Dear Theresa:

You are welcome. Your thread and two last posts make a perfect example of approaching a problem on two fronts: one is insight into the past that keeps living in the present, fueling the problem, that is the past being re-activated and “bleeding” into the present, my approach here, and the other front of dealing with a problem is Inky’s- focusing on the present only, dealing with it practically now. In this case Inky and I cooperated so well and that is why you wrote to each one of use that we hit the nail on the head/ being spot on. Being spot on two fronts.

And this is how you move forward, with this, I believe, on these two fronts.

Communicating well with your boyfriends is of crucial importance. The context of a good relationship IS THE CONTEXT in which it is possible to work on the past injury. Having him on your side and you being on his side.

The injuries in your past, both the sexual assault and the very inadequate parenting, are significant injuries that keep bleeding, so to speak. The injuries, the traumas, are alive in the present in the form of neural connections in your brain. “Little things” in the present activate those pathways and you feel great anger, all that anger at past injuries.

The message in that anger, in that anger reactivity, in the anger too great to be explained by the little incidents provoking it, is that there is something for you to process. At first, you felt nothing, after the sexual assault because you dissociated. The anger went hiding, but not gone. Now the anger is connected to thoughts and feelings causing behaviors that are harming you. That anger needs to be rewired in a process that is possible and takes time and patience and it can be done in the context of good therapy and/or an honest, loving relationship.

Place your energy as Inky suggested and as I suggested in the relationship with your boyfriend first: this is the basis for further, deeper work. Then there is the therapy work that needs to be done in facing the hurt and fear and anger of the past injuries.

Did you attend therapy? If you did, it was not adequate and/or not complete. Going to better therapy, perhaps?

anita