THe reality of the past was the abuse and if you put 1000 kids in that situation they all come out with the same thoughts. These thoughts aren't distorted. If someone beats me I must be useless. This is a rational conclusion for a child. As we grow older and can look at it in therapy we can see that they beat because they were messed up. But as an adult you have these thoughts which you concluded based on the reality of long ago.

Maybe saying that no one loves you is a stretch but if you want to work on this issue you have to go back to the source. Just working on the "nobody" part is not deep work IMO. If you work on the core issue the "nobody" issue will vanish.

When children feel that it was their fault there are many reasons for this. Two reasons are: 1) children feel that everything that happens is because of what they did for developmental reasons, 2) the abuser told them it was their fault.

I said at what emotional cost because you said that we can control how we think. If our thinking is based on something that we haven't worked through yet and all we are doing is forcing control over our thoughts we will suffer emotionally. We can't force our thoughts, we can only understand where they come from and work with them for change.

I edited my last post several times. Did you see my last edit?