I often wonder how Eminem will continue to write rap music when he runs out of anger that fuels his creativity....will it ever run out?

FACT: i experience emotional hallucinations and cognitive distortions daily
FEELING: scared and confused

I will not speak for eminem, but as my personal rage runs out, my songs seem to be acquiring space for kindness and acceptance. Still gotta treat a fact like a fact. I am learning to leave the judging to the judicial types.

Related to 8 Mile Road at a soul deep level. Some of my street skirmishes went down on those very streets. I wasn't blessed with eminem's stability, though. Detroit is far from the only US city in crisis.

sounds to me like you've done a lot of work healing and that it has paid off...from rage to kindness...

you my friend are an inspiration to those here without hope...an example that healing happens even if we are never fully healed...


thank you

I experience something very similar but for a shorter lenght of time.

Wouldn't the facts and feelings go hand in hand??

And whatever the feelings are coming from the facts and have a very valid reason to be there even if you have trauma induced amnesia.

Yes, uno, that is the very rub. Separating the two is like separating the blood from the circulatory system.

Yet...

I have a growing sense that the feelings and the facts are not the same, however co-dependant. The small differences might be critical. Buttttaaaa... So far it is only a feeling. I think. Maybe...

Maybe when we can consider the facts of our past without again being pulled down into the negative emotions, that is where the separation begins.

When our memories no longer trigger us, they become just our history - not to be buried but to be used as the source for empathy, understanding and kindness towards others.

You can be so kind to others here, because your history (the facts) fill your heart with empathy...

Thank you, letitbe. Those might even be the very words I was looking for. The objectivity to have a past without losing my present? The skill to walk past the ugly memories without getting lost in the feelings of a frightened child?

Memory happens.

Well said letit.

The FACT you mention gets my attention as much as the feeling. My sexual and physical abuse was over years and involved ultra conservative church family members, literal abuse in church, and--believe it or not--a forced baptism at age 16.

My family of abusers belonged to one of those sects that doesn't practice infant baptism, but later when one reaches "the age of reason." When I reasoned I didn't want to be baptized at 16, I got forcibly baptized. Talk about something that felt unholy. Like being drowned in the name of God. At age 16, too, too. My parents had to set it up with congregants assisting to get me under. I was baptized at my own request as a adult years later by a clergy person who understood, when I actually embraced faith for myself.

arfie, what gets me about the fact of your abuse is that something that once had connotations as positive as baptism, i.e. "free love," was the pretext for abusing you. Right or wrong, I associate that with liberal language from the 60s. When I was a kid back then, I would look out the bars of my window. My abusive parents actually put bars on the windows of our house, or I would have escaped several severe beatings out the window. I rued my bad luck at being born to religious fanatics, and fantasized that all those liberal people out there didn't get abused like I did. Someday I'd be liberal and safe, too.

Listening to friends in support groups since then, I find I was wrong. People end up together like you and I are here, arfie, from abuse by people from the left and the right all the same. Abusers use any ideology--church, free love, you name it--to justify what they do.

Thanks for sharing. About when the anger will end, I couldn't even guess. Speaking just for myself, I could write a whole Dante's Inferno about how angry it makes. Words like God and love were interspersed with savage sexual abuse, and homophobic mockery over how it made me a "fag" God now hated.

I was doomed to hell weekly when I couldn't speak in tongues at church because, I was told, I was so hideous and disgusting to God. I was so ruined by my abuser, I was told, even the Holy Spirit wouldn't enter me to prompt me to speak a celestial language.

I would never fit in at the weekly services in speaking in tongues at my church. I was on my way to hell and God wouldn't have me even if I begged Him to. I was told weekly beatings in my house growing up were for my own good to beat the devil out of me and transform me from the fag that sexual abuse had supposedly turned me into, and make me a Godly man. Spare the rod spoil the child.

You can sense the anger, I'm sure. I can now speak of how crazy this religious fanaticism was. Then I see how horrible, by the same token, the free love you survived really was. Keep writing, arfie. What you say makes sense here.

My heart breaks for what you and what the other posters have gone through "in the name of God." I do not experience abuse with my God and is one of the reasons I got to where I could see through the church abuse, which was just like the abuse I suffered at home--objectifying the congregation and then stripping off any shred of dignity in the quest to destroy one's autonomy for the "good of the whole."

