Reply #99: I am referring to the confidence that you can honestly assess

[IdaBriggs]

a child abuse situation without either minimizing it (in order to cope with what happened to you as a child), or blowing it out of proportion. When I said "balance" I wasn't trying to be patronizing; I am being honest.

I have an interesting parallel to your situation. My father recently passed (March 9). We spent most of the last year of his life not getting along as I struggled to integrate the fact he was a loving but lousy father into my world view. (I am also a member of the physical abuse brigade.) Being the person I am, it took him mistreating someone else for me to finally get in touch with my own anger. You see, I am a "nice" person. I spent thirty years doing everything I could to "get along" with my family, and in asking for nothing, received exactly that. When I was finally hit upside the head with the reality brick of "its not me -- its him!" my fury, suppressed for thirty years, was terrifying in its intensity. My fantasy life became violent (I am not a violent person AT ALL), and I would sometimes find myself shaking with rage. It was extremely scary, as I personally struggled to reintegrate the emotions of anger and rage (which I had been ignoring and denying) into my life. The "bad feelings" lasted about a month or two before they began to ebb; occasional flare-ups occurred for a while longer, but things have settled down, and I was able to do the eulogy at his funeral with sincerity and grace.

However, I now try to remember that owning ALL of my emotions is important, and that they are there for a reason. Anger, hate and rage are not fun, but they are a part of our survival skills. Children from abusive homes are rarely allowed to express these feelings, so we have a tendency to "empower them" more than they need, and view them as terrifying / life threatening. They aren't. Being mad, angry or filled with hate does NOT mean we are going to commit the same acts (or worse) that the folks who abused us did. We have a right to have the full range of human emotions at our disposal. What we do with them is up to us.