Nice Girl Syndrome: Nice girls suffer from "the disease to please" - they put their needs behind everyone else's.

If you live your life to please everyone else, you will continue to feel frustrated and powerless. This is because what others want may not be good for you. You are not being mean when you say NO to unreasonable demands or when you express your ideas, feelings, and opinions, even if they differ from those of others.

Survivors who don’t stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. They turn their anger inward and become prone to headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions and insomnia.

Begin to nurture yourself…Some grew up expecting their romantic partners to give them the nurturing they hungered for, only to be disappointed. But our partners are not our parents, no matter how much we try to make them into parents. No one can make up for the deprivation you experienced, and no one should be expected to.

Some Survivors get angry at having to work at recovering from sexual abuse. They feel that it is unfair. They suffered all their life because of what someone else did to them: why do they have to suffer any more pain? This anger of “having” to do something is similar to the anger they felt at “having” to put up with the abuse.

You can avoid the issues from abuse for only so long. Sooner or later, the problems in your life cause you to either face it or go deeper into denial. Most of you will eventually be forced into admitting that it is indeed the sexual abuse that is the root of your problems. Even then, the tendency will be to ‘forgive and forget’ in the belief that by doing so the pain will be assuaged.