think there were two articles, but the first one will probably be the most helpful. All the negative emotions have a function in keeping us alive and healthy, and anger is the one that protects your wellbeing — physically and in terms of your psychic integrity. It’s a good, good thing.
But if you’re not used to it, and particularly if you’ve been suppressing it for years because you were trained to absorb mistreatment without defending yourself, you have a whole lot of “danger alerts” that have never been addressed.
Ultimately, you’re going to address them all. You will look at every one of them, determine if there is anything that happened that still presents a risk today, and figure out what to do about it protecting yourself or neutralizing the threat. The ones that are long gone and no longer a threat will still provide learning opportunities. If that happened today, what would I do? And you’re gradually going to recognize that you and your circumstances are different now. You’re stronger and more independent and more committed to your own survival and integrity. That all comes with the angry part of the healing process.
So you have good, empowering, freeing work ahead of you. A lot of people love the angry phase so much they never want to leave it. Because anger is the voice of your strength and will. So don’t worry.
In the meantime, if it continues to feel overwhelming, just read it as the amount of backed-up stuff that’s still rising to the surface of your mind. It’s evidence of how much different you and your life will be in the future. Deal with the physical and emotional overload by channeling it into activity. I especially encourage getting outside if you can. The world is still going on, and it will distract you a bit, change your brain chemicals and give you a breather. Which will be good for your blood pressure, and remind you that you’re in a process, just a process, and it will eventually be resolved.
Later, when you can, you’ll probably limit yourself to a certain time each day to work on this stuff, because you’re ready to limit anger in your life. Your “never again” list, and your research and exercises on self-defense and boundaries will start to pay off for you. You will be amazed at how it all works, and how you grow into a new sense of power over your life.
I hope this helps. You’re doing great, moving right down the path like a champion self-healer.
Kathy
It’s 4 and a half years i am trying to heal. LF helped alot, but STILL i feel i am walking in circle. I became addicted to my xN…because he represented all i was dreaming on, from REliving my youth, from suffering my N parent’s abuse, from abuse at work. I always had a dream which helped me going through: some day, ONE day, i will find a love, understanding, support. Than i have “found it”, in my mature ages. Tree years after, i got to know it was a LIE. I had no twigg to hold on during my hard times, no dreams….like alian…empty shell.
Ashamed. Believing him, i allowed myself some behaviour which i never would, i let him see my soul, told my deepest fears and secrets, i was foolish like girl, and i feel ashamed that i got totally naked infront of someone who acctually DID NOT CARE. God, i just can imagine how crazy i might look…..
Looking at the mirror did not help. All i could see was how fast i got old, transforming from lovely, pretty woman, into an old ugly, wrinkled , sad face person.
Like Dorian Gray….he transformed me into monster. I HATE TO SEE MY FACE, cuz it reflects everything he did to me, suffer, pain, sorrow….
Some old friends are telling me: where have ur smile gone? where have ur tricky spark from ur eyes gone?
Karma? I do believe in it, but what’s the use? I never wanted anything bad happen to anyone! I can’t see any satisfaction nor pleasure in bad things happen to him, nor to anyone. It can’t bring a peace to my suffering soul. His pain will never lesen my pain he caused.
I do not see the way out. I am just fading in my pain…
I wish if i can feel hate, but i just can’t. I feel anger, YES, but hate is strange feeling to me. I still hope he will regret, repent, become “normal”. I still hope i can rebuilt my trust and get to know was ANYTHING true…and WHAT was true. I cant accept everything was an empty lie and i was just a source of supply. I can’t….
ThornBud,
Hate is a form of anger. Like bitterness, it’s a kind of congealed anger that isn’t moving anywhere. Don’t worry about not being able to feel it. It’s better to have vibrant, moving feelings that a lump of anger that has settled into your system.
You might look at your hope for what’s inside of it. If he can change, what does that mean for you? Or maybe look at the flipside of that? If he can’t change, what does that mean for you? Not in your relationship with him, but maybe in how you look at the world.
