Existence in abuse is riddled with constant guilt and shame – and this is not by accident. All abusers put effort into convincing their victims they deserved it, to prevent resistance, and make them 'ashamed for deserving it', to prevent the word from getting out. If abusers can pinpoint one bad thing you did in your entire life, they will repeat it back to you consistently, amplifying how guilty and ashamed you need to feel about it.
Lacking anything concrete, they will shame you for everyday, small things, and depict them as malevolent crimes. You will hear about how selfish you are, for failing to put someone else's feelings first and even for wanting to do one little thing for yourself, after taking care of everyone else's feelings. You'll hear about how spoiled and inconsiderate you are, if you voice your struggles or problems, when abuser expected of you to only give attention to them. If you dare to call the abuser out in return, the focus will be put on you with so much fury, leading you to find out that this person is enraged by every single thing you ever did. They'll accuse you of not even knowing how much damage you did to them, what they sacrificed for you, what you owe them, what you already took from them (they list something they did without you asking for it).
The repeated treatment of being told off and shamed even for acting in the most normal, or empathetic ways, will lead you to question yourself, your intention, if this is all justified. You'll analyze past situation to see if you could have done better, blaming and shaming yourself for 'mistakes' your abusers are throwing back at your face, when you either didn't know they were bad, or had the kindest intentions in doing as you did. Your own actions will become scrutinized and you will wonder if you in fact, do deserve punishment and hostility for anything you ever did. Even when your standards rise and your behaviour becomes as kind and considerate as possible, it will turn out it's never enough. You're always guilty of something, you must always feel ashamed. You're ignored and neglected and then told off for not paying enough attention to them, you're working all day to please them only to be made feel stupid for thinking this would in fact, please them. You become helpless and desperate for any confirmation that you're a good person, because no matter what you do, it's never good enough, it's always shamed and ostracized.
I remember living in this soup of toxic shame and guilt, too scared to take credit for anything I did, because 'then I only did to get credit', too scared to feel good about anything good I did, because then I did it 'only for the sake of feeling good about myself'. I couldn't win. The abusers around me amplified what a horrible person I was, until I gave in and believed it. After all, if every person around me is confident that I am a wretched monster, then how could I be anything else? I can't be the only one who is right, and all of them wrong. They wouldn't be saying it for no reason, and why would they lie to me. These people love me. They're saying it for my own sake. They're doing it so I would have a chance to become better.
This is how they prefer you to think; you must stay focused on your own faults, and boil in shame until you're too scared of doing anything, and refuse credit for things you do, so someone else can take it. There's one very convenient feature to this brainwashing; you are not allowed to focus on what anyone else is doing.
You can't be scrutinizing your abuser's actions, or comparing them to your own, because that will make them mad, and they'll explode calling you derisive and insulting names, and you will get triggered and crushed. You can't point out their hypocrisy when they're apparently 'trying to make you a better person', when they themselves are not even trying to be good, because again, this makes them mad, and is too dangerous for you. You have to focus on yourself while also putting yourself in a world where nobody else's actions are scrutanizable or accountable, only you need to be perfect, only you need to be guilty and ashamed of everything you do; everyone else can do whatever, and you better pretend you didn't see it. Phrases like 'look at yourself before you look at others' might be thrown at you to make you ashamed for even looking at other people's actions critically.
I too was afraid to compare myself to others people, constantly keeping in mind the regular excuses. 'These people had it rough, they have reasons for doing what they did, they're struggling with guilt too and would be crushed if it was ever pointed out to them what damage they're doing, they don't know how much hurt they're causing, they were never taught better, I can't judge, I can't hold them accountable. They wouldn't be able to stand it'.
All of these excuses, of course, were not applicable to me; I had to know what I was doing, I had to take responsibility for everything I did or didn't do, I had to be strong enough to withstand the guilt and shame, but others could live instantly absolved and asking them to feel guilty was just too cruel.
I wasn't able to escape this worldview while I lived with abusers, because the constant stream of guilt trips and shaming was pushing me back, but once I escaped, I allowed myself to take a look at how other people live, what they do and say, and what they feel ashamed for. To my surprise, even the slightest scrutiny revealed that people I lived around did numerous crimes to their own children, neighbours, to the world in general, they felt comfortable lying, manipulating, using, exploiting and gaslighting others; they felt justified to invent any kind of story that shows them in a good light while hiding atrocious amount of cruelty and lies. If I was to do any kind of comparison, it became obvious that by any moral standards – I was better than all of these people. Easily. I never did any of that shit, and considered other people's well being meticulously before deciding on my every move. For all of them, other people's well being wasn't even an afterthought, it was something they actively attacked and mutilated. As long as they could get away with it, as long as no consequences followed.
Finding this out, I was mortified to know that these were the people who had the nerve to shame me for my behaviour. People who never cared about anyone in their entire life said to my face that I was selfish and inconsiderate for not caring about them enough. Outrageous. People who reached for violence to get their way were getting mad at me for not guessing what would please them good enough on a certain day. What inverted hell is that.
After a lot of anger and objective scrutiny of actions of people I lived with, I was able to conclude that I lived with garbage. These folks has no humanity in them, they were only parasites, and they had me thinking I was somehow worse than all of them, and that my normal and humane actions were in fact, worse than their cruelest crimes. That is one skill that all abusers train themselves in; making other people feel worse about themselves. It's a tactic of abuse that often comes so aggressively that people become too shocked and scared to counter it, it takes an abnormally cruel and self-justified person to reach for it. They consistently get away with it. People will learn they're not allowed to think badly of them, before they even get to judge or scrutinize their behaviour.
While you're living with abusers, some of their suspicious actions and evasive tactics will not make any sense; so write it down, and remember it for later. Once you find out what they've been up to, what they were trying to get away with, what they've been lying about, what they were doing in secret – you will become able to see both them and yourself more clearly. Yes they can confidently lie to you about who you are, not because they think they're right, but because they're trying to convince you of it. If they truly thought you were the worst of them, you'd be celebrated.
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