Excellent questions/points. It's both going on. On the one hand it is absolutely MYSELF being afraid to dissent outloud and be okay with walking away when my dissent is taken poorly or not accepted/tolerated. And then, yes, there are situations in which it is verbalized and then I am attacked and harassed (easiest way to describe it) until I either do say that I changed it or back away.

So what I am wanting is to not make myself a bad person (yes, ME making myself a bad person - because this is what happened in my abuse) for feeling, believing, seeing, acting in a way that others disagree with. ME making it okay for ME to disagree and to either decide I want to "confront" which could be as simple as discussion or as heated as argument, or to just walk away.

Yes, this has come about because there are specific things that have happened where I verbalized a dissenting opinion or spoke up about how I felt about something and was made to feel that I was wrong and believe I was bad for feeling/believing what I did. But what I'm struggling with is basically now I'm so afraid to disagree or say what I feel and not only that, I actually feel I am a bad person when I feel or think differently than others, even if I think they are really wrong and it's justified. Yes, it is me that is making me not allowed to have my opinion or feelings. It's reinforced by certain events and situations, but it continues and pervades my life because it was a survival coping skill and now it is metaphorically strangling me.

Does that make sense at all?