What emotions are most prevalent

[levfin003]

I'd certainly say anger at my lost childhood. Anger towards my abusers, and towards the fact that they run scott free after causing so much harm to me.

Fear is the second most prevalent thought. Most of it is fear around these people who hurt me as a child. Even though I am physically away from them, these people make me afraid.

Anxiety comes next. There is anxiety for the future. Anxiety of my pain; can I enjoy my life again, can I be there for my child when she needs me, will I be able to help her with her homework?

There is also some guilt about not doing enough for my mother, who continues to live under abuse.

I started working with a psychologist this week, and she proclaimed that my mental state is complex. She and I will have to work hard to resolve it.

 

[Walt Oleksy (RIP 2021)]

Hi, levfin. I'm sorry you had such a rough childhood. It's good that you have started to see a psychologist.
I can share an experience with you that may help you a lot.

My best friend's wife (I'll call her Mary) who had three young children began having serious emotional illness and saw a psychologist. She learned through psychotherapy that her mother had not wanted or liked her, preferring her sister. Her mother even told her once that she wished Mary had been a cat so she could have drowned her. The psychotherapy enabled her to deal with all this and even to forgive her mother. She resumed a normal life.

So I encourage you to follow the psychologist's advice but also to continue in the SEP because it also will help you to make peace with your childhood abuse. Let God deal with those who abused you. Find inner peace by turning the anxiety and fear over to the Lord.

 

[levfin003]

Thank you so much for your kind words Walt! My psychologist told me that to keep hatred in your heart is to hurt yourself. Until you stop hating, you will keep hurting yourself.

One think I never mentioned here was that my father beat us on the footsteps of a church once. That experience has caused so many mixed feelings about religion. I need to come to terms with that. I know Scott Brady talks about the role of spirituality and religion, and the buffers that it provide. Unfortunately, for me even that buffer was taken away when my father beat us outside the church. I always believed, yet there was this apprehension of why did the Lord let that happen on his dooorstep. There is so much work to do!