Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP. I say this with nothing but love. One verbal exchange, even a humiliating one, is not grounds for someone to be killed or to have their will to live taken away. It's not grounds to take their kids or anything else you mentioned. I am a bit concerned that you may misinterpret the lovely messages of support you've gotten as proof that your intense wishes for harm to befall this person are appropriate. If this person had murdered your child or something like that, your post would be emotionally on key and appropriate. But lots of people get into verbal tiffs, and it isn't a death sentence. Don't. Do. Anything. Harmful.

I’m going to take the OP’s word for it that it was that bad.

It wasn't "they should die for it" bad. Especially since OP's own story is that everyone sided with the villain. It doesn't add up. Not saying OP wasn't traumatized or that their hurt isn't valid. But this isn't about hurt, this Is about an all consuming desire for vengeance.

Anonymous wrote:OP. I say this with nothing but love. One verbal exchange, even a humiliating one, is not grounds for someone to be killed or to have their will to live taken away. It's not grounds to take their kids or anything else you mentioned. I am a bit concerned that you may misinterpret the lovely messages of support you've gotten as proof that your intense wishes for harm to befall this person are appropriate. If this person had murdered your child or something like that, your post would be emotionally on key and appropriate. But lots of people get into verbal tiffs, and it isn't a death sentence. Don't. Do. Anything. Harmful.

I’m going to take the OP’s word for it that it was that bad.

Fighting feelings intensifies them. It's like the kids' book, Going on a Bear Hunt - the only way through, is through. You can't go over it. You can't go under it. You have to really feel it. You have to go through it.

OP. I say this with nothing but love. One verbal exchange, even a humiliating one, is not grounds for someone to be killed or to have their will to live taken away. It's not grounds to take their kids or anything else you mentioned. I am a bit concerned that you may misinterpret the lovely messages of support you've gotten as proof that your intense wishes for harm to befall this person are appropriate. If this person had murdered your child or something like that, your post would be emotionally on key and appropriate. But lots of people get into verbal tiffs, and it isn't a death sentence. Don't. Do. Anything. Harmful.

This has got to be one of the most tedious threads ever.

Honestly I think you have every right to be angry. Do whatever you want. No one has walked in your shoes. F it.

Anonymous wrote:OP, would you like some petty revenge ideas? Normally I'd say to take the high road, but this person sounds pretty evil and you've certainly tried to get over it in more mature ways.

I'm serious.

Well now you have to share. Everyone needs some petty revenge ideas.

OP, would you like some petty revenge ideas? Normally I'd say to take the high road, but this person sounds pretty evil and you've certainly tried to get over it in more mature ways.

I'm serious.

Anonymous wrote:Op, how are you feeling after reading all these opinions and advice?

I found the exercise useful. Just getting it out was helpful and a lot of the responses from peopel who identify and have experienced similar challenges really helped me feel less alone.

I actually also even find it useful, to a point, to engage with the critics or people who give advice I think is bad or unhelpful. Because even just being able to articulate why I think that criticism is unfair or why a very common bit of advice actually doesn't help someone in my position at all helps me to express some of the frustration and anger I feel over this situation. So it's like a form of power, just having the knowledge of self and of my situation to be able to say "no you are wrong" and calmly explain why.

The actual anniversary is not for another week and a half or so but I think this was a good way for me to get out some of the extra "ick" feelings that came up. It will probably also make my therapy session next week more productive because it has helped me to clarify some feelings and thoughts. The sounding board aspect is really useful for that.

Anyway, thanks for the listening ears, all. Even the ones I disagreed with or who think I'm just stuck in a victim mentality or whatever. Sometimes it really is enough to just talk it out.

Op, how are you feeling after reading all these opinions and advice?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This person is not worth the energy you are putting into your anger.

And that anger is giving this person a prime spot, THE prime spot, in your mental real estate, OP. In essence this person is, to put it crudely, "winning" against you, even after the abuse is long over, by taking up so much of your emotional and mental time and energy.

