Originally Posted by EndGameNYC

It may be helpful for you to reflect on this.

I'm concerned that you've taken doctoring into your own hands. You have a wife and several (five? six?) children. No matter how bad the health system in the States may be, a doctor is his own worst patient, particularly when he isn't a doctor.

When you talk about your early abuse, your comments circle around blame and restitution, rather than working on a serviceable outcome. We rarely get closure, at least not the closure we want, but relief, and even redemption, are both possible. But neither will come looking for you. You've essentially concluded (or at least you tell yourself with very little conviction) in this thread and others, that "if it's not their fault, it must be me."

You've reduced your alternatives to getting an apology that is likely to be unavailable, which is also your preferred outcome, or "shouldering" the pain, and walking your "happy" way. Landing on only these two, somewhat unrealistic outcomes keeps your past alive in your present. And I don't believe that nurturing a resentment by holding onto the pain and simply walking away has anything to do with either happiness or resolution.

When I identify as the "abused one" into adulthood, then everyone is a potential enemy, and no one can truly help because no one can ever truly know what I've been through. I never consider other options beyond my own thinking, because only I know what is good for me. Besides, if not everyone is out to get me, I will surely find a way to be disappointed in them. Add to that the convenience that there's always a good excuse not to get the help I need.

How do I know so much about mental states that are familiar to me? I have a wonderful education and excellent training, followed by a successful and fulfilling career in what may be the best city on the planet for what I do. Nope, it's not that, though I imagine it helped. More important is that I've lived through it. I was more neglected than frankly abused, but it all amounted to the same thing for me and my internal life.

My "having been abused/neglected life" no longer carries any currency, and serves no purpose. I'm not special, I have the same kinds of problems that most people have, and I'm no magician. I reached out for help and, when it was given, I put aside my prejudices about what kind of help I was getting, I put aside all my well-considered excuses, I found a way to get the help I needed without spending a fortune that I did not have, and I stopped listening to my abusive voice. Nothing new, no big secret, and nothing different from anything else that the millions of people who suffer in these ways each year have done to make progress.

Life awaits. But not forever.