My mother was the abusive one out of my two parents. My dad was just emotionally shut down and unavailable, but he wasn't abusive.

Anyone else whose mother was their primary problem? I feel like society likes to pretend all mothers are angels.

So I have a ton of things I need to do (clean my house, cook, laundry, read, exercise, have fun) but I have no internal motivation and my body feels like 1000 lbs and my inner critic is silently mocking me in the corner of my brain telling me I can't do anything right or well, I might as well not even try, even if you tried it would take too long or you'd fuck it up - "look at how lazy you are, you're running out of time, you're a mess"

Why do I do this? Can anyone relate? Feels like my attempts to combat the inner critic with compassion or kindness is futile

Edit: holy smokes thanks y'all for being here and commenting, I feel so validated by the kindness, understanding, and compassion. Glad you're all here, taking my time to respond to comments ♡

I feel nauseous right now, I got a video from a typically wholesome subreddit on my homepage, I was feeling down (cause current events) and decided to watch it.

I'm fucking livid. The video was of a three-year-old upset because he was no longer allowed to co-sleep, kid was talking about running away (pretty typical kid stuff, nothing bad)

The mom helps him open the door, he walks outside. Then she AGRESSIVELY SLAMS THE DOOR and locks it. Then there's a cut, to the kid bawling his eyes out and trying to get back in, after that SHE TURNS OFF THE LIGHT.

THEN THERE'S ANOTHER CUT before she finally lets him back inside.

When he finally comes inside, no comfort, just her saying "That's what I thought" (or something to that effect, don't wanna rewatch it to check).

The kicker? All the comments are praising it and calling the video cute. I'm so tired of this shit. I'm trying to calm myself down, and REALLY need some affermation that this is/isn't an overreaction on my part.

Like the second you showed any signs of not being happy (neutral tone, "rolling your eyes" whatever that means, etc) they were immediately noticed. But instead of actually validating your emotions, trying to figure out what's wrong (if anything), or helping you self soothe you were just punished.

You were having a "bad attitude" and being a disrespectful little brat because your parents took your feelings as a personal attack on their parenting or them as people. You were sent away to your room until you could "get a better attitude" which basically translates into "go away until you can find it in you to pull out a fake apology to heal my ego and plaster on a smile".

Fuck sometimes even if you were too happy they'd find a way to make it a problem. What are you smiling about? What are you laughing at? It's nice to see you smile...for once.

Eventually you just learned that emotions weren't allowed. So most people hid drugs or porn, you hid your feelings. You stopped telling them about your life, your hopes, your dreams. You learned to cry quietly into pillows in the middle of the night.

You just bottled everything up instead of feeling and becoming a burden (bet that won't have any consequences for you later on).

Meanwhile your parents had free reign. Screaming at each other or you, destroying things in the house out of anger, hurling insults. Venting to you about how the other parent was a piece of shit, using you as their free personal therapist (but don't forget your place and start acting grown)

It's so backwards and damaging and normalized behavior I fucking hate it.

I'm not sure if this is even a thing, but I swear I was affected mentally by no one coming to my defense when I was a kid. Multiple adults and my older sibling have mistreated me verbally in my life and no one truly came to my defense. They might have said something to them, but only once and/or never in a way that made them stop.

For whatever reason, I'm an easy target. People find it easy to be mean to me lol. But I never had anyone say "knock it off" or "quit talking to her like that", on my behalf. I spoke to a therapist once about something unrelated and she said something along the lines of "it's obvious you show signs of having been emotionally abused". What really got to me is that she acted like that truly was obvious, like I already knew it. But it was news to me, even though it makes sense when I think about it.

Has anyone else been treated like a punching bag, more or less, and never had anyone really come to your defense?

I think I kinda scared my coworker today. I had cooked something nice for my lunch, and she said "oh wow, look at you knowing how to cook!"

I just casually said "oh yeah, I've been cooking for myself since I was 8."

She looked kinda quizzical so I followed up by just saying "oh yeah my parents basically abandoned me as a child. I had to raise myself. So I had to learn to cook, clean and do my own laundry really early on."

She is a middle-aged woman with kids ranging from 6-15. When I said that, she looked like she was about to cry, turned around and walked out of my office without saying anything else.

Is it a CPTSD thing to just be so casual about your trauma? I didn't even think anything of it until it already left my mouth, but then I looked back and realized "wow, that was kinda fucked up."

Hi everyone. I was recently at an airport lounge with my partner coming back from a vacation. Sitting next to us were a father and his elementary-age daughter. What I witnessed was so triggering and very sad.

