* dear melissa:

My thoughts about your post above:

A child victim is not a victim for agreeing that the hurt of the past has more power over one’s life than the present. When victimized as a child, in one’s FORMATIVE years, when the brain is forming in size and in the many connections formed there, the hurt and fear of childhood is a physical part of the brain.

So let’s say a boy was seriously abused as a child and is extremely anxious and desperate. The boy becomes 18 or 21. He does not get a new brain for his 21 birthday. He still has the same brain with the same connections made as a child. The past in INSIDE his brain. He cannot, no matter what, extricate the past from his brain. Connections formed, such as deep distrust in others, do not get undone with time. Only healing can do that, intended, directed, helped healing, and it takes time.

True, the constant complaining some people do about their past while they make no effort to heal from it is ineffective and annoying to many. But the massively complaining person is annoying not because of “living in the past” but because of not taking the steps to heal.

It is fair to blame the person or persons who victimized us and hurt us so severely. And it is only the victim who can take the difficult journey of healing. It is one’s own responsibility to heal because nobody else could do it for the person.

And there are people who do take advantage of their victim position, cemented it for monetary help purposes, and otherwise to have others take care of them. This is also reality.

anita