Self Hatred

I have joined some online support groups for sexual abuse victims. 

They are interesting.  I don't know why I didn't think of doing that before.  It's nice to know I'm not alone. :)

But here is something that one made me think of: Abuse victims usually have a lot of self hatred. 

I heard in a college class once that "anger is either turned inward or outward."  Either we lash out at others and say mean things or some get violent.  Or the alternative is some have self hatred, which leads to drugs, alcohol abuse, cutting, suicide attempts etc.

This is usually the path that most victims of abuse go down.  They hate themselves, blame themselves for the abuse, and so they abuse their body.  They take their anger at the abuse out on themselves.  Even smoking would fit into this category.  They take drugs, drink too much, cut themselves, try to kill themselves.  These are all signs of anger turned inward.

I on the other hand did neither.  I simply stuffed my anger for years.  I dealt with it some in counseling, but I had to be the good little Christian girl and put on a mask etc.  I tried to sweep it all under a rug. 

Most of the times when people do that, one day they snap and have a psychotic break, as happened to my grandma when my mom was about 12. :(  So be careful of doing that. 

But my anger finally came out somewhat in relationships with guys, which was good and not good at the same time.  When we fall in love we let our true selves show and our emotions we've been hiding for years comes out.  This is one reason why marriages are harder at the beginning I think. :)  It makes sense that I would have anger at guys given what happened with my dad.  I just didn't realize it for a long time. 

We all have anger about something.  Anger comes from un-forgiveness to an extent from a pain in our lives.  It also is just a normal human reaction to being abused or hurt etc.  It protects us from getting hurt again. 

The more we face our abuse or our past and what happened to us, the more we can let go of the anger. 

How does it work this way?  Because the anger is our body's way of telling us we need to work on something.  We need to take action.  We need to talk to someone about something.

The longer we remain silent, our anger just eats away at us.  We flip out if someone cuts us off in traffic, this is anger turned outward, or we try to drink the pain away, this is anger turned inward.

Introverts could be said to have anger turned inward and extroverts have anger turned outward. 

Introverts generally are more reserved.  The reason is because their self esteem is lower.  They in some ways hate themselves, if they were honest with themselves.

But extroverts are very outgoing.  They have higher self-esteem, but it is too high.  This is why they tend to step on the poor introverts. :(  They think too highly of themselves and blame others for their problems etc. 

Eat or be eaten right?  Extroverts in a sense eat introverts, or dominate things more.  I have seen this time and time again.  And opposites attract. 

One of a pair usually is the one who has a too high self esteem.  They may be slightly narcissistic.  This is the extrovert.  I will say I generally have fit into this category, sadly. :(  And the other is the introvert who is insecure and takes a lot of crap from extroverts because of their low self esteem.  They think deep down that is what they deserve. :( 

When you get two extroverts together there is a lot of competition.  When you get two introverts together almost nothing gets done, as they may both wallow in misery for a long time. :) 

The extrovert gets things done but they can be a bit bossy. 

What personalities all comes down to is where you focus your anger; at yourself or at others. 

Ideally we would not have any anger at all.  But that is almost impossible living in a fallen world. 

Everyone I have known really is more of an anger turned inward kind of person.  They always blame themselves and are mad at themselves.  And it has always made me sad to see this. :( 

The extrovert admires the introverts ability to have what seems to be self control with anger, and the introvert admires that the extrovert can vent their feelings and feel free to be themselves.

And that is why opposites attract. lol

I hope my insight on this helps you in some way. :)  May God bless you and increase mine and your wisdom regarding relationships.  Amen. :)