Andrea’s story is familiar to many child abuse survivors:<\/p>\n
\nPersonal Perspective: For the first 40 years of my life, I avoided anger at all costs. Then, two events forced me to face my terror.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Many of us avoid anger for various reasons, including growing up in a household where anger was met with violence, feeling like we don’t have enough value to be angry about being hurt or avoiding negative emotions entirely.<\/p>\n
For others, we used anger to hide fear, mistrust, depression, anxiety, etc., because anger was the one emotion that was acceptable to express.<\/p>\n
Whatever that looked like for you, we know that survivors often have difficulty feeling emotions, let alone expressing them. None of this is good for our long-term healing, and I hope you’ll read Andrea’s story and how she approaches anger now. I think we need a reminder that we can heal to the point where we feel our emotions and live with them in a healthy manner.<\/p>\n