Dear Jim:

“She suffers from… PTSD, due to having a neglectful alcoholic father and a mother who was emotionally absent… it probably goes back to emotional absence at the very early stages of child rearing… she simply cannot control her fear of being left or abandoned for one reason or another and this results in long bouts of crying, screaming and abuse towards me. She calls it ‘blind anger’“- she is angry with her father and mother for having neglected her, and she keeps confronting them by proxy of you. She confronts you and punishes you for what they did to her (or didn’t do for her). This is the nature of abuse.

“Yesterday she told me all the intrusive thoughts came back because I didn’t return my arm around her when sleeping and she felt unloved“- she is trying to work through her childhood neglect .. through you. It will not work, especially if she is still in contact with any of her parents, repressing her anger at them and redirecting it, and expressing it at you.

anita