jockoj,
You've spoken with great understanding when you say the following
but have spent my entire life trying to "suck it up like a man" and keep going. I am now willing to open to the truth, but what can i do to manage the anger I feel, and the sadness i feel, the shame i feel?
Society has placed us in that "male role" of always having to suck it up. What they didn't tell us is that it's OK to grieve the terrible things that have happened to us. They didn't tell us that it's necessary.
All the anger, grief, sadness, and shame needs to be experienced and dealt with. In order to do that it needs to be talked about and experienced. That process can be a real load for any man to deal with and it's such a hard thing to admit that we need help. It' such a hard thing to even talk about.
In my own experience I went through months of not even being able to verbalize what was going on inside once I had begun to recall the memories. I was scared stiff to talk to anyone, and not only that, I knew if I tried I'd turn into a blubbering idiot. I gave it up one day and opened up to a man that had opened up to me about an issue in his own life. That encounter gave me the courage to seek a therapist who specialized in men who'd been sexually abused as children.
In answer to your question, I don't know that these emotions can be managed so much as gone through. You need to grieve. You need to let out the anger. You need to face the shame and learn that you have nothing to be ashamed of. It was not your fault what happened to you as a child. The shame belongs to the abuser and to him or her alone. It was theirs to start with and they cruelly placed it on an innocent child.
It doesn't matter the age or the fact that you may have felt you enjoyed "it" at the time. The fact of the matter is that your boundaries were seriously violated by someone who held power over you. That is what abuse is. One person holding power over another and doing them great harm, either emotional, physical, or sexual, and many times all three.
So stick here with us, talk about your pain and your anger, vent if you need to. No one will judge you here. We've been there and we understand.
Lots of love,
John
