u/NoDependent15

I am 23 years old. Through out my life, or for the larger part of time that I can recall, questioning my habits, trying to understand why are my antics like this, I always felt my brain is messed up. Why do I fear being in social circles? Why am I not like others who can talk to people normally and not be anxious? Why are my habits so weird and unlike other regular people. I always kept questioning my worth.

Until recently I saw some posts and videos related to childhood trauma and adult habits that are actually a result of a lot of emotional abuse in childhood. Now I believe, I might have had a lot of abuse and unhealthy situations that fucked up my neural wiring. But I just cannot recall those incidents or identify those particular instances that might have caused this. Vaguely I remember my mom shouting on me or hit me for very small stuff, me always fearing mom would shout on me if I do something or want to do something. Always trying to calculate consequences first.

For my dad, though he never shouted or hit me but he had this weird fetish of demeaning me in front of friends and relatives to gain a laugh. Making fun of my paintings or my hobbies and stuff like that. Never appreciating me(even my mom never did), as if me doing good in academics and other achievements are an obligation and pretty basic.

Moreover, I don’t know why the only things that I remember from my entire childhood are these vague moments of emotional abuse and some good time I had with my school friends.

Sometimes I also question myself, was I really abused? Did all these things really happen and wired me how I am today or is it just me trying to cope and feel good by making up stories, situations and events that never happened nor were intended to happen like that. Am I just trying to hide my social and emotional incompetence by blaming my parents of abuse?

TL;DR: As as adult I am unable to actually understand if I was abused emotionally as a child or is it my adult brain trying to hide my flaws and incompetence by making up stories and assigning meaning to random events labelling them as abuse. Events like emotionally unavailable dad, him making fun of me for no reason and mom shouting on me for small stuff, me as a child always trying to think of consequences to a thing I want to do and not let my mom get angry instead of doing it for my fun.