The interesting thing about the emotions part is that my parents were NOT overtly abusive. They were invaliding at times. I suspect this is because they were raised in a very staunch religious culture where displays of negative emotions were seen as almost unholy. My dad especially had a very cold mother who was not nurturing at all, and I think he reacted negatively to my emotions because he was taught to react negatively to his own emotions as a child. They say that we are most often critical of people who embody things that our Inner Critic beats ourselves up for. I don't hold a grudge against my parents because they didn't know what they didn't know.
I became very stressed by school early on. I do not have happy memories of elementary school and I do not think of childhood as being carefree. I think that my nervous system was probably overaroused for a lot of my growing up years. Because I was so sensitive, I would snap at people in my family because that was at least a little bit safer place to reveal my negative emotions than at school. It didn't help that I lived in such a small town, and my mom worked at my elementary school. She was sort of compromised as an advocate for me because the adults who were critical of me were often her friends and colleagues. It was often convenient for my negative feelings and experiences to just dissipate on their own because it meant a lack of confrontation for my peace-loving parents.
My internship at the end of my undergrad years was far and away one of the most overtly abusive experiences I have ever had in my life. My mentor was the only person I would see (other than the "customers") all day because it was a very independent work environment. Five days a week, seven hours a day, it was the abuse channel. I would dream that I was there and being abused and then get up to go be abused some more. Someone asked me once what my proudest accomplishment in my life was, and I said it was surviving that internship. Surviving is a relative term. I still wish I could be "perfect" enough at my job to feel like no one would abuse me like she did. Two years into my career, a "customer" launched a months-long campaign to get me fired for incompetence because of a very misplaced grudge. That pretty much ripped open all the wounds again.
I became very stressed by school early on. I do not have happy memories of elementary school and I do not think of childhood as being carefree. I think that my nervous system was probably overaroused for a lot of my growing up years. Because I was so sensitive, I would snap at people in my family because that was at least a little bit safer place to reveal my negative emotions than at school. It didn't help that I lived in such a small town, and my mom worked at my elementary school. She was sort of compromised as an advocate for me because the adults who were critical of me were often her friends and colleagues. It was often convenient for my negative feelings and experiences to just dissipate on their own because it meant a lack of confrontation for my peace-loving parents.
My internship at the end of my undergrad years was far and away one of the most overtly abusive experiences I have ever had in my life. My mentor was the only person I would see (other than the "customers") all day because it was a very independent work environment. Five days a week, seven hours a day, it was the abuse channel. I would dream that I was there and being abused and then get up to go be abused some more. Someone asked me once what my proudest accomplishment in my life was, and I said it was surviving that internship. Surviving is a relative term. I still wish I could be "perfect" enough at my job to feel like no one would abuse me like she did. Two years into my career, a "customer" launched a months-long campaign to get me fired for incompetence because of a very misplaced grudge. That pretty much ripped open all the wounds again.