What I have found from my own experience is that what I went through in my childhood wasn't abuse.....it was that I had dysfunctional parents who weren't able to provide the things that I needed for my own growth & wisdom in life....most of what I was able to learn I learned on my own & my parents even commented that they thought the babies were switched at birth because I was nothing like them (thank heavens because I worked hard to NOT be like them)......but the things that were missing in my life could have been looked at as emotional abuse......but in reality it wasn't intentional.....it was because of their lack of ability & their dysfunctions that made the situations what they were.

I think all too many times we jump on the word abuse.....I know even in my marriage I thought....it was emotional abuse....but in reality...I ended up marrying an even more dysfunctional H than even my parents were but I thought because he was a college grad that no one intelligent could be as dysfunctional as my parents who barely got their high school diplomas.....boy was I wrong.

But when I looked at other abuse & compared it to what I had gone through there were holes.....that was when I started to understand that it didn't fit the total picture even though it definitely felt abusive in many ways.....but they were just so dysfunctional (all of them) they had no idea how they were effecting a normal person who wasn't at all like them.

We are quick to grab onto labels.....but that's why T's aren't because they want to see the bigger picture before doing that.

It doesn't make me feel that much better about what I went through....results are similar....but the way of getting there is different.