Dear lisa:

Best place to work through it is in quality psychotherapy, with a capable, understanding, empathetic therapist that you can learn to appreciate and trust.

The hurt from back then, the hurt of betrayal, it doesn’t go away because time goes by. The experience is well recorded  in the brain. It is cemented there with fear, not wanting to feel that hurt again.

We are afraid of feeling pain, physical, emotional.

We get less scared when we allow ourselves to feel some of that hurt/ pain. When we do, we learn that this kind of pain will not kill us. That way we become less afraid.

You can try, once you are calm, maybe after a hot bath or some relaxing activity, you can try a writing exercise, writing about that hurt of the young girl that you were, using the language of a young girl, simple words, simple sentences. You are welcome to try it here, if you want. It  wouldn’t be therapy of course (and I am not a therapist!), but maybe it will give you a feel of what I mean by feeling a bit of the pain not being dangerous to you.

anita