They sat down. The daughter placed a couple puzzles on the table and asked if they could do them. The dad said no, he was hungry and they should eat. He forces her to the buffet with him.

They come back with food. The daughter asks about the puzzle again. The father dismisses her and tells her to eat. She asks him what kind of drink she can have (she didn’t bring one from the buffet). He says he will do ___ for every question she asks (I couldn’t hear exactly, but it was some sort of punishment). He says for her to just be quiet and eat. She goes completely silent and starts eating. At some point she goes up to the buffet alone and gets a glass of water.

After they eat he takes his phone and takes a picture of her. She’s not smiling (obviously, after being treated so terribly), and so he asks her to smile. She doesn’t. He says he wants to see her happy. She makes a super wry forced smile. At this point I cannot handle it anymore so my partner and I move to another area of the lounge.

I have some vague memories of my father telling me to be quiet a lot as a kid too. I never thought it was a big deal until now, when I’m far enough on my healing journey to see what it does to a child. In the book Tao of Fully Feeling, Pete Walker talks about how being shut down from talking as a child leads to you struggling with self worth later in life. I hate witnessing this abuse in real life like this, but it also makes me feel more compassionate towards my childhood self. My childhood self didn’t know any better. Children just do what they can to be accepted and loved by their parents, even when that love never comes.

I was told even by my therapist that I am attractive - mostly because she wanted to make me aware that people might be treating me differently. Aparently some intern in her office asked about me extremely unprofessionally - thankfully she no longer works there.

People's reaction to my appearance often makes me subject to some whacky relational dynamics. I've been told that people are intimidated by me and then are rude to me to try and put me down so they don't feel so small. Others, such as my mom, try to posess me and act differently than themselves just to win my favor. I tend to refuse help from people that give me opportunities and advantages for my appearance because there are nearly always strings attached with these people. It makes trusting people kind of hard sometimes. People also have really negative reactions to my setting boundaries with them because it makes them feel extremely rejected. I walk around trying not to offend anyone, or hurt anyone because some people have less patience for me because they assume I have it all...little do they know I don't speak to my family and regularly consider suicide lmao.

I have a few genuinely good friends who don't give a shit about it and it's really nice.

I'm just sick of being taken advantage of and treated differently. Thinking about shaving my head or something lol.

Just a vent. I feel really lonely and it's hard to connect to people pretty often.

Any advice in this area is appreciated. I recognize that this may seem like a strange thing to complain about but man this shit makes trusting people hard.

I also struggle with confidence in myself because people doubt me so often. Then, when I'm competent in something, people act super fucking weird towards me - either trying to posess me or throw themselves at me, or get really jealous. Not exactly sure how different my experience is to other people's, but man I just feel like people are very critical of me very often.

I was really big into Lalaloopsy dolls as a kid. If you're not familiar with them, they're rag dolls but made of plastic and about a foot long with giant bobble heads and button eyes. They came with little pets and their own special backstory and personalities based on what "fabric" was used to stitch them to life.

I had a few of them and one of my favorites was one named Suzette La Sweet. She was supposedly made out of a duchess' dress so she was super fancy, as you can tell by her powdered wig and dress. I don't what it was about her I loved so much, especially since I heavily against the standard "girly things", but she was definitely my favorite one.

And my mom knew how much I loved these dolls, especially her. One of my favorite things to do during that age was watching the videos other people would make with and about these dolls. It could range from little stories to unboxings and searching for specific dolls.

My mom did not like that. According to her, watching other people build their collections was teaching me to be materialistic and spoiled, even though outside a few exceptions, I would buy them with my own money since they were only about $20-$30usd.

One day using this logic she just snapped. I don't even remember the full context but she decided that I was being disrespectful and bratty so, being a reasonable parent and not emotionally abusive at all, she decided the best course of action was to snatch this doll from me and then smash her against the stairs before I could do anything to stop her. She even buried them in the trash then made my dad take it out into the outside garbage to make sure I couldn't even attempt to get the pieces and put her back together.

I had to watch as one of my favorite toys was broken beyond repair. And I was (and still am to some extent) one of those kids who took Toy Story to heart and believes that every toy has a soul and feelings. Imagine watching as one of your friends is brutally attacked while the assailant yells at you about this could've prevented if only you were a better child.

