Quote:
Originally Posted by 1976kitchenfloor
Hello.
you mention anger being righteous and that righteous anger is ok. I wonder if you were brought up not to express any anger. In my own aprents house neither of my parents wanted to ehar anything that insinuated in any way that life in that house and they as aprents were anything but perfect. Even when someone hurt me outright I was expected to just take it. The environment was so emotionally neglectful and artifical. My parents drank and mentioning that was completely off the table. I was being abused sexually and that could not be addressed. If I got angry or expresed hurt when soemthing terrible was done to me then I was called bad or even crazy. This was a truly artifical environment and as I result very early on learned to shut up and give them what they wanted. Unfortunately this wasnt that great for me as a kid growing up. There was so much I couldnt understand, so much pain and punishment when I was so young and for nothing I could see.
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Thank you for sharing. Your upbringing in regards to anger and feelings are very similar to mine. I was tought at an early age and forever from then on out, that positive emotions were ok, but negative ones were not. You were wrong to feel hurt, sad, angry, unhappy, and board. These things made you a bad person. I also learned that my feelings didn't matter. Kids were seen and not heard. If something bad happened you jsut brush it under the table. My parents knew about some of the sexual abuse stuff, yet they still exposed me to individuals who had a history of doing that. My parents had hard proof that my uncle was a "sick" individual and did things that were not right to children yet they brushed that under the table to. I jsut learned that I didn't matter. They would not help me and they were not going to protect me. When the rapes occurred I never told my parents. Whats the use, they weren't going to stop it or do anything about it. They still don't know 25 years later.
Anger is an emotion that scares me. It is powerful, it sets off addrilinin, it causes people to say and do things that they otherwise would not have. When I am in an environment that is hostile I immediately walk away or avoid the situation all together. When I cannot avoid it, like if H and I have a heated discussion, I freeze. I usually cannot move, I cannot speak, A mental dialogue begins to go on in my head. (if I could only say this, or thats what you think, or liar, or you have no idea what you are talking about) But I can produce no words. Eventually after a point of absolute no return I can produce tears sometimes, and that is the only way I have to show/say this is to much. Often times my H will not stop talking to me and I just continue down my frozen path.
I have learned over time it is just easier to do what people say even if it is detrimental to me. Don't make people angry. Be a good girl and just do what they say it will only take a min, then you can go back to what you were doing. Other peoples feelings were always more important then your own is what I was taught.
My rapist used to tell me "See you put up all this effort into arguing with me and all these tears, we could jsut be done by now" in regards to sex. Unfortunately my H said those same words and that immediately made him my perpetrator a long time ago. And I just haven't seen him in any other light sexually speaking.
If my H became my perpetrator mentally, and my H is angry, and my H pushes me to that point of fight, flight or freeze, then there is no wonder this is not working.