Quotes from the courage to heal:
DENYING AND TWISTING ANGER
Anger is a natural response to abuse. You were probably not able to experience,
express and act on your outrage when you were abused. You may not even have known you had a right
to feel outraged. Rather than be angry at the person or people who abused you,
you probably did some combination of denying and twisting your anger.
One way survivors cut themselves off from their anger is to
become so immersed in the perspective of the abuser that they lose connection
with themselves and their own feelings.
This approach is enthusiastically endorsed by most of society. Many People find it easier to sympathize with
the abuser than to stand up as a staunch advocate for the victim. This is
particularly true once time has passed and the abuser is an older man and the
child a grown woman. People will feel
sorry for him; perceive even weak attempts toward reconciliation on his part as
major efforts, and blame the survivor if she continues to be angry
But if you are unable to focus your rage at the abuser, it
will go somewhere else. Many survivors turn it on themselves, leading to
depression and self-destruction. You may feel yourself to be essentially bad,
criticize yourself unrelentingly, devalue yourself. OR you might stuff your
anger with food, drown it with alcohol, stifle it with drugs, make yourself
ill.
As Adrienne Rich
writes: “Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to
drive it inward like a rusted nail.”
Having been taught to blame yourself, you stay angry at the
child within – the child who was vulnerable, who was injured, who was unable to
protect herself, who needed affection and attention,…….But this child did
nothing wrong. She does not deserve your anger.
From “The Courage to Heal. A guide for women survivors of
Child sexual abuse”
Printed by Cedar1992
By Ellen Bass and Laura Davis.
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