I can relate to this. I used to hide my little brother and sister in my room under my bed when things got really bad. Made it a game for them. When I was older I used to deflect his abuse towards my mother onto myself because I knew that I could stand there and take it without crying or getting mad and eventually after he got it out of his system he would stop and go take a nap or get in the car and drive away for awhile. My mother though would often "talk back", which usually led to an escalation to physical abuse, so my main goal was to prevent that. When my older brothers were around, he wasn't as bad because although he abused them when they were younger, as they got older, he became wary of them and usually wouldn't escalate to physical abuse. Taking the verbal abuse was the only way I had to protect my mother.