Southern_Bell

My SIL is married to a Catholic. He is a fabulous guy and definitely right for her. He supports her in the Church (they all attend together every week). For a long time, religion was a very touchy subject for them, but more recently, he has become more open to discussion. Whether or not he ever joins the Church is less relevant than their being able to talk to one another openly about it with mutual respect and love.

You have every right to be hurt, to feel betrayed by what happened. From my perspective, though, it seems that the biggest issue that you are dealing with right now is anger. For your own good, you have to let this anger go. Believe it or not, your anger doesn't do anything to her or to your husband. It only serves as a cancer to you. The longer you remain angry and bitter about what happened, the more miserable you will become. Please let it go.

Quick update: During the past few weeks, I have been reading everything I can find on abuse and recovering from abuse found on the Church website. The biggest thing that I learned from that research was that the Atonement still applies to my situation. By relying on Christ and drawing closer to Him, I am able to start setting that burden down, to begin to trust male figures again, rather than fearing them, and to begin to understand (to a degree) the happiness that He has in store for me. My patriarchal blessing has also proved very useful. My hope is that by sharing this, others who find themselves at the stage of recovery where forgiveness has already occurred will know how to ease the hurt and combat some of the other ill effects of their maltreatment.

I grew up in a very abusive situation. My parents' attitude toward me vacillated between neglect and outright emotional abuse. As a child, I didn't know anything different, and I unfortunately came to believe the lies that all forms of abuse inflict on its victims. As an adult, I am no longer in that situation. I have long since forgiven my parents for the hurt which they caused me (and told them so). The trouble is that the lies that went with the abuse became my truth. I am sorry to say that it is so ingrained in me that I now abuse myself by telling myself those same lies over and over again. It is destroying me and my family, and I really want to be able to set this down, to stop this self-destructive behavior. I really just don't know where to begin, or even how to go about it. How do I go about changing what I think and feel about myself?