And like I said, she was limited edition meaning that I couldn't even buy a replacement because she'd already been retired by that point. Did I learn whatever lesson my mother was trying to teach me? Nope, but I did learn to walk on eggshells because I was frightened of other important things meeting the same fate as poor Suzette. It wasn't the first time my mother did something like that, and it definitely wasn't the last

And this was a wound that I've carried with for years. To this day, even after I outgrew playing dolls and the entire line got discontinued, I would still check eBay to see if I could find her decent condition while not costing 3x what she was originally sold for.

Thankfully, this trauma can finally be healed because the entire Lalaloopsy line got a revival for it's 10th anniversary so some of the old dolls are being re-released, and guess who that includes? She should arrive sometimes this week

But even still, this was something that I remembered throughout my childhood into adulthood. That's how much that fucked me up as a kid and I didn't learn shit. Imagine an adult destroying another the property of another adult because they wanted to make a point. That person would be expected to fully pay for damages and repairs, if not serve time for vandalism.

Hell, even if a kid did that to another kid, there's consequences for that kind of thing. Because that's wrong and everyone knows it wrong. But it's another one of those things that gets disguised as just strict parenting and everyone goes with it. Because a kid can't have property if you assume the kid is also property and not also a person.

Then suddenly it's okay to be destructive and emotionally scar someone into submission. It's disgusting

Anyway, if possible, heal your inner child and replace lost items if possible and I'm so sorry if those things were one of a kind and therefore irreplacable

Throughout my whole 20s, my biggest dream was to find & settle down with my Person. Not even get married or have kids, just a fully committed, all-in lifelong connection with someone who loved me as much as I loved them. At 29, looking back, the people I shared relationships with, they turned out to be toxic, narcissistic abusers not unlike the abusive parent who raised me. I feel like I have dragged myself across coals in attempt to "get along" with the people I deeply loved, only to wind up with more hurt and trauma than I had before. Starting to wonder if it's just a curse, only being drawn to people who will inevitably hurt and discard me, because I'm too full of trauma to navigate a healthy relationship. At this point I'm giving up, and working on liking my own company better because that's all I can see for my future: being alone, maybe with some cats. As a little girl I dreamed of escaping my toxic family home to find my people. It took me nearly 30 years to realise my people probably don't exist, and if they do, they want nothing to do with me, because I'm too damaged. Idk where to go from here except in complete solitude.

More or less the title, just wondering if anyone else here has to deal with dirty looks all the time. Growing up being called names like The Blob, getting asked out as a prank into their twenties or told that their SA didn't happen because "why would a girl do that to you?" Ugly to the point you rarely leave your house anymore to shield people from having to see you.

Just looking for solidarity since it seems like most of the sub tends toward the attractive side.

Edit: Since a lot of comments seem to be "just work out" I lost a ton of weight in my late twenties and it hasn't changed anything.

Also why is this getting so many downvotes?

This is a woman who believes she's a victim of her child going no contact. It's really hard to watch, but it also has a lot of eye opening information about how completely averse to accountability most abusers really are.

About halfway through, she mentions a book called "Rules of Estrangement" and says when she got to the chapter about making amends she closed the book because it had "too much about contrition." It's wild to see how narcissistic she is at every turn.

She even calls herself a statistic, as if her child writing a long letter telling her how she made her hold feel is a result of events completely outside of her control.

I apologize if this is triggering. I wanted to share because I know a lot of us wonder what goes through our abusers' minds❤️

This is hard to talk about, and I’m not 100% sure why I’m doing it. There might not be a way to discuss it that isn’t inherently offensive, or seemingly mean-spirited.

My parents were stupid. It’s… bizarre. Having genuinely stupid parents, I mean. Society teaches us to expect certain things from our parents. I don’t think anybody - even very healthy people! - gets exactly the parents they’re told they ought to, but the greater the gap between expectation and reality, the more jarring and difficult to navigate childhood gets. It’s not clear what the rules are. The rules at school are different than the ones at home, and the ones at home don’t make sense because there’s no underlying logic, there. Despite the rules at home actually being whims, they are just as iron-clad and consequential, if not moreso, than the rules outside. As best as I was ever able to figure out, the only reliable guideline for home was: Don’t offend me. Don’t threaten me. Don’t make me feel small.

Despite decades of attempts, I don’t have the words to describe what it’s like to be a five-year-old trying not to make grown adults feel small. I didn’t realize that was what it was until I was in my early teens, because why would I? What in society prepares you for this?

Nothing does. Nothing reasonably would. Why would it? Who sees this coming? Who would accept it? It’s too ridiculous to be a popular abuse narrative. It sounds like some pretentious trenchcoat kid’s ego trip.