I keep meaning to write an article about fear. It’s an emotion we try to avoid, but like anger, it has its purposes. And a lot of our healing work, at least in the early stages, is to get around the fact that there actually is something to fear in the world. If we lived a long time ago, before civilization had so insulated us from weather and wolves and the flu, we would be a lot more aware of how real, rational fear feels and the fact that it is an inner challenge for us. It tells us our survival is at stake, and we need to do something about it. As most adventurous people will also attest, fear is one of the great stimuli to personal growth. Things that make us afraid also force us to discover new resources in ourselves, and afterwards we never quite feel the same about ourselves or the world at large. We own something we didn’t own before.
So let’s say, everything was an empty lie. And you, despite being a responsible and smart person, were fooled. There was not a thing you could do about it. He was focussed, clever and he read you like a book. By the time you figured out you were in trouble, you discovered that all your previously trusted resources weren’t any good to you, and you didn’t know how to get out of it. (Though you did eventually, or you wouldn’t have the opportunity to heal and learn from the experience.)
So, whew, this is serious stuff. Scary. It means that you (like the rest of us) are vulnerable in a way that you never imagined before. Somebody can pretend to be a good person and turn out to be a bad person. Or someone can have some very good characteristics that are attractive to you, and turn out to be hiding some really dreadful characteristics that really challenge your ability to judge and react appropriately. And you are left feeling… what? Totally unprepared? Like you don’t exactly understand the lesson? Like the things that it seems like you’re supposed to be learning here are not who you wanted to be when you grew up?
I’m going to try to give you a hand in cutting through this. You are feeling anger, but you’re still hanging out in the bargaining phase. You think that if you can figure out one thing or another, you can make this less scary and you can save yourself from becoming a permanently embittered and permanently scared and untrusting person.
How you can move yourself to something a little more stable and lasting is to stop trying to make sense of the circumstances and the other person. All this analysis and third-party thinking is a form of avoidance of the more important thing that is going on. Besides there is really only one truth that really enables you to get your feet on the ground. It’s the one that begins with “I.” Each of us is the center of our own universe, and to order it, we have to start wtih ourselves.
So let’s talk about you. How do you feel? You said you feel anger? About what? What happened that made you feel resentful, disrespected, confused, uncomfortable, fuming, resistant, furious, outraged, thinking that you deserved better? Don’t get sidetracked with considering whether you have a right to feel that way, or whether other things didn’t make you feel angry. Stick to your feelings and peer into them to find the real cause. And decide whether or not you want to assign a value to what happened to you. Was it okay, acceptable, something you can shrug off and overlook. Or was it important, serious, something you hated and never want to go through again?
This is personal stuff. I mean that this is subjective, about you, and you don’t have to be fair or objective about your feelings. In fact, if you have strong feelings, it is because something happened to you. You were threatened with him, actually harmed, placed in a situation where you lost dignity or control, used in a way that drained your resources without compensation, treated like less than you know yourself to be, etc. If your emotional system had a strong reaction, the only possible reason that it may not have been valid is that you’re suffering from PSTD and overblowing a situation that reminds you of an earlier trauma. And even then, your feelings are still valid, just misdirected.
So I’m suggesting to you that, right now, you’re making something more important than your feelings. And in doing so, you’re making something more important than your wellbeing. You may disagree. You may say that your wellbeing depends on not fully crediting your feelings, because you don’t want to become untrusting or bitter. But I’d say back that you’re risking making a part of your emotional spectrum unacceptable to you, and so creating an environment in which self-hatred will flourish. These emotions are normal reactions. Normal reactions flow through our systems and change as we process a trauma. Block them, and you don’t finish processing the trauma and live with it until you do.
Your feelings are complicated. You miss the good part of the relationship. And like many of these Jeckyll-Hyde relationships, the good part was really wonderful, even more wonderful as time went on, because we increasingly valued the good as we became more scared and disoriented by the bad. I’m not suggesting that you discount those feelings, anymore than you discount the angry, sad and scared feelings. If you feel them all, it will make it easier for you to eventually keep the good parts and the bad parts in your mind at the same time and recognize that this was the same person. And come to some sort of conclusion about the whole of it. A conclusion that relates to how it made you feel. Not just when it was going on — good in good times, bad in bad times — but over time, including now when you’re trying to get over it.
