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[athena]

149. Unprocessed feelings don't disappear.

They stick around and continue to cause problems until you give yourself a chance to process them once and for all. Having a traumatic experience "ruin one's life" does not mean you don't get an MBA or have a happy marriage. You can attain all of those things, and be outwardly very successful, while you continue to live in denial about what really happened to you and feel inexplicably miserable inside. What speaks volumes is your categorical denial that you were harmed by the trauma, and a greater display of concern for abusers than for their victims.

I fully expect that you will respond to this with anger and rejection. As someone who spent decades in denial after a traumatic incident, I hope one day you will get around to dealing with those feelings. When you have fully processed those frozen feelings, you will no longer worry about your son being falsely accused of rape.

Indeed, where alcohol is involved, you should be much more worried about your son getting into a car accident than about him getting falsely charged with rape. That you are more concerned with the latter is suggestive of repressed feelings about abuse. The smart thing to do would be to explore those feelings more directly rather than continuing to live in denial. Of course, living in denial is much easier, at least in the short term.