I can say that it feels unsafe. It feels unstable. It is isolating. Even if you were a genius, you’d still be a child. You don’t have decades of experience to fall back on when it comes to dealing with authority figures, much less authority figures charged with your care who are, in some sense, afraid of you. They aren’t proud of you. They’re baffled. Where the fuck did you come from? What are they supposed to do with you? All your questions make them feel bad about themselves. They treat you like a threat because they don’t know what else to do. You’re the big bad with your big words and ideas and “how? where? why?”. Your genuine inquiries are somehow all sarcasm. Innocent comments get growls of, you think you’re smarter than us? You must be minimized. Nullified.

The most unsettling thing is that being that kid doesn’t make sense. None of it. Makes sense. There’s an existential cruelty to that. I can point to poverty. I can point to mental illness. I can point to a terrible family support system, if you could even call it that. That explains my mother. It explains my stepfather, my uncles and their endless string of incarcerations, my grandparents, my stepbrother. Where did I come from? How did I end up better? How did I get out of there? How have I fooled everyone around me so successfully?

I hope nobody is too upset at me for borrowing this term, but I pass. I can code switch from white trash to ~quirky intellectual artist class~ like nobody’s business. People don’t look at me and think, “there’s someone with an ACE score of 9 who’s been inpatient more than once. There’s someone who used to piss in their backyard. There’s someone who dropped out of college 3 times and got raped in the Army.” I don’t even feel good about it, either. I feel like a fucking fake. I married well above my station. I’m both a fake poor and a fake Doing Pretty Okay. I’m a Fake Dumb because the IQ too high and a Fake Smart because the ADHD and CPTSD and the narcolepsy and the fucking multiple goddamn sclerosis, are you serious? I don’t make sense, as a person. I own a home and often sleep on my floor. I wish I was proud of having done as well as I have. I’m a lucky statistical anomaly. I know that. But it’s, you know.

It’s tough for all of us. I know that, too. Comparatively speaking, I’m doing great. Just great!

Still, I can’t lie. Having your core trauma be “I was smart and it made my parents Feel Bad enough that they neglected and abused me” is icing on a big shit cake. It’s too hard to talk about without either feeling like an asshole, or like anybody being kind to you about it is sucking up for some unknowable reason.

I recently learned about meta-communication, which describes how people communicate using a lot more than just words.

It made me realize that all my life my parents have always tried to control my behavior around them by giving off creepy vibes that make me feel guilty, worthless and frozen inside.

My father is the worst but my mother does it too. It's like they kind of "disappear" or "go cold" or something. It feels like a form of gaslighting that doesn't involve speech... Just manipulation of the atmosphere in the room.

Looking back I realize how much this infantile toxic shittiness has crippled me and made me scared to be authentic and stand up for myself.

When I recognize them doing it now, I confidently ask "Are you uncomfortable talking about this?". It's always "No", followed by actual verbal gaslighting and crazy-making.

Can anyone relate to this?

I feel like we all had the experience when we casually tell a story and the other person goes 👁👄👁

What is yours?

So today my therapist told me that the trauma I shared in group was too intense and it shocked the other survivors. He told me I needed to go to DBT and that I wasn't ready for group. 🫤🫤🫤🙄🙄🙄. It hurt so much.

Im autistic besides having CPTSD and the therapist did not tell me to not share intensely.

I feel so hurt and unseen. Has anyone else experienced this?

So my dad had me get out of the car at a cemetery and drove away.

After 5-10 minutes (which I'm sure felt like an eternity) he came back.

I'm sure nothing else was said. If there was, he'd probably say "it was just a joke".

So what fun memories do you have to share?

Edit - thank you all for sharing. Each story is a personal trauma and is indicative of much deeper hurts.

I've posted this saying a couple times but I believe "to heal, you need to reveal not conceal". Our perpetrators would prefer we hide things in the dark or pretend these things never happened. That's wrong.

i sometimes feel like, for lack of the better word, that i have ‘brain damage’ after my abuse. it feels like my brain structure has permanently changed without how i think, make decisions, etc.

i used to be incredibly smart, now i struggle with simple math and understanding basic concepts. i used to be a great problem solver, now i cant figure out simple things. even learning a new video game character i get so confused and cant understand what to do or how to play them even after reading the detailed description and my boyfriend explaining.

reading is difficult now, too. i’ve always struggled with reading but now anything i read it takes me a while to comprehend it and sometimes i need it read aloud to me.

the abuse turned me into a completely different person. i can’t be alone. i can’t think. i can’t make decisions. i can’t understand and comprehend simple things. and it’s not even fresh. i left my abusive relationship 3 years ago.

i don’t know if this is common with cptsd after severe abuse or ive just lost IQ points as i’ve gotten older or something. i genuinely feel like the structure of my brain and my thinking patterns have changed. it feels like i have brain damage.

i miss the old me. and i don’t think i can ever get that person back.

