Gaslighting myself
*TW?*
I keep resisting to use the term “abuse”, I can throw it around and not care but when I think deeply about it I keep telling myself “it isn’t abuse” and “you’re being a p*ssy”. I’ve told people what I’ve experienced and everyone has told me that it’s just very messed up, and I’ve been told I suffered (and suffer) emotional and physical abuse from my mother. But I can’t get myself to actually believe it. My mother did/does everything she did/does to me for my own good, and while yes I can recognise that her methods were and are questionable at best, it is still with good intention deep down (of course if she was too mad she’d get carried away, but I digress). She still cares about me, and while I might have been abused I was never neglected. I know I’m gaslighting myself but I still believe the voice in my head, and I don’t know if I should actually hear it, I see so many posts of people who have gone through unbearable things, and what I went through feels like child’s play.
I get that. I never thought what I went through was abuse. It wasn't until an angry customer was screaming in my face that the damage really started to show. And when I finally started to talk about what my childhood was like, others were quick to point out how messed up it all was.
That being said, I know my family did the best they could and I love them. But understanding and forgiveness doesn't undo the damage.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'll always understate your own circumstances. The only metric you can go off of is the effect it has on you. You're not weak and you can't compare what you go through to what others go through.