I wish I could say I have never abused my children, but I'm ashamed that I can't say that and be honest. I didn't know better. Thank God I did get help.

When I was a young mother, the slightest sign of non-compliance sent me into a fury. "How DARE you disobey me? I'm the parent. You WILL do what I tell you!" I soon caught on that I was repeating my father's tone from long ago. And a bit of insight occurred to me.

I had been conditioned into total submission,and being the one to give the orders didn't quite feel right to me. I was yelling so loudly in asserting my authority because I was trying to convince *myself* I had the right. A person who truly knows he or she is in charge, doesn't need to do that. Anyone who is secure in their authority would automatically expect obedience, and usually get it, without the dramatics. I wasn't one of those. Neither was my father, thanks to the conditioning by his father before him. He, too, threw his weight around because he had to remind *himself* that he was the one in charge.

It's still that way for me, sometimes. Not the throwing the weight around, but the feeling funny about being in charge. Tuffy (in my avatar pic) and Tiger were my husband's cats before we got married, and now I even feel funny sometimes telling them not to scratch on the furniture. Who am *I* to give orders? When I was in college, in the early days of "information processing," when computers were booted by a removable disk and run by DOS, I even felt odd giving the *computer* a command. As if an inanimate object is going to rebel and say, "don't you tell me what to do."

I hope this bit of insight will show part of what makes an abuser tick. Not that anything ever excuses it, but maybe this helps explain it.