Is Abuse an Excuse?

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I'm finally talking to a therapist, and we're delving into my past. I always believed that my childhood was average, and that I was just weak or overthinking the bad stuff, because that's what my parents always told me. I'm finally beginning to understand that I was abused in many ways, with my parents making up convenient excuses to cover their tracks.

One of those excuses was to tell me stories about their own childhoods, about how their parents would beat them over nothing, about being locked out of the house on cold, winter days, or having their hair pulled out by an angry mother. They would then use that to directly tell me that since they were abused as children, that makes them an expert on abuse, and they can tell me that I'm nowhere near abused, so shut up and stop complaining.

I have to know, is abuse an excuse? Or was my childhood really terrible and they've just brainwashed me into accepting it as everyday life?

Some people do really suffer horrible abuses as children, sometimes because the parents aren't very good at parenting and sometimes because of their parents have problems with mental health or problems with drugs and alcohol.

I would also say that parenting can be very hard especially when parents have to work hard to put food on the table, fit their own relationship in, their own relaxation, and also their kids.

Kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder are also known to be very demanding and challenging, as well as teenagers generally being difficult.

So, for parents it can be really challenging to be able to cope with this amount of stress and the amount of stress and emotional turmoil that they may suffer can be difficult for them to keep a level head at all times, after all parents are only human too.

I am not making excuses for parents if they have subjected you or anyone else to extreme abuse, however,
i would say don't allow minor problems get out of hand and be perceived disproportionately, as having ASD
you will find over life, that having parents to help you is usually a massive advantage and often your main lifeline.

Also, consider what your parents experience themselves, from their perspectives, what it must be like to be them.
Although i know this is often hard, to step outside of your own mind and view your own circumstances as if you were an onlooker.

But if you can try, you may see that the problems aren't always one sided. Sure, at times we all have some issues and disagreements with our parents, but this is natural, as we all are individual people who are pulling and pushing to get our own way. But sometimes, it isn't always just about us, and there is a bigger picture.

If however, i am completely off the mark and do not understand why you mean, and you sincerely feel that what you have been through is significant abuse, then perhaps you should seek advice from one of the services. who may be able to help make sense of what you wish to communicate.

Hope what i have written helps. Thanks

My parents are very similar.
It's abuse to cut you down when asking legit questions. It is abuse to make excuses like that if they are doing wrong.

I believe people really don't see themselves as abusive because they are not doing what their own abusers did to them or because they have seen worse. I think people just find other ways to abuse just as long as they are not doing others are doing. I think there is a word for it. It's where people can't see something in themselves because they are not doing what others are doing. The truth is, someone out there will always have it worse. People will compare themselves to others and think "I am not that bad so therefore I am okay." But that is like "Well that kid is worse than my child so my kid doesn't have any problems" so the parent does nothing to help their child and doesn't try to seek therapy for their kid. But sadly I think lot of humans do this. Even doctors do it to their patients so sometimes the patient has to fight hard to get help for whatever medical problem they are having. They shouldn't have to wait until it gets worse and worse before doctors can take it seriously.


I don't think it's an excuse. People just need to become self aware to change.

My mom has Aspie traits and was emotionally abusive to me. She herself was abused in more ways and worse. It reminds me of a burn victim support group --- being burned 60% is horrible, it doesn't mean being burned 20% is a walk in the park. And if a burn victim were to light another person on fire? Ummm, no excuse (although if that person had been lit on fire by someone else "this is how we discipline" it might be understandable). My mom is STILL abusive - to be nice, let's call it a bad habit - and it's for me to create healthy boundaries. It reminds me of movie the The Color Purple, were Hattie is physically abused and when her son Harpo comes to ask how to control his wife, Nettie says "hit her". So sad. If you haven't seen the movie ----- spoiler alert ----- Nettie comes into her own!! !

Some counselors are obsessed with the Mandated Reporter law


"Abuse" has a legal definition


The definition is up to child protective services to determine


Strangers on the internet do not have the authority to tell you if your parents abused you


Alleged victims and their counselors tend to be biased in favor of the alleged victim.