I know you’re worried about not being able to rebuild your trust. I can promise that you will grow into a whole new awareness of how trust works in your life, and you won’t abandon trust. It’s a kind of glue that makes other things possible, and even when we think we’re not trusting we are. (Look at your trust in the people at LoveFraud that enables you to be so honest.) We just start become more judicious about trust, viewing it as something to be earned, rather than giving it away. Because we’re worth it. We are valuable people and we don’t want anyone to mistake us for anything less. And you’ll get there.
As far as whether “everything was an empty lie,” whether or not you get there probably boils down to whether you start to understand psychology of people who have trouble trusting or bonding with other people. Or whether you understand the psychology of people whose huge needs make them unable to really commit to anything but getting those needs met (like addicts). It’s not that they don’t have times of being human and warm and feeling, but that they can’t sustain them in the face of the demands of these out-of-control needs. Eventually you’ll probably get more sanguine about what you were dealing with, and the fact that the other person’s problems just made a normal relationship impossible. You don’t have to hate or even be angry to understand that, but you do have to be sufficiently motivated to avoid people like this in the fuure, if you don’t want to go through this again.
I hope all this makes sense. I’ve covered a lot of territory here. But if you can only absorb one thing in this post, it’s the advice to stop looking anywhere but your own feelings for the truth. Get a grip on that — what was good and bad for you — and you’ll take a huge step toward establishing a truth that will take you forward to healing and creating a better life.
Kathy
And ThornBud, if all of this is just too rational for the mood you’re in. Try this:
I have a right to feel bad about what happened.
I did not ask for this, and I resent having to suffer for other people’s behavior.
I am a survivor. I’ve been through a lot, and I’m here fighting, talking about, still trying no matter how bad I feel. My survival instinct is still working, and I’m still here.
The darkest days are where the greatest learning is happening. (Say this to yourself.) It may not be happening on the top of my mind, where I can see it. But it’s happening, and I’m living through all the positive changes in my deep emotional system.
The anger, frustration, fear and grief are all part of the healing. I’m getting better. My future will be better than my past.
ThornBud, all this is true, whether or not you believe it right now. But in the meantime, you need to take care of yourself and work on your mood, because you sound pretty blue. Depression can take on a life of its own, and you don’t want that. So get out of the house, do something nice for yourself, and remind yourself that you’re worth it. What you see through the eyes of grief is just what grief sees. You know that there is more to life. Go stimulate some other emotions, like curiosity, pleasure and feelings of achievement.
You can do this. Even the tiniest little effort will help, but all those other feeling are waiting for their chance. And all of them can help you heal.
A send you a big healing hug —
Kathy
Kathleen,
Thank you so much for your support and very helpful post.
What you said here:
“This was wrong. This was abuse. I hate what happened. I reject it. I reject the person, his behavior and what happened to me. I was treated badly, and this is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
This is SO good for me. It’s things like this that I need to say over and over to myself. HE HAD NO RIGHT! Inside my heart and soul and being are screaming “HOW DARE YOU!!!”
I am still in pain physically from when he attacked me and the righteous indignation and PURE RAGE of what he did to me is boiling in me right now. It’s like a white hot heat in my belly. I may have ongoing issues for who knows how long from being literally thrown and my head smashed against a wall.
The first thing I’m going to do with my anger is go see a doctor. Yeah, I know this sounds incredible but I never went to see a doctor. I was at a massage this afternoon and was talking to my RMT about the horrendous pain I’m in and started embarrassingly asking her questions about my head and neck. She encouraged me to go see a doctor. I tried not to start crying but when she hugged me, I couldn’t stop myself.
I decided after I left that I’m going to be shut up anymore. This isn’t really physically acting out anger the way that was described, but for me it’s my ANGER speaking loud and clear.