For those reasons, this stranger is begging you to get back into therapy, or, if you're still in therapy, to tell your therapist more fully exactly what you told us here. Maybe change therapists if you have one but for some reason aren't being this frank with the therapist as you are anonymously here. We can advise all day, and you'll get posts asking you for more and more details here "so we can help you better" etc. (often these come from people who just get kicks out of all the gory details--don't feed those beasts). But you need to see a professional to evict this person from your mind. Your life is being impaired and that gives this person power over you. I won't say, "Just stop giving this person power over you" becuase it is so hard to do that on one's own. See a new therapist, or tell your current one your whole, raw, angry truth, or restart therapy if you've stopped it, but you need help to take back your life and thoughts. You deserve to have your true self back and that cannot happen with just venting to strangers online. Please, please get help.

You don't get it. My therapist knows I feel this way. Have you ever been through this? If not, you don't get it.

And yes, I'm aware that this person is winning, that they have won. That's the whole point. No matter what I do I can never get back what they took.

Also, I'm not sharing any details here, I'm not stupid.

I am not in the same boat but my therapy has only amplified my bitter feelings. I think we could both be helped by seeking healing in another outlet.

DP. You said upthread that you have learned that you must express feelings to be able to move past them but many people have the experience that expressing negative feelings increases them and is not the solution.

The way to let negative feelings go is to let them go, not to focus on them and give them more power through expression.

You are not responding to a post by the OP but I am tending to lean into what you are saying. The problem is too much baggage. It's like how hard it is to cut family off when you still have tons of ties that bind in other ways. Can you let go of bad feelings for an abusive teacher if you still see them in the hallway every school day? People often side against a victim because the victim is so upset, never mind they didn't ask for any of it in the first place. The guy that rocks the boat is annoying but the person who rocks the boat back is looked down on even more.

The issue is that when you have strong negative feelings and share them, and the response is "you need to let them go," if the person cannot let them go (which is common if you're talking about trauma), then instead what you are really saying is "bottle those feelings up and don't take about them anymore." Which is toxic AF.

There are very limited spaces in the world where you can say stuff like this. In therapy, maaaaaaybe with very close friends and family (but even that is dicy because most peopel are just not able to hold emotions like this and it will freak them out to see someone they love express this stuff, it's just really rare to have a support network that can handle this unless you are paying them), and then on an anonymous site like this. Maybe a support group IF you can find one, they are actually hard to find.

Which is why "you need to let it go" is just such useless advice. How? When you have been harmed like this, you can try to think about other things, you can exercise, meditate, whatever. At some point you are going to wind up thinking about what happened and you're going to feel how you feel.

Just where exactly is it that you folks think all these negative feelings go?

It is totally useless advice. Next comes the lecture about why do you see yourself as a victim? Well, because you were victimized. The only productive approach is to stop inviting people to take advantage of you. You were genuinely victimized. Victim has become a dirty shameful word and it’s all about not enforcing accountability for perpetrators.

+1, the comments about "you need to get out of this victim mentality" make me mad because is anyone telling the abuser, condescendingly, "you need to get out of this abuser mentality."

It's not a mentality. If someone harms you, you're a victim. I'm a believer in the power of language and embrace using the term "survivor" over victim and I totally agree we need to find ways to facilitate survivors feeling empowered to make changes and take control. But the truth is that if someone hurts you and gets away with it, you feel powerless because you have been stripped of power. Expecting someone in that situation to believe they actually are powerful when their abuser and the people who facilitated, ignored, or covered up the abuse have provided copious evidence to the contrary is not a realistic expectation. When people succeed at this, you should be wowed by them. When people fail at it, you should be understanding.

If you want to yell at someone, yell at abusers.

DP. These comments are not yelling at OP or PPs. It's a variation of the wisdom of Carolyn Hax (who, like her or not, is occasionally right). You can't change other people, you can only change yourself. And no one else can change you, not your therapist, not anyone else. Only you can change yourself. So if you want to, you will.

