So sad. But your question was how to heal, so let’s dive right in. As a child in your parents’ home, you lacked the emotional maturity and life experience to know how to process what you were exposed to. Now, as an adult, you have the ability to take a step back, view the situation from a distance, and decide what you want to do next.
While it can sometimes be true that “time heals,” this is certainly not always the case. Pain and the imprints of deeply disturbing events, especially events that occurred on a regular basis, are not necessarily erased with the passage of time. Even when one tries to forget and move on, it doesn’t always happen.
What actually helps, varies from person to person. For some, it can be as simple as venting, as you write. Recording your feelings in a journal can go a long way towards working them through, coming to terms with what you experienced, and reaching a level of acceptance. Other people need to have another person to vent to, whether it’s just a listening ear or actual therapy. These ideas, amongst other, can be extremely helpful but with one important caveat: You have to want to heal.
This may sound obvious, but it’s very common for people to vent and even spend thousands of dollars for the privilege of having someone to vent to, only to remain stuck in a rut of suffering. Sometimes, as much as we think we want to heal, the temptation to be the victim, a very easy role to adopt, proves too much to withstand. After all, the excuse of “I went through so much and therefore...” is so multi-functional. It’s much easier to justify an angry outburst at a child with, “That’s all I saw growing up,” than it is to work on oneself to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And that’s merely one subconscious advantage, among many, of victimhood.
