The thing about emotionally abusive parents...

…is that they are not necessarily horrible human beings. They are not necessarily heartless. They might not even know that what they are doing is wrong, and they might not mean to hurt. They might just not be emotionally equipped to take care of an other person, especially someone completely dependent on them. They mean no harm by it, they just don’t know how to provide an emotionally healthy environment, because they probably didn’t have it either.

And this is why it’s so fucked up. You can rarely stay mad at someone if you can empathize with them. So you suffer from the damage they caused, and the meantime you feel guilty for being hurt when no harm was intended. And you can’t help but think that you are the problem for feeling this way.