I think peopel who do this don't understand how trauma works. Whether they are "yelling" or not is debatable -- the truth is that is not kind to tell someone to do something that they are trying and failing to do as a form of advice. Like this is what it sounds like:

A: I was hurt very bad, I'm struggling, I want to feel better but don't
B: Do this, this and this and then you will feel better
A: I did all those things, I still don't feel better
B: Stop being a victim, you just have to change how you feel

It's just a weird brick wall of advice. It doesn't help. Maybe this works for other things, like if someone who is unhappy in their job and complains about it all the time, maybe telling them "the only person who can change this is you" will help because in that situation, they can in fact change it. But telling people with PTSD to just let go, stop being a victim, etc... it just doesn't make sense within the context of the problem. It's like telling some whose bored to go visit the moon because that would be an exciting thing to do. I mean, I guess, but that's obviously not a feasible solution to that problem.

This is what the phrase "trauma-informed" means when it comes to therapy or other forms of services designed to help people. A lot of the "common sense" advice on improving your life just doesn't make sense in the context of trauma, and can even be harmful.

Look, to an extent, we define our realities. If you believe everything you just wrote, that is how your life will play out. For others who choose to do whatever they can to move on and find a new identify for themselves, that is how their life will play out. No one is denying OP's feelings or suffering but only offering advice on how to mold a new identity for herself so that her life is not defined by this one event. If you look at human history, it always strikes me how much people in past centuries suffered. The women who lose child after child, the hardships, the wars, etc. But yet they persevered. All the focus on being hurt and being a victim is really quite a modern phenomenon and while useful in to some degree, can backfire and make us less resilient. Stop looking inward and focus on someone else.

OP is very mature for not wishing real harm to the perp but is angry at him "getting away." My advice would be to focus on you having done right, regardless of outcome or how others perceived the situation. You didn't do anything wrong, followed your conscience to confronted him. Can you take comfort in that? None of us are judged by the misfortunes that befall us, but by how we acted. And again, do whatever you need to distance yourself and start afresh. Move to a new location/neighborhood if possible, cut off all shared acquaintances, get a new job if job related.

I don't really agree with your point but I just wanted to highlight that the bolded is not true. For historical research projects, I've read a large volume of personal letters written by people in the early 19th century, and let me tell you -- those folks focused plenty on being hurt and "being a victim." People have ALWAYS struggled with these kinds of interpersonal hurts and harms, with power struggles and humiliation. We tend to put this rosy, dignified patina on portrayals of previous eras in our media, but this is not accurate. Lifelong grudges between neighbors, parents disinheriting their children, siblings who don't speak to each other for decades over childhood hurts. This is not a new thing, it's not some new weakness or vulnerability developed by modern people. It's very old and probably just part of the human condition. Since people started forming societal groups for safety and comfort, the betrayal of social bonds has been among the hardest things for people to recover from.

Have you actually talked to people in previous generations? And compared it with talking to people now with all the trauma mentality? Of course everyone is going to have petty angry thoughts and literature is going to be full of them because that makes for drama. But people have lived through REAL hardship and not only survived but managed to achieve more happiness than people today who live during the best of times.

You are romanticizing. I mean one thing you seem to miss is that the idea of "achieving happiness" wasn't really a life expectation for a lot of people until the rise of the middle class in the 20th century. Most people's lives were hard and relatively short and while they sought comfort and joy in their lives, the idea of having decades of stable "happiness" was unrealistic because most people had to work hard, backbreaking jobs (whether physical labor, service jobs like maids or cooks, or caring for children and animals at home without any modern conveniences including refrigeration, running water, etc.).

Yes, they absolutely spent years angry over traumatic events in their lives. My grandmother and her sister had a rift in their teen years over marriage and babies and did not speak to each other for nearly 50 years, and when they did, the first thing my grandmother said was "still think you're better than me, huh." I was there. This is a woman who survived immigrating to the US with nothing, the Great Depression, WWII, and raised nine children mostly on her own because my grandfather was a drunk who died when most of the kids were still very young. And she also spent half a century angry at her sister over hurts she experienced as a teen.

You might know some inspiring people who survived great hardship and still found lasting happiness. But the idea that this is how all peopel used to be is just some silly notion you've acquired from watching Hollywood and historical novels glamorize traumatic events like war and famine. The truth is that people who experience trauma have always struggle deeply, that suicide, depression, family dysfunctions, etc. have been extremely common throughout all of history.

