Passivity, Submission, Bullying and Christian Womanhood - "As I grew up, I watched my Christian mother take a lot of emotional and verbal abuse ... from my father and my older siblings, from people at church, her own siblings, and neighbors. My mother rarely stood up for herself when she was treated poorly ... I was also being taught to bottle up all my anger and never speak up on my own behalf, if mistreated. I was taught that the bully’s feelings were more important than my own ... After many decades of living like this, when I got to adulthood I had no clue how to deal with conflict ... Sometimes it took weeks, months, or years before I even recognized that I was being used or treated poorly by someone because my mother (and Christian literature, sermons, Christian books, magazine articles, etc) had taught me to never think about myself, my feelings, or my needs, but to be intently “outward-focused,” always striving to meet other people’s needs because to ...
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