Understanding and a new mindset

 For forty years I've been lugging a ton of rage, blame, shame, judgment, and more.  I have suffered a lot of abuse in my life and somehow I got the thought in mind that these abusers will suffer if I stay angry.  I know, weird huh?  Ultimately, the only one suffering was me.  To bring you up to speed, my dad passed away on December 4, 2020, of COVID and pneumonia.  My rage prevented me from seeing other peoples' points of view and prevented me from understanding.  I take full responsibility for this. I could have stood up for myself but was too chicken to do so.  Due to the abuse, I felt I had to abuse myself.  I was full of self-hated for decades.  For decades I followed so many self-help gurus who told me I needed to release all this rage and forgive everyone involved, including myself.  Subconsciously I knew this was true but I couldn't figure out the roadmap, the steps, to do this.  Last December, I started therapy - initially for ADHD but after my dad died, it pivoted to figuring out this rage stuff.  The therapist and I met every few weeks and slowly he was able to open me up to considering understanding what happened, why the people involved acted as they did. I learned they didn't mean any malice to me.  In many cases, they were abused too.  Some people who are abused at an early age grow up believing that abusing someone is showing that person that they love them.  Slowly but surely, all that negative energy stored in my chest dissipated.  I feel no hate, I'm no longer mad at anyone.   I've learned that when I say "I don't know", "I don't know how" these were a part of a defense mechanism from decades ago.  So now. when I don't want to do something, rather than say that, I say "I will learn how."  Some of what I am learning, I never realized before.  It is enlightening, most of it, and some is a little disheartening but all of it is learning experiences for me. 

In the coming weeks and months, I'm going to be sharing more of what I have learned and why all of this understanding is so freeing for me.  I can listen to the lessons and not blame anybody or get mad at anyone.