The mistake you are making is thinking that because people TALK about these issues now, instead of bottling it up and pretending it didn't exist, people are more fixated on these issues. Nope. The talking is healthy and saves lives and helps more people find peace and happiness. That stoicism that you are confusing with strength was actually toxic AF.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This person is not worth the energy you are putting into your anger.

And that anger is giving this person a prime spot, THE prime spot, in your mental real estate, OP. In essence this person is, to put it crudely, "winning" against you, even after the abuse is long over, by taking up so much of your emotional and mental time and energy.

For those reasons, this stranger is begging you to get back into therapy, or, if you're still in therapy, to tell your therapist more fully exactly what you told us here. Maybe change therapists if you have one but for some reason aren't being this frank with the therapist as you are anonymously here. We can advise all day, and you'll get posts asking you for more and more details here "so we can help you better" etc. (often these come from people who just get kicks out of all the gory details--don't feed those beasts). But you need to see a professional to evict this person from your mind. Your life is being impaired and that gives this person power over you. I won't say, "Just stop giving this person power over you" becuase it is so hard to do that on one's own. See a new therapist, or tell your current one your whole, raw, angry truth, or restart therapy if you've stopped it, but you need help to take back your life and thoughts. You deserve to have your true self back and that cannot happen with just venting to strangers online. Please, please get help.

You don't get it. My therapist knows I feel this way. Have you ever been through this? If not, you don't get it.

And yes, I'm aware that this person is winning, that they have won. That's the whole point. No matter what I do I can never get back what they took.

Also, I'm not sharing any details here, I'm not stupid.

I am not in the same boat but my therapy has only amplified my bitter feelings. I think we could both be helped by seeking healing in another outlet.

DP. You said upthread that you have learned that you must express feelings to be able to move past them but many people have the experience that expressing negative feelings increases them and is not the solution.

The way to let negative feelings go is to let them go, not to focus on them and give them more power through expression.

You are not responding to a post by the OP but I am tending to lean into what you are saying. The problem is too much baggage. It's like how hard it is to cut family off when you still have tons of ties that bind in other ways. Can you let go of bad feelings for an abusive teacher if you still see them in the hallway every school day? People often side against a victim because the victim is so upset, never mind they didn't ask for any of it in the first place. The guy that rocks the boat is annoying but the person who rocks the boat back is looked down on even more.

The issue is that when you have strong negative feelings and share them, and the response is "you need to let them go," if the person cannot let them go (which is common if you're talking about trauma), then instead what you are really saying is "bottle those feelings up and don't take about them anymore." Which is toxic AF.

There are very limited spaces in the world where you can say stuff like this. In therapy, maaaaaaybe with very close friends and family (but even that is dicy because most peopel are just not able to hold emotions like this and it will freak them out to see someone they love express this stuff, it's just really rare to have a support network that can handle this unless you are paying them), and then on an anonymous site like this. Maybe a support group IF you can find one, they are actually hard to find.

Which is why "you need to let it go" is just such useless advice. How? When you have been harmed like this, you can try to think about other things, you can exercise, meditate, whatever. At some point you are going to wind up thinking about what happened and you're going to feel how you feel.

Just where exactly is it that you folks think all these negative feelings go?

It is totally useless advice. Next comes the lecture about why do you see yourself as a victim? Well, because you were victimized. The only productive approach is to stop inviting people to take advantage of you. You were genuinely victimized. Victim has become a dirty shameful word and it’s all about not enforcing accountability for perpetrators.

+1, the comments about "you need to get out of this victim mentality" make me mad because is anyone telling the abuser, condescendingly, "you need to get out of this abuser mentality."

It's not a mentality. If someone harms you, you're a victim. I'm a believer in the power of language and embrace using the term "survivor" over victim and I totally agree we need to find ways to facilitate survivors feeling empowered to make changes and take control. But the truth is that if someone hurts you and gets away with it, you feel powerless because you have been stripped of power. Expecting someone in that situation to believe they actually are powerful when their abuser and the people who facilitated, ignored, or covered up the abuse have provided copious evidence to the contrary is not a realistic expectation. When people succeed at this, you should be wowed by them. When people fail at it, you should be understanding.

