My upbringing was chaotic and dysfunctional. I certainly didn't have any boundaries or emotional closeness. I lived inside my head. I was warned not to speak to people in the same house because they hated eachother and wanted me to hate them too. I didn't 'fit in' the family as I was born much later and to a different father. I was an aunt as a small child. I was afraid all the time as people in the house hated me, there was violence (not at me) and out of control emotions, I kept the status quo by being 'mother's pet' so she wouldn't fall apart...