Everyone has a different number of pain receptors




An article claimed that a man told his daughter he was going to hit her. She told him it's illegal and she was calling 911. He said go ahead. 911 came and supervised

Well, geez, I incorrectly remembered "Nellie", looked it up quickly and saw the name Nettie and transcribed Hattie, but it percolated up that I was thinking of Celie. Where's the edit function? I'm new here; I take it it's only around for a limited time.

In any case, my counselor said she's been counseling for so many decades and she can count on one hand the bad emotional abuse for which the people recovered as well as I have. My first thought was: I'm doing well? My next one was: Was it really that bad? I thought so, but... it's not like she ever hit me---- oh, wait she did... but it was all my fault. So weird to figure out that I was moderately abused and may have ASD. Who the HECK am I?

https://www.gosmartlife.com/emotional-abuse-test
Past parental relationship 12/15 = likelihood of severe emotional abuse
Current spouse relationship 1/15 = Healthy!! !!

Off to consult Dr Google about the relationship between emotional (and slight physical) abuse and ASD.

No there's never an excuse for abuse - abuse included. It's hard to tell more about your situation, since you don't give any details about how your parents treated you, except for the pitiful and manipulative "excuse" that they had it worse.

You'll find quite a few people here who were abused to various degrees, and most of them had to deal with the abuse-denial issue too. I would recommend some caution though, because there is also a significant number of abuse apologists and enablers here, some of them extremely insidious. If you read around the forum, there already have been a few very good threads about abusive and/or narcissistic parents and they might be of some use to you.

Otherwise, keep working with your therapist and I wish you the best - healing takes time and dedication and can be very painful, but it's possible.

Edit: also this has been posted recently in a similar thread and might be helpful:
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/emotional-abuse/#what-is

My parents would jump to the "kids don't come with a handbook" and "your childhood is better than mine, my parents beat me and watched as my sister was abused."

It is not an excuse. It's a way for them to justify their cognitive dissonance over abusing someone else, who trusted them and depended on them.

And you don't have to forgive the abuse. You never owe that to anyone either.

These examples are proof positive that hard times don't build character necessarily, but reveal it. People being people, they tend to act in ways they get accustomed to seeing every day. It's no excuse, just an unfortunate fact.

Absolutely not! Under no circumstances is it ever okay to abuse someone else because the perpetrator got hurt first. I grew up in an abusive home myself and like you, my parents and one of my sisters would make excuses for their bad behavior as well as cover up for each other.
1. They had a bad day
2. My mom had her period

They got physical if they were provoked enough.
1. My dad found every form to spank me
2. My dad was "Mad" and so he did physical things to me

They also manipulated me
1. There was lots of gaslighting
2. My mom used me for things

Mainly, my relationship with my immediate family was extremely toxic while I was growing up. They also bullied me whenever they felt like it out of the blue. I was truly the black sheep in my family and I still am. At 17, I made a pact for myself that when I got the chance, I would get out of there and I.



Sadly, my parents both had a lot of excess baggage of their own which they brought into the marriage which came with lots of anger. Not only did they take their problems out on me, they were also mad at me all the time for having a disability. Again though, their behavior was not an excuse.

@Summer_Twilight, are you still in touch with your family? If so, how do you handle it? I am still in touch with mine, and it's much better, but there are still lots of bumps (me triggered every 4 months or so). Amazingly my parent apologized (still feels like a first every time), but it was a semi-tense 10 hrs until that happened.

No, abuse is not an excuse.
It may be the cause or one of the causes.
Nevertheless, it is always wrong.

The kind of abuse I got wasn't extreme and there would be plenty of people out there who had it worse - but it twisted my personality and emotional development quite seriously. It came mainly from mental health issues of one of my parents - and they were likely caused by being raised by a parent with mental health issues - maybe CPTSD after the war...

Trying to confront the abuser was always futile in my case. The same pattern of denial and rationalization was used.
But giving things the right names for myself (with a lot of help from a good therapist) makes a lot of difference. Identifying the shaming, blaming, denial, guilt tripping, thought control atempts and neglect enables me to react to them healthier ways.