Dr. Betty MurrayHelping Women Navigate Menopause | Speaker, Author, and Advocate for Women's Health Over 40

Healing After Abuse: Overcoming Anger and Resentment

20 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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1:14

In this interview segment, Dr. Betty Murray and Speaker B discuss the emotional aftermath of surviving a long‑term abusive relationship. Speaker B describes the intense anger, self‑blame, bitterness, and resentment that arise when a loved partner becomes an abuser, highlighting the cognitive dissonance of feeling both love and hatred toward the same person. The conversation emphasizes the difficulty of accepting that the person once cherished is now a destructive force, and underscores the importance of granting oneself grace and compassion as a first step toward releasing emotional weight and moving beyond bitterness.

Chapters

How does one kind of release that emotional weight directly after surviving such an often long and horrific sort of experience?
There's so much damage. You do have a lot of bitterness and resentment, and you're just— for the longest time, I was very angry. I was very angry. I felt angry with myself because how did I fall for it? You know, how did I not see it? And you beat yourself up a lot. So you've got to give yourself some grace that this didn't happen overnight. If that person that you finally got away from showed up on the first date, you would run screaming. You would never have had a second date with them. That's not who showed up. The person who showed up was who you fell in love with. And that's the person that you just were so desperate to get back. And so I struggled with it because it's like his goal in life was to destroy me, like on purpose. So it's so hard for the brain to wrap around the fact that you married this person, you were in love with this person, you're gonna spend the rest of your life with this person, and they are your worst enemy. They actually hate you and they are trying to destroy you. So to To accept that is very, very difficult, and to get over being bitter and resentment is also difficult.