Yes, I identify. I think it's pretty normal (if anything about abuse dynamics and their effects can be considered "normal") to have ambivalence and confusion surrounding abuse. Of course we tell ourselves that it wasn't that bad, that it didn't affect us--to say otherwise somehow puts power back in the hands of the abuser. It says that, yes, their actions had consequences; what they did had the power to affect us.

I remember the first time my T said this directly to me--"Those things that happened had an effect on the way you see yourself."

I was shocked, somehow. I didn't know what to do with that information. Somehow it wasn't real until T said that. It's not that I disagreed in the abstract--if we were talking about some hypothetical third party, I'd say, "Well, Duh abuse ***** people up."

But this was me, not somebody else. And I'd been telling myself for years and years that it wasn't that bad.

Hearing T say that...I, too, had the feeling of being a fraud. That, since I didn't feel it affected me but T did, I must somehow have exaggerated my experience in order to get attention.

I didn't, though. And neither did you.

I hope you can work through this with your T.