This was a really interesting read to me, because I have always been of the belief that one of the worst things about growing up in an abusive situation is that you don’t ever really see yourself in a realistic way. I’ve always talked specifically about how surviving physical and/or sexual abuse is a full time job, and so you don’t develop a sense of self that you are supposed to as a child, and that makes it difficult to navigate adult life.
In this article though, we see how emotional abuse can lead directly to feeling like you have no value, and bring nothing in to the world, and how that can affect you throughout life. Once you believe those sorts of things about yourself, it can be very difficult to see anything other than that, despite it being so far from the truth.