Understanding the source of our pain is the first step towards the cure.
In my particular case I had one parent who thought I could do no wrong (my father) and one who thought I could do no right (my mother). Unfortunately for me, my father died when I was six and he could no longer protect me from my mother. It was many years into therapy that I came to understand why I was her victim. She feels jealous of me because all the things that came so easily to me were the very things she always wanted and never achieved. It's sad when a parent turns their own self-hatred on their child. She is in complete denial and any attempt to get her involved in my treatment only brought on more abuse. I cannot change her, and no one can help her unless she is willing to face the problem. So, I am doing what I have to do to protect myself from her. My husband is aware of the problem and he is not afraid of her. He knows that she has a history of turning people against me and so he will not let that happen to us. When we first met he thought I might be exaggerating about how bad she was. It only took one day with her for him to see that I was telling the truth. He is protective of me and I like that. It's nice not having to go it alone. I also have many friends that care about me. It's easy for me to have friends because I don't go out of my way to treat people bad. I don't want to hurt anyone because I know what it feels like. Being so nice to people can make me a potential victim, so I have had to learn how not be one. I also learned self-defense because I cannot control every situation. There are a lot of people like me in this world. We suffer from what I call 'Nice Person Syndrome'. It is good that there are so many nice people in this world but bad that there are so many that only care about themselves. If we don't give up and give in to the evil then we will continue to survive. By finding others like us, we can have hope that we will do more than just survive. A twig is easily broken. Put two together and they are harder to break. When all you hear is what you did wrong and no one ever tells you what you do right then you will never know anything different.

I think that I said enough for now. I could write a book on abuse and what I've learned about it. Maybe I will...