Fantasy bond? Stockholm syndrome?

The anger didn't go away = you just turned it against yourself. I don't know why we do that. I have been the same with my own brother. I hate my father. But I don't hate my brother.

This is the exact same issue I braught up in therapy. I ran away from it all and now it is like I have this big whole for that fantasy relationship I had this part of me that wants to feel the false love or mabee the real love I never had. I try to feel it with other relationships but nothing gives. It was your families place to be loving and careing and fill those needs for you for eachother and I think you are not alone to feel the way you do to react that way. Your very sole is trying to feel a need the need to love and be loved as a young child to know you are taken care of. How can you be angry when you feel so much love and want so much back? As donna said suring anger against yourself I think I have done that too. I have alters that act like my abusers the other side the abusive side of them and tare me down constantly.

I think the anger is there but like donnawanda says you have turned it in on yourself.
Sometimes it manifests as perfectionism, or addictive or compulsive behaviors which mask the emotions like anger connected to child abuse.
Maybe it would help to put a few support mechanisms in place and then look at the effects of abuse in your life. No one ever gets off Scot free except of course many abusers.

There are 8 defined stages of recovery the first being denial.
Then Confused Awareness, followed by Reaching Out and then Anger. You may be somewhere in the above.

For a full list of the stages see the link below.

http://www.naasca.org/2011-Resources/010111-Recovery-1-SelfHelp.htm

Wow thank you for posting carolin57 that information I find incredibly helpful and I will definitly pass it onto others. It made me see where I am and where a friend of mine is. I hope you find it as helpful as I did cecil. Sometimes I want to post things on here but dont know what to post I am greatful for those who bring things like this out and its like I have an "aha thats it" moment.

I'm trying to keep my "therapist" side out of the forums because let's be honest, if you wanted or needed a therapist you would have one. Anyway, the blame thing and finding the anger. I found that once I learnt why my brain and body react in certain ways, things started popping into place and I began to heal more. I have a very similar situation with my father. I can find so much hate and anger for other people that have wronged or hurt me, but when it comes to my father, it's hard. As far as I knew as a child, the things he did we're love.

We turn the anger on ourselves and a lot of us blame ourselves for things that have happened. This is our brains way of helping us keep a sense of control. Being vulnerable and powerless is a very traumatic thing and our mind tries to protect us by having us think that we were somehow to blame, that we could have stopped it if we wanted to right? Or that we caused It. This is the false sense of control.

You were just a little one

You were just a little one. All children want love and acceptance. That just the way the world works. We don't know the difference when we are little between real love and distorted love if we only ever get the latter.

You deserve mainly to forgive yourself. I know you think you are odd for not feeling angry at your brother but you aren't. We all heal at our own pace and there is no marked path for healing. For now. Just be kind to yourself and give your inner child a lot of love. Listen to yourself and don't be afraid to reach out. Sending you so much love and strength

Actually Lola is right, and makes me wonder if you might turn this into another thing "wrong" with you. Your main task is to love and nurture and advocate for that little girl. You have to be fiercely loyal to her, no matter what. She's way more important than the men or boys in your past.

Carolin57, thanks for the link. I have never heard of the 8 stages of healing. I can relate to more than a couple of them.

Turning anger against myself? That is a possibility. Fantasy bond is in the running too. If I walked away from my family what would I have??

Is it to hard to admit the people I loved were cruel and selfish?

I want to be angry. I want to be angry at the ones that hurt me. I think I always felt it was my job to be understanding, forgiving. I always make excuses for their behavior. Stupid. They never said "I'm sorry" They never admitted doing anything wrong.

If I got really pissed I would have to walk away forever. The ones who did not participate, looked the other way. The ones that did not participate won't take my "side".

I don't think this is going to be easy.

It won't be easy Cecil, in fact it is going to be bloody hard work.

I tried to be angry with my family but I had no one outside my family then for support and I just got another family label for being a difficult and loony member of a very dysfunctional family.

My husband has always been great, but there is only so much support a partner can give. I needed to put into place a whole new family of supporters. I started with counselling which helped my social skills enough to find other support that was right for me and not imbalanced where I would be the co dependent one in the friendship or support system.

It is very important to find support that values and enhances you. At first this was difficult for me as my self esteem was on the floor and I needed supportive friends so badly I would choose the wrong class of person. This stems from feeling that nobody would want me as an equal, so anyone would do and I was grateful for that.....I don't feel that way now though.

Once you have a good support system in place....And that may be us here on the boards and maybe a therapist or counselor because it does get messy. You could start to look at your healing options, and you may start to see your family as the abusers and co abusers that they are.

But remember you were a child the abusers were the responsible ones. It was not your fault and you have every right to feel aggrieved.

Hmm.
...Maybe if you wrote your story up as if it were another little girl...maybe you could be angry on your own behalf in third person?

I'm afraid that ...when my mom divorced my dad ( I was 17 ) the repressed fury at my dad started rising like magma. It was WAY out of proportion to what I remembered him doing. So I began to suspect there was stuff I did not remember.

...This leaves me without really useful advice in this instance, though...O.o
Loving your abusers, interpreting the abuse as love, can be an effective defense mechanism.