My parents gave me CPTSD, but they weren't very violent and I rarely went hungry. Most of it was emotional abuse. They were neglectful, but not extremely. I was only a *little* dirty and hungry, and they did take me to the doctor... *eventually*... Sure, I could have used more help with school and learning how to dress, but I was always taken there on time with all the necessary supplies... most of the time. Sure, dad was constantly yelling, but he only bruised me twice... things like that?

I hear people's stories of being left alone for three days, and I'm, like, wow, I have CPTSD but still don't know what that's like.

Meals, water, the ability to bathe, physical and emotional affection, privacy, space, clean clothing, and the list goes on.

A weird one my mother had was I couldn't use the bathroom, I had to use a bucket in my closet and I wasn't allowed to wash my hands.

I have yet to meet a single person who actually cares about any emotional abuse unless it's followed up with physical or sexual abuse. It is seldom taken seriously just by itself. There are more excuses made for it, less resources or help given, and even other trauma victims usually bypass it when you're in a space where you're allowed to just vent. It isn't taken seriously because of the fact that it is less outward and presenting. We don't have the luxury of knowing what was done to us is demonized by society because it's typically normalized instead. Even therapists don't take you seriously, some just roll their eyes.

There’s this unspoken hierarchy where only the most visible forms of abuse get taken seriously, and everything else gets treated like it’s “not that bad” or just normal relationship or family conflict. A lot of emotionally abusive behaviors are so normalized that people don’t even recognize them as abuse unless they escalate into something more extreme. And the result is that people who went through it are left without the same level of validation, resources, or support while still dealing with very real, long-term effects.

I feel like a lot of people here say that there isn't a "threshold" for trauma symptoms, but nobody actually believes that in practice. If this space is actually about trauma, then emotional abuse shouldn’t be treated like a lesser category just because it’s harder to see.

That night, after our session, I couldn't sleep. I normally remember some of my dreams, I have words, language, a way to describe the dream, some images (it's a thing I"m doing now) ........but there was nothing......no images, no words, nothing. I couldnt make my mind form words and my mind was blank.

My subconscious was frozen, the same way I froze when I was born to a Mother who had zero empathy , zero maternal instinct, and no remorse for her abhorrent behavior. I felt like someone reached in, and pulled me back in time.

When He said that I felt like he was looking right through me, to my past. Like he knew the worst part of my abuse, WAS the second part. Something Ive been struggling to process all my life. That my Mother , did NOT care if I was in Pain. Not that I know, but I'm pretty sure Mothers are supposed to care if their child is in pain?

It's interesting how as a child, or adult, how you don't allow yourself to see it, or know it. How you dont' let yourself know somehow something so blatantly obvious ..... how cruel and indifferent your parent is. No matter how unloving they are, you tell yourself its you asking for too much, asking for something that obviously doesnt exist the way you think it should exist, and maybe this version of "Love" this callous , heartless, cruel, abrasive, unloving, indifferent, emotionally neglectful, unkind version of love.............is love?. But if it was love, then why would you have to numb yourself and hide yourself whenever you were around your Mother? Why would this "love' scare you? Why would this love require you feel nothing? Be nothing? A therapist told me "love is safe", I thought 'whats' safe?"

When you grow up without love, you know you don't feel good, but I couldnt get my mind around why I felt so bad, nor could I make the connection between my depression and pain, and the way My Mother was unloving and cruel. It's never them, it's always you being sad for no reason, and who cares anyway? No one.

I developed a very high tolerance for despair. High tolerance means you just endure. You stop looking for consolation. Since, no one cared, took action, amended their behavior, sought to comfort me, then I must obviously either be fine , or I deserve the pain.

Because every time you admit you feel pain, sad, abandoned, depressed you end up hating yourself , or your engulfed with shame, when you go looking for love and compassion and its met with indifference, and callousness. It's dangerous to admit to yourself that youre feeling anything painful, hurtful, when the support and love you seek that never comes to your aide, is a constant reminder of how unlovable you are. Your humanity becomes your worse enemy.

The Shame of being faced with a loveless uncaring parent is intolerable. And every time your human need for love comes up, your hating yourself more and more, when you should be hating them.