Even those who leave are called "backslidden." Yet there are 47 million Christians in America who don't go to church. Is any wonder why? Transformation is not the same as conformity. Yet abusive leaders get away with abuse of power by re-defining words and treating adults like "naughty children."

Those who carry the scars are heroes in my book--you got out and lived to tell about it. Thank you for your courage to share your story within the healing. May voices, all of ours, give warning to those readers who may recognize their own story within these words.

I grew up on 10 Mile Road, so I enjoy the 8 Mile/Eminem references :-)

Here's a thing.

It's not THE thing; just A thing.

We don't have a controlled experiment, here -- we few, we happy few, we band of PTSD brothers and sisters.

Meaning: we can't ever tell ourselves that the work we've done hasn't resulted in SIGNIFICANT progress, because there wasn't another one of us -- identical to us in genetics and experience -- who did something different from what we've done, and ARE doing, to which we can compare ourselves.

'Zat make sense ??

I have an old saying ... normally about psychotherapy: you can work your entire life just to move the mountain a little.

And it may not move.

But it's the only way it ever will move.

I also tend to believe that without all the effort, these things tend to get worse, so ... even treading water is a net gain.

I like to believe we're moving mountains, here, if only a little.

And on bad days ... in bad years ... we're holding them off -- no small feat.

Been having a low couple of days in Northern Honduras, but ... I'll be back to moving mountains in no time ;-)

May your mountains ... move abruptly, in the right direction, and when you least expect it, Arfie.

And all of you.

Of us.

Sunday was Hellday in my home. The belt beatings seemed to take place right before church, when something as gigantic as I couldn't find my black patent lether shoe, or I wasn't in the car exactly when I should have been, or sis and I got into a squabble, or I would pee because my dad raised his voice....then he would shove my face in it (you know, like a dog). Then, you had to go to church and watch mom and dad wave and mingle with all their fellow parishoners and act like you are just as happy....or else. Had to stand by while they asked the Almighty Priest if he would be so kind as to come have dinner in our home. The same home we had to immaculatize before his almighty arrival.....imo, there was something in that house, no matter how well you cleaned....it still stunk. Ugh. The fakeness. I am still a church bound woman, but to this day (40 years later) cannot and will not go to church on a Sunday morning....must always be an evening service or Saturday service. Nothing can tie me into piling my family in the car on a rushed Sunday morning....that's a FACT.

Wasted time. My memories are facts. Most of my family lives in denial. From my place of great emotional pain; I tried for years to get anyone to admit to our severely abusive home life. It was a total waste of time. Each child copes by whatever method works for them. I have no control over anyone but myself. Who am I to try and get my family to accept me and believe me-----by admitting the truth. They live in denial; and do better than I do; in many ways. It is very helpful for me to ACCEPT that I know the truth; whether anyone believes me or not; accepts me or not. Facts are facts. Like a lawyer; I collected evidence. Did it make anyone come clean? Did it make anyone accept me or love me? NO!!!
I continue in therapy to heal as much of myself as I can. I wish I had more self-control concerning feelings. I was not allowed to express anything; as a child----no joy, no laughter, no fear, no anger, no emotion of any kind. I was not supposed to exist. I was supposed to be invisible. We were beaten for any infraction of rigid ridiculous rules----made up by our Narcicist; Rage-filled; Alcoholic; pedophile father. Our mother was dead; and unable to protect us. Those are facts. Feelings of deep shame and fear wash over me every day of my life. I do my best to face those feelings and cope the very best I can. Diagnosed with Complex PTSD. My issues are so deeply ingrained (brainwashed) into me; as I believed I deserved to be treated badly: told I was at fault for everything. I feel empathy for anyone that suffers from the long term ramifications on long term abuse. We do our best to cope.

Blueiris.....you just explained me. I so agree with you. In the end, of all of it, we are all we've got, and the baggage that comes with it. Like you, I spent years collecting evidence, didn't change a thing, as a matter of fact......it made matters worse. The one who knew the most (and had something to say about it) was the biggest problem in my family....those who compained about a screwed up upbringing and called people out on abuse were now branded mentally unstable for fantasizing things that never happened. They add insult to injury when they do this....you cannot win when you are brought up in an abusive home. This is, unfortunately, a road we travel alone. At least we have each other.

David your Reply was brilliant! Thanks, it really helped me. We are all survivors fighting to live a thriving life. May we all stick together as we support each other through our difficult times!