Biiv,

You are right.....not a good coping strategy. I hope that you know that whatever happened, you will be ok. I know it it hard when we feel we are responsible for something that happened to us. Why weren't we strong enough to not let that happen to us. Why weren't we wise enough not to get into the situation in the first place so that in couldn't happen.

We can beat ourselves up all over the place, but somethimes bad things happen that we can't help & even if we could, we weren't prepared for it anyway & sometimes we can't anticipate something nor do we even see it coming until WHAM!!!! we are right in the middle of the situation.

It isn't our fault that these bad things happen....& they are bad things that shouldn't be trivialized. When things happen.....all we can do from that point on is to learn from what happened & it can serve as a red flag for future situations & then we can protect ourselves because we are now wise. We can't know everything or how to handle everything without experience. Sometimes that experience hurts.....but if we truely learn from it, we will be much stronger in the future to fight it from happening again.

Hope this makes sense & may help put some of the emotions you are going through into perspective,
Debbie