If you want to yell at someone, yell at abusers.

DP. These comments are not yelling at OP or PPs. It's a variation of the wisdom of Carolyn Hax (who, like her or not, is occasionally right). You can't change other people, you can only change yourself. And no one else can change you, not your therapist, not anyone else. Only you can change yourself. So if you want to, you will.

I think peopel who do this don't understand how trauma works. Whether they are "yelling" or not is debatable -- the truth is that is not kind to tell someone to do something that they are trying and failing to do as a form of advice. Like this is what it sounds like:

A: I was hurt very bad, I'm struggling, I want to feel better but don't
B: Do this, this and this and then you will feel better
A: I did all those things, I still don't feel better
B: Stop being a victim, you just have to change how you feel

It's just a weird brick wall of advice. It doesn't help. Maybe this works for other things, like if someone who is unhappy in their job and complains about it all the time, maybe telling them "the only person who can change this is you" will help because in that situation, they can in fact change it. But telling people with PTSD to just let go, stop being a victim, etc... it just doesn't make sense within the context of the problem. It's like telling some whose bored to go visit the moon because that would be an exciting thing to do. I mean, I guess, but that's obviously not a feasible solution to that problem.

This is what the phrase "trauma-informed" means when it comes to therapy or other forms of services designed to help people. A lot of the "common sense" advice on improving your life just doesn't make sense in the context of trauma, and can even be harmful.

Look, to an extent, we define our realities. If you believe everything you just wrote, that is how your life will play out. For others who choose to do whatever they can to move on and find a new identify for themselves, that is how their life will play out. No one is denying OP's feelings or suffering but only offering advice on how to mold a new identity for herself so that her life is not defined by this one event. If you look at human history, it always strikes me how much people in past centuries suffered. The women who lose child after child, the hardships, the wars, etc. But yet they persevered. All the focus on being hurt and being a victim is really quite a modern phenomenon and while useful in to some degree, can backfire and make us less resilient. Stop looking inward and focus on someone else.

OP is very mature for not wishing real harm to the perp but is angry at him "getting away." My advice would be to focus on you having done right, regardless of outcome or how others perceived the situation. You didn't do anything wrong, followed your conscience to confronted him. Can you take comfort in that? None of us are judged by the misfortunes that befall us, but by how we acted. And again, do whatever you need to distance yourself and start afresh. Move to a new location/neighborhood if possible, cut off all shared acquaintances, get a new job if job related.

I don't really agree with your point but I just wanted to highlight that the bolded is not true. For historical research projects, I've read a large volume of personal letters written by people in the early 19th century, and let me tell you -- those folks focused plenty on being hurt and "being a victim." People have ALWAYS struggled with these kinds of interpersonal hurts and harms, with power struggles and humiliation. We tend to put this rosy, dignified patina on portrayals of previous eras in our media, but this is not accurate. Lifelong grudges between neighbors, parents disinheriting their children, siblings who don't speak to each other for decades over childhood hurts. This is not a new thing, it's not some new weakness or vulnerability developed by modern people. It's very old and probably just part of the human condition. Since people started forming societal groups for safety and comfort, the betrayal of social bonds has been among the hardest things for people to recover from.

Have you actually talked to people in previous generations? And compared it with talking to people now with all the trauma mentality? Of course everyone is going to have petty angry thoughts and literature is going to be full of them because that makes for drama. But people have lived through REAL hardship and not only survived but managed to achieve more happiness than people today who live during the best of times.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This person is not worth the energy you are putting into your anger.

And that anger is giving this person a prime spot, THE prime spot, in your mental real estate, OP. In essence this person is, to put it crudely, "winning" against you, even after the abuse is long over, by taking up so much of your emotional and mental time and energy.

