Anyone emotionally abused growing up?

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I've heard of worse, but my dad had an explosive, hair-trigger temper -- probably from PTSD from having a messed up childhood. I remember him screaming in my face and mocking me for crying at about 4-5 y.o. The weirdest was when his reason for being angry didn't make any sense.

He once lifted our 90 pound family dog off the floor by her choke chain and then kicked her while suspended in the air. It was at a campground and people were pointing and looking horrified. He was lucky cell phones didn't exist then.

He never hit me, though. So he did have restraint. He'd be beaten by relatives he was forced to live with was a kid, so I think he consciously wanted to avoid repeating at least that part.

My mother's attitude was my feelings about anything were my problem alone and to shut up about them. So, I did and we're not close.

I do not know whether to class this as emotional abuse or to class it as something typical of most parents, and just my being over sensitive, or the like, but as a child, I was called gormless, a useless object at times, asked why I couldn't be more like my brother, why I couldn't be more normal, and ignored if I did anything that was against my parent's wishes, or talked about in front of me, in a negative way and given cold glares. There are still occasions where I have met with the same if I have refused to dress a certain way to go out to the theatre and the like. I feel angry with myself when I say anything negative about my parent, partly as she has reminded me that she was the one who was there when I was in hospital after overdoses and when I had a sort of episode of psychosis due to stress, and that my father was not there, and things like 'after all I have done for you' when I have spoken up for myself. I have come to fear anger in others, as often if things went wrong, anger was directed at me. I find myself now, often feeling myself to be useless, gormless and feeling as if I am undeserving of any kindness or good.

Sounds like emotional abuse to me.

This offers a relatively clear definition of what emotional abuse is:

http://www.americanhumane.org/children/ ... abuse.html

Yes, I think I've made that very clear so far, not a lot from my parents but my peers basically crucified me.

it seemed to me at the time, that I had no "peers" that I could tell.

Emotional abuse wasn't even recognised until the 1990s, as a distinct form of harm, and then only by a few outlier psychologists. It took another 10 years for the concept to filter through into recognition in training programmes.

So who could you have told? You didn't even have a name for it, and if you had tried to explain it, you would have found that it was trivialised, discounted and denied.

The idea then was much more that children were possessions, that parents had a right to treat them as they wished, short of criminal behaviour, and that no-one should interfere with these "rights".

It is hard if with the bad, there was also good, and then you feel guilty for having been so affected by the bad, as if you are ungrateful about the good. I find the impact gets worse and worse as I get older. I mean, I love my parents. And I know one of them, the main one, was abused as a child, and I do not know they are even aware of the impact of their words, not sure.

^^^
the most any of us can do when faced with this mixture of good and bad, is to strive to not perpetuate the bad.

The problem is, undoing the resultant self loathing and sense of being a useless, worthless person.

You have nothing to be guilty for. It wasn't your fault, you are not being "ungrateful". It's ok to validate to yourself what your experience really was, even if they didn't know the full implications of what they did. Be kind to yourself.

http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/FAQ- ... Abuse.html

Hope this puts it in a clearer perspective, Graelwyn

it took me decades, but one MUST MUST MUST learn to love oneself NO MATTER WHAT! I determined that I would be useful to myself, and that if I could help somebody else along the way so much the better, but at least I am being good to myself. the following words offer some comforting perspective-
"The person who spoke most cruelly to him/her was him/her. S/he decided s/he would start speaking kindly to himself/herself, replacing any negative words with positive ones. S/he would choose language that supported, nurtured, motivated and, as often as s/he could, make him/her smile. That’s how you treat someone you love."

One way I look at it is that their abuse made me who I am, and I like who I am right now and am happy in my life for the most part.

There is little point in dwelling on what ifs and could have beens, there is only what was.

I look at it as I am happy now, why waste time wondering about dice rolls that could have been?

I read the above too, but wonder how true it is, the following is a line from my "Children's Society" notes from when they assessed my home life and make the recommendation that I be taken into Children's homes.

"they feel they must now recommend admission to avoid further suffering and damage to Nambo"

The year was 1964, back then people working for a charity held the notion that a child can be "Damaged"

possibly, my parents used the "love withdrawl' method of parenting when i was growing up.

Yeah that's my biggest problem