Have you been emotionally abused?

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It might work if the emotional abuser is inspired to not emotionally abuse any more.

Otherwise, it's gaslight city!

You make several excellent points. Try not to blame yourself if you can, narcissists, in particular, are experts in hiding what they are for as long as necessary and "covert" narcissists are incredibly insidious. Plenty of socially astute NTs fall prey too.

Your last paragraph is something most people refuse to talk about or acknowledge, so my hat's off to you for spotting it and speaking up. Individual members of a family, entire families and even society as a whole often gaslights victims of emotional abuse. As an adult, you're expected and supposed to be able to deal with them in a similar passive-aggressive and manipulative manner as they use (confronting is discouraged and even punished), but as kids, we are often "groomed" to accept emotional abuse until it becomes normal (the intentions are not necessarily malevolent but that's neither here or there).

As an adult, you'll feel tremendous pressure from family members not to break ties with your abusers (but deal with them in the manner mentioned above) and one of the most efficient ways of spotting when someone is doing this to you is when they insist you should accept and tolerate behaviours that they would consider unacceptable from a spouse or stranger. Don't be fooled.

All. The. Time.

It wasn’t easy having parents raised in broken, Abusive, and dysfunctional home. They were the black sheep of their respective families.

As far as my brothers and relatives are concerned, I’m the blackest of the black sheep, and to be avoided at all costs.

Of the few friends I've had, some of my online ones turned out this way. When I am depressed, I become friends with the first person that talks to me because I'm desperate to be accepted and to have friends, so it doesn't really matter whether they treat me like crap or not. I'm very used to being a doormat/punchingbag but I cut off that friendship recently. It was very hard to cut off an unhealthy friendship that lasted for years.

^^^Studebacher, you're in a good place now, we're good people here

Yes. By teachers in school. I've had teachers make fun of my weight and I had teachers say if they don't do what they say, they won't let me go to the graduation ceremony and then after I did everything they demanded, I later found out they never had any intention of allowing me to go regardless.

teachers useta like to humiliate me in front of the class, to exhort the other students to laugh at me.

I’m almost 63 and I can remember my grade 6 teacher laughing at me several times. So more than 50 years ago. Once, on the rare occasion of us playing baseball, I was up to bat, swung and split the zipper down the back of my dress. Seemed hilarious to him and my classmates. And then the time he forced me to say in front of the class that we couldn’t afford the three dollar class photo. Or the time, before we knew I needed glasses, he pushed me to read from the board at the front and I couldn’t see it. I was a scrawny, crooked toothed sliver of shyness. I think what saved me from worse treatment by classmates was that I had a good-looking, social older brother. The girls loved him and would try to use me to get to him.

I’ve had a generally good life, but there have been times when I came close to ending because of others and not knowing how else to escape. Grade six was the first time.

i think what we endured in our early years, was at least instructive. it taught us above all, how NOT to treat other people.

I had a disorder the public really did not know that I wouldn't be diagnosed with until I was an adult while going to junior school, a place where most of the NT students have no real empathy and are basically psychopaths who are trying to read The Pearl by John Steinbeck, but can't because all they can think about is how long before they can go outside and have a smoke. So it would have been an absolute miracle if I *wasn't* emotionally abused.

I've also had rocks and other objects thrown at me, sexually harassed and threatened with rape while the adults tried to force me to stop doing the very things that helped me to cope with all this misery. I will never, ever just get over it.

I was in an emotionally abusive marriage for almost a year, and I still have PTSD moments nearly 20 years after I met my ex. I'm just glad I didn't have my diagnosis back then, as my ex certainly would have used it as an excuse to further abuse me. If I didn't get out when I did, I know the abuse would have turned physical.