I don't think it's so much "damage" as "surprise" because we didn't understand. I use to think things my stepmother said were "normal" only to have my T explain over and over how they were abusive until I finally got it. I was trying to "connect" and my stepmother was being critical. The answer to "Hey, what's for dinner?" (me) is not, "If you were in here [the kitchen] helping, you'd know!" (my stepmother :-)

I think therapy can "fix" a great deal of emotional abuse in that it can show us how "not normal" the responses were to "us." My T was respectful of me as is my husband and friends and . . . so it comes down to just my stepmother having her own problems which I thought were mine because I was a child instead of an adult. Think of the emotional abuse of your childhood as if it were happening now. . . you wouldn't think anything of it/wouldn't put up with it and would move away from that person if it happened now. Most of us are not teenagers anymore.