I recently read a comment on a site about N mothers that talked about N abuse being cumulative. It basically stated that Ns often dish out their abuse as minor events that seem like "parent/child issues," especially to the outside world . . . the type of things, that on their own, no one would consider abusive. We often don't realize until our teens that we are being abused, because it takes years for these small events to build to a head.
I was recently watching "Celebrity Rehab," and during one of the counseling sessions, one of the guys (a reality star, can't recall his name), said that he had unresolved anger towards his abusive mother, and cited a painful experience with his eye glasses. When he was a child, his mother refused to pay the extra money for wire rims, and forced him to wear the cheap plastic frames, which caused him to be bullied in school. When I heard that, I sat with my mouth open. My mother did that to me, and I had forgotten it. When I was 12, and needed glasses. M refused to let me have the wire rims, and forced me to wear the cheap plastic cat-eye glