My story is: I've been in therapy 11 years before I've dared to start naming this thing I'd been struggling with my whole life. First session with my previous therapist he said there was not much love in my childhood story, and he also said he didn't think I was crazy. I thought to myself "that's what you tell them all". Here I am now, years later, at last understanding what he meant. I had a physically and emotionally abusive mother, and an at best emotionally absent father. I'm third out of 4. My role in the system was scapegoat, and I reenacted that role many times over the course of my life. With high school group of "mean girls", at work not so long ago. My parents and those compatible with them + a teacher infused me with toxic shame my whole childhood which was very sticky. As a child I had this weird fantasy that my mirror was lying to me by not reflecting a sort of monster. I've always been a very triggered narc detector. People with narcissistic traits used to make me enter endless mind paradoxes, and they used to love to do so. Not anymore. I've been reading a lot of books and watching a lot of videos, and now I guess I am able to hand them a little mirror to themselves when they bother me. Still I'm a little sad for them. I wish I knew more people like me who have been through stuff like that, but we don't go shouting it out.