understanding into facing the emotion directly, choosing not to feel it is indeed the only option for the child at that time. Unfortunately, that early defense mechanism usually remains in place when the child becomes an adult. The emotion still lives in him or her unrecognized and manifests indirectly, for example, as anxiety, anger, outbursts of violence, a mood, or even as a physical illness. In some cases, it interferes with or sabotages every intimate relationship. Most psychotherapists have met patients who claimed initially to have had a totally happy childhood, and later the opposite turned out to be the case. Those may be the more extreme cases, but nobody can go through childhood without suffering emotional pain. Even if both of your parents were enlightened, you would still find yourself growing up in a largely unconscious world. The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion
move toward adulthood. However, some people fixate at this stage and never grow beyond it. If we are not taught the importance of letting go of our grievances as children, we will come into adulthood with a gunnysack of unfor- given experiences. If we are not careful, we will then build our lives around our anger toward people who we feel are to blame for some- thing they did or that we disapprove of. Many psychotherapists and psychiatrists spend their entire careers helping people confront and deal with these unhappy past and current experiences. The most powerful and liberating decision you can make is to forgive everyone who has ever hurt you in any way. Only by freeing the other person, in your mind, by forgiving him or her can you be free yourself. This is why most religions stress the importance of for-
annaabi.ee 
