Dear Lily:

I read through your earlier thread, Feb-June 2018. “Something is just very wrong with me” is your most recent sentence on this new thread.

Yes, something is very wrong: you are experiencing life with an emotional injury that is still bleeding, figuratively. You often feel hurt, angry or numb and confused. In any interaction, you don’t know if there was abuse, and if there was, who is the abuser and who is the abused.

When your father slapped your face and insulted you, when you were a child, he was the abuser, the guilty one  and you were the abused, the innocent one. If you believe this one truth that I stated, then much of that figurative bleeding would stop and you will be able to know presently, in any particular interaction, if there was abuse, and if there was, who was the abuser and who was the abused.

For as long as you believe that your father hit you and insulted you because you were bad, because you deserved it, then you will continue to be confused in the present time.

Back in February I suggested to you that if your father apologized to you, clearly stated he was wrong, that he understood your hurt and anger, and then corrected his ways, healing could have taken place then. But he didn’t. Instead he acted like nothing happened. A core belief was formed in you that you were a bad person, or that there is indeed something very wrong with you.

Living with this core belief means that every time you do make a mistake, or every time something doesn’t turn out well, you assume it is because there is something very wrong with you.

And yes, there is something wrong with you, but it is not something you were born with. There was nothing wrong with you as a child. You have to go back to childhood to believe it.

It is true that abused children often turn into abusive adults. at least at times, in some contexts. Part of the healing process is to behave in ways you are okay with, making sure you are not abusive, that you do-no-harm. And to make sure that you don’t stay in situations where harm is done to us, that you do not submit to abuse.

anita