For those reasons, this stranger is begging you to get back into therapy, or, if you're still in therapy, to tell your therapist more fully exactly what you told us here. Maybe change therapists if you have one but for some reason aren't being this frank with the therapist as you are anonymously here. We can advise all day, and you'll get posts asking you for more and more details here "so we can help you better" etc. (often these come from people who just get kicks out of all the gory details--don't feed those beasts). But you need to see a professional to evict this person from your mind. Your life is being impaired and that gives this person power over you. I won't say, "Just stop giving this person power over you" becuase it is so hard to do that on one's own. See a new therapist, or tell your current one your whole, raw, angry truth, or restart therapy if you've stopped it, but you need help to take back your life and thoughts. You deserve to have your true self back and that cannot happen with just venting to strangers online. Please, please get help.

You don't get it. My therapist knows I feel this way. Have you ever been through this? If not, you don't get it.

And yes, I'm aware that this person is winning, that they have won. That's the whole point. No matter what I do I can never get back what they took.

Also, I'm not sharing any details here, I'm not stupid.

I am not in the same boat but my therapy has only amplified my bitter feelings. I think we could both be helped by seeking healing in another outlet.

DP. You said upthread that you have learned that you must express feelings to be able to move past them but many people have the experience that expressing negative feelings increases them and is not the solution.

The way to let negative feelings go is to let them go, not to focus on them and give them more power through expression.

You are not responding to a post by the OP but I am tending to lean into what you are saying. The problem is too much baggage. It's like how hard it is to cut family off when you still have tons of ties that bind in other ways. Can you let go of bad feelings for an abusive teacher if you still see them in the hallway every school day? People often side against a victim because the victim is so upset, never mind they didn't ask for any of it in the first place. The guy that rocks the boat is annoying but the person who rocks the boat back is looked down on even more.

The issue is that when you have strong negative feelings and share them, and the response is "you need to let them go," if the person cannot let them go (which is common if you're talking about trauma), then instead what you are really saying is "bottle those feelings up and don't take about them anymore." Which is toxic AF.

There are very limited spaces in the world where you can say stuff like this. In therapy, maaaaaaybe with very close friends and family (but even that is dicy because most peopel are just not able to hold emotions like this and it will freak them out to see someone they love express this stuff, it's just really rare to have a support network that can handle this unless you are paying them), and then on an anonymous site like this. Maybe a support group IF you can find one, they are actually hard to find.

Which is why "you need to let it go" is just such useless advice. How? When you have been harmed like this, you can try to think about other things, you can exercise, meditate, whatever. At some point you are going to wind up thinking about what happened and you're going to feel how you feel.

Just where exactly is it that you folks think all these negative feelings go?

It is totally useless advice. Next comes the lecture about why do you see yourself as a victim? Well, because you were victimized. The only productive approach is to stop inviting people to take advantage of you. You were genuinely victimized. Victim has become a dirty shameful word and it’s all about not enforcing accountability for perpetrators.

Yes, you were victimized. No, it is not your entire identity years later.

And yes, before you bother, I have experienced SEVERE trauma in my life.

But the perception that someone has made victimhood their whole identity is an incorrect one. There might be situations when this would apply but you'd need to interact with this person regularly over time to see that they think of themself this way and interpret every aspect of their lives through this lens.

On here, you are reading a person's thoughts about their experience relating to being victimized, and only that. It's the topic of the thread. It should not be necessary for a person to put their entire identity in context in order to convince you that this is not their entire identity but just one thing that they struggle with.

I am a rape and sexual assault survivor. I also experienced childhood abuse and neglect. Those things had a serious impact on me and continue to impact me. However, if you asked me what my identity is, I'd talk about being a mother, about my work and one serious longterm hobby I have, about my spiritual beliefs and ethical priorities. I probably would not even mention my identity as a survivor unless it was a context in which that was obviously relevant. Sure, it is something that comes to mind often when I encounter triggers, but it's not my entire identity by a long shot.

This would be like if someone came on here and wrote at length about struggling to get over the death of a loved one, how painful and difficult that was and how even years later they still struggled with it, and multiple posters replied "you're not that special" and "let it go" and "stop making this your whole identity." It's this myopic belief that just because all you know about a person is the worst thing they deal with, that means that's all there is to them and it's the only think they ever talk about or think about.

People are complex.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole point of trauma is that it is soul breaking. It’s about learning to live in the aftermath and reality of that destruction not pretending you can think it away.