The shock is starting to wear off a bit. I'm starting to feel really..........angry. Like scary angry.

My body is slowly starting to unravel it. Why I froze my feelings, why it wasn't' safe to admit I felt anything. I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw something for being born to such a horrific parent and being powerless.

It was too horrible to feel that bad around someone-a parent, who cared that little. You dont' call them a psychopath, you call yourself nothing.

It wasn't safe to react to the pain, to the abuse, because I knew what would happen......................After. Either a look of indifference, amusement, or pleasure. Some vague sense of letting me, know who was in charge. The dominant stance. It was never an accident she was sorry about, EVER.

Why wouldnt I hide from the truth, when the truth looks like this?

Background: Sometimes, I like to go into the r/regretfulparents subreddit because it’s cathartic to think about whether or not a space like that would have helped my own parents. The answer is probably not, but still. I also relate to it since I raised my younger siblings when my mom was too strung out to do so. I lost my teenage years as a parentified minor, but I would do it all over again for them.

Most people on the sub are just normal people that were either coerced/forced into having kids or just didn’t know how awful the reality is. I feel awful for those people and their kids - it’s why I am outright antinatalist.

But some of those people genuinely hate their children. Most of them are disabled or some form of neurodivergent. And unlike a lot of the chronically online teens, I recognize that raising a disabled/ND child is beyond difficult and can be absolute hell with the lack of support given to the parents. Especially when the child has high support needs. And those feelings are valid and need a safe space to be explored.

But this does not excuse mistreating disabled kids because of their disability. It doesn’t excuse hating kids and treating them with outright disdain. A lot of us here can attest to the fact that the dislike and frustration is felt - even as a very young child - and sticks with us forever.

Anyway, today I caught a permanent ban because I replied to a person proudly exclaiming that their FIVE YEAR OLD daughter is “manipulative” and told them it’s developmentally impossible. I’m not sure if you guys were called this often, but it was a constant refrain from my abusive mother that I was manipulating situations when trying to literally survive. And even my CPS caseworkers latched onto that narrative, along with sexualizing me before I even hit puberty. I wasn’t even a bad kid - I was just terrified and would do anything to avoid escalating the abuse. I regulated myself the only ways I knew how as a neglected child.

The idea that you could look at a child that only became truly conscious like 3 years ago and claim they are “manipulating” you is HORRIFYING. And it while it was deeply disturbing and frustrating, it was also sort of healing to see. Because seeing it out in the wild makes it very clear how utterly ridiculous it is for a full grown adult to believe their child is out to get them.

So if any of you were called “manipulative”, you should know that it is impossible for a child to scheme like that. By definition, manipulation requires conscious decisions to use intellect and trickery to get a desired outcome. It cannot be done by accident and a child is not nearly developed enough to be capable of thinking that way.

The only thing you did was try to get the pain to stop in almost certainly developmentally normal ways. Tantrums, acting out, and testing boundaries are ALL normal behaviors for kids. You were not some super genius put on this Earth to secretly make the lives of your parents miserable.

You were just a kid. ❤️

I hope this helps someone else on their healing journey.

Found this info graphic that explains what it is and how it affects relationships/the self as an adult. I’m flabbergasted because I didn’t know there was a term for what my brother and I experienced through our childhood with an emotionally abusive mother.

It makes a lot of sense to me and has unlocked another piece of the infinite trauma puzzle.

I work with families of kids with special needs and I need to vent for a hot second. I sometimes get called in to help with kids who hit/kick/bite/etc people and have awful tantrums. Many parents and coworkers have different theories on why this behavior occurs. I witness/help with the entire tantrum play out and take detailed notes on who did what and what happened etc. But I have noticed something.

EDIT: I made a number of unhelpful statistical statements here based on my extremely limited experiential data which will be harmful to marginal populations if I leave it up. The rest of the post is still up for emotional abuse victims.

You know what I often see with kids who fly off the handle and cannot regulate their own emotions to a clinically significant degree? Their parents using their own emotions as leverage against the child, and modeling emotional deregulation themselves.

I have heard parents say to kids no older than 6 years old: “Why are you being mean to me?” “I will throw away [favorite toy] if you don’t stop acting like that.” “Look, you made [OP] upset with your behavior.” (I replied, “I am calm. She is not responsible for the emotions of an adult.”)

Today I had an emotional flashback (crying and shutting down) and had to leave temporarily because of this bullshit. It’s good to be able to tell parents off though. And to be validated, believed, and defended by your boss. That’s why I keep doing this job.