Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she’s being abused—pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground.

All the repressed emotions and subconscious desires in time lead to some kind of psychological or physiological breakdown, if kept unchecked.

As ever in the family Goodman, someone would have to swallow feelings here, and it was easier that it be Mercer.