+1, succinctly put. Thank you.

We aren’t anything but our thoughts.

I bet OP knows exactly what she needs to do to release the anger, she just doesn’t want to yet. There’s a thought that’s still too painful to bear and so the anger is more comforting.

She’ll get there, but isn’t ready yet.

This is deeply condescending.

It isn’t meant to be. I’ve been there, and I understand that there is a deeper pain that OP must deal with in order to let go of the anger. It feels safer to be angry than it does to let the anger go. It’s not fair. And it sucks.

OP has been to loss of different therapies, but it isn’t taking because she is hasn’t accepted she is the only narrator of her life. When she starts to do that, then her therapy will kick into action. It will feel worse before it gets better.

OP doesn’t deserve to feel this way. She deserves to find peace. I am rooting for her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This person is not worth the energy you are putting into your anger.

And that anger is giving this person a prime spot, THE prime spot, in your mental real estate, OP. In essence this person is, to put it crudely, "winning" against you, even after the abuse is long over, by taking up so much of your emotional and mental time and energy.

For those reasons, this stranger is begging you to get back into therapy, or, if you're still in therapy, to tell your therapist more fully exactly what you told us here. Maybe change therapists if you have one but for some reason aren't being this frank with the therapist as you are anonymously here. We can advise all day, and you'll get posts asking you for more and more details here "so we can help you better" etc. (often these come from people who just get kicks out of all the gory details--don't feed those beasts). But you need to see a professional to evict this person from your mind. Your life is being impaired and that gives this person power over you. I won't say, "Just stop giving this person power over you" becuase it is so hard to do that on one's own. See a new therapist, or tell your current one your whole, raw, angry truth, or restart therapy if you've stopped it, but you need help to take back your life and thoughts. You deserve to have your true self back and that cannot happen with just venting to strangers online. Please, please get help.

You don't get it. My therapist knows I feel this way. Have you ever been through this? If not, you don't get it.

And yes, I'm aware that this person is winning, that they have won. That's the whole point. No matter what I do I can never get back what they took.

Also, I'm not sharing any details here, I'm not stupid.

I am not in the same boat but my therapy has only amplified my bitter feelings. I think we could both be helped by seeking healing in another outlet.

DP. You said upthread that you have learned that you must express feelings to be able to move past them but many people have the experience that expressing negative feelings increases them and is not the solution.

The way to let negative feelings go is to let them go, not to focus on them and give them more power through expression.

You are not responding to a post by the OP but I am tending to lean into what you are saying. The problem is too much baggage. It's like how hard it is to cut family off when you still have tons of ties that bind in other ways. Can you let go of bad feelings for an abusive teacher if you still see them in the hallway every school day? People often side against a victim because the victim is so upset, never mind they didn't ask for any of it in the first place. The guy that rocks the boat is annoying but the person who rocks the boat back is looked down on even more.

The issue is that when you have strong negative feelings and share them, and the response is "you need to let them go," if the person cannot let them go (which is common if you're talking about trauma), then instead what you are really saying is "bottle those feelings up and don't take about them anymore." Which is toxic AF.

There are very limited spaces in the world where you can say stuff like this. In therapy, maaaaaaybe with very close friends and family (but even that is dicy because most peopel are just not able to hold emotions like this and it will freak them out to see someone they love express this stuff, it's just really rare to have a support network that can handle this unless you are paying them), and then on an anonymous site like this. Maybe a support group IF you can find one, they are actually hard to find.

Which is why "you need to let it go" is just such useless advice. How? When you have been harmed like this, you can try to think about other things, you can exercise, meditate, whatever. At some point you are going to wind up thinking about what happened and you're going to feel how you feel.

Just where exactly is it that you folks think all these negative feelings go?

It is totally useless advice. Next comes the lecture about why do you see yourself as a victim? Well, because you were victimized. The only productive approach is to stop inviting people to take advantage of you. You were genuinely victimized. Victim has become a dirty shameful word and it’s all about not enforcing accountability for perpetrators.

Yes, you were victimized. No, it is not your entire identity years later.

And yes, before you bother, I have experienced SEVERE trauma in my life.