I am not so sure we are hyjacking Azul's thread tbh. All we are doing is presenting our own examples that affected us. We have this in our history and because of that certain interactions can affect us based on that. Truth is, everyone has something toxic they experienced. So few of us are handed a map to navigate with either, we are pretty much reliant on a parent/caregiver figure and our piers and different teachers and some of them are not so great either.

DechanDawa, I am glad what I wrote makes sense to you, may even provide some much needed comfort for you too. Yes, one most definitely can literally spend years in therapy trying to unravel and make sense of how others affected them in ways that hurt and even crippled them. I believe you, I am sure you grieve about your sister and how she clung to negative things to her last breath even. Any caring person can experience cognitive disonence from that. Truth is, what most want is the "hurt feeling" to go away. And some victims of abuse try to do so by becoming abusers themselves.