I think I relate, Bridget/bloopsy.
In fact, I was thinking over the last couple of days just how much my recent posting has been helpful in that regard.
As much as some have found my posts irritating, it has been helpful to me to work so dogmatically toward changing my way of thinking and the language I use to do so, if imperfectly.
Lately, I have begun to really FEEL my feelings - All of them, not just the "acceptable" ones or the righteous ones.
As a youngster, I shut down most of my feelings, becoming tough and hardened in many ways. Capable of feeling love, affection, sadness (some) even anger (the main point of de-lableing, since anger can block your real feelings, in my book) - but fragility and fear, terror and loss and just the sheer loneliness of the child who lived that way, kept in a box for so long, had become inaccessible, although those feeling still lived within, making themselves known in sly little ways, usually self-destuctive.
Even in just the last week, I have finally been able to start to be just be that kid again, before she blocked it all out and got tough.
It is unsettling, scary, hard and is to some degree affecting my efficiency and dedication to duty. However, it is freeing, too - as if I see a light at the end of the tunnel, long and black and cold though it may be.
My aim is not to dispense with my anger, which is righteous enough, but instead to let it have it's own room, out of the way of the deeper, more self-oriented feelings that need to come out of the dark and breathe. Anger has had its turn. Time to let the rest of me come forward.
In essence, I need to grieve...and if anger keeps getting the front row seat, my capacity to grieve is diminished.
Again, I can't say what works for anyone else, but I do think the need to grieve loss (of trust) and hurt (betrayal) is universal, whatever method you use to get there. Anger and grief are not the same. Anger is a shield and sword that, while it keeps the dangerous enemy at bay, also keeps the grief behind and hidden, squashed and ignored in battle. But grief is tenacious, too, and will keep trying to surface no matter how many other emotinal devices we may employ to keep it down.
Better, in my book, to just drop the armor and let it come. It's going to do so anyway, but if you don't fight it, it may well not fight you back.
I'm hoping that by letting my grieving, frightened little girl come out and just be herself, railing and weeping and grieving as she needs to, she may grow into a stronger, more complete and integrated part of me.
T
