So I guess for me, I've been looking back at my life now and have realized that I was, and kinda still am, emotionally abused. I think what triggered me to realize this was right after I was sexually assaulted about a month ago. I've been talking about assault with my psychologist and then I kinda have talked about the tension within my family, and now that I've been talking over that it doesn't really matter "how bad" something was, whether physical, sexual, or emotional, but on the impact of it. So now that I have looked back at things said to me from my family, I now realize that they were not things a parent should say to their child. A lot of it was about my weight and sometimes it was about mental illness that I deal with. I have realized that this is a main contributor for feeling ashamed of myself and a cause to my low self esteem/self worth. I have a hard time looking at myself and loving how I look.

I've had other things too which I have realized that made me lose my childhood. My parents are divorced, and each of them would tell me things about the other parent (their ex) they hate in them and make me feel that I had to choose a parent to love. I was also told about the finances of my family and how money was a big factor in the divorce. I also had to communicate between my parents because they wouldn't do so themselves. Even when I asked my lawyer (part of the my parents' divorce) about me not talking between them, my parents told me that I had to do deal with it and they wouldn't stop.

Anyways, even throughout all this, I never really saw this as abuse of some form until now. I guess I wanted to see my parents in a good light. I have been pointed out by people that what they were doing was wrong, but not that it was abuse. I would say this happened right after my parents got divorced when I was 10 until even now. It just doesn't happen as much now since I'm not living at home luckily.

How did you come to accept that you were abused? I just think this is an important first step I need to make with myself in order to work on dealing and continue to deal with coping with abuse. Thank you.