Broken Men, Broken Women: Can Survivors of Childhood Abuse Form Healthy Relationships?

You can drop a glass mirror on the floor and it may remain remarkably intact. Or it may chip slightly, Or it may be cracked. Or it may totally shatter. These are the various levels of brokeness people experience as survivors of childhood abuse. Some manage to emerge unscathed, able to shake off neglect, abandonment, verbal abuse and even physical abuse at the hands of those who raised them and still form healthy relationships as adults. Others are an emotional wreck, and they display signs of their brokenness in all of their relationships. They are unable to form and maintain healthy bonds with others because of the unhealed childhood wounds that create insecurity, defensiveness, jealousy, uncontrolled anger, even violent outbursts of rage that make them dangerous to be around. Most childhood abuse is not visible to the eye, because people have been raised to believe insults, public embarrassment, and hitting are normal ways to treat a child. Parents divorce and one parent disappears from the life of a child, which is abandonment, leaving an emotional scar on a child and creating an individual who is unable to trust others.  If you can't trust you can't love, and when you can't love you can't grow spiritually.  How do you recognize if you have been damaged by childhood abuse? Will you choose to seek help or will you continue to hurt the others around you?