@ TishaBuv: Well, my father was emotionally vacant and my mother was very overbearing and controlling and would constantly sabotage me socially every chance she had with our relatives, with her friends, with my friends and their parents. I was her personal punching bag. Like, me asking for a drum set and her aka "Santa" gives the drum set to my sister who didn't even want it.

Or, the time she took us to a local pond to go swimming with some of our friends and their mothers. I was swimming and almost drowned when I tried to surface from being underwater, but was trapped by a large yellow raft because it was so crowded with people swimming.

Eventually, I found an empty spot in the water to surface and was coughing like crazy and fearful. And when I went up to our spot and told my mother what had happened, she accused me of over-reacting. I was 6 or 7 years old at the time. I couldn't believe it. She was accusing me lying and over-reacting. Who the hell says that to their child who almost drowned. I was just a kid looking for emotional comfort from her mother. But I didn't get it. I have so many examples of times she did that to me growing up. Invalidating or minimizing my feelings instead of comforting me or validating me.

Or, speaking for me instead of letting me speak up for myself. Or lying about me to other people to make herself look good. Or, not apologizing to me when she hurt my feelings or stick up for me when my father would neglect or ignore me. Like, she forced him to take me to the circus when I was in 3rd grade, as a way to increase our bond. He drove me there in total silence.

Then, he walked so far ahead of me around the circus before it started that I got lost. Eventually, one of the security staff reunited us, but my father just sat in silence next to me, while each act came on. I was like 8 years old. I'll never forget it. I was so sad and my mother blamed ME for being sad.

She conditioned me to associate self-loathing with negative emotions, by blaming me for responding sad that my outing with her husband/my father didn't go as SHE planned. When I was in college, and my father's cancer returned, he called a family meeting to tell us.

Prior to that, he hid his cancer tests from my siblings and I, sending us to our cousins after school on those days without explaining what was happening (his own shame, projecting it on to his children, asshole! like it was our burden to bare). When I expressed anger that it returned, he yelled at me to "Shut up! This isn't about you!" All I had said was, "I'm angry that your cancer came back." So, he was an asshole in a lot of ways.