A therapist and I were discussing "learned helplessness" and I proclaimed that I'd lived in my abusive environment so long that I had developed "learned hopelessness", to which she replied that I may have stumbled onto something there.

I still struggle with all of this, and I've been in and out of therapy for 20 years. I don't think it's that I don't want to get better so much as it is that I lived in the abusive environment that I grew up in for 33.5 years which is an extremely long time ... So, it's not lost on me that it's going to take a long, long time to be able to overcome all that.

The most important thing is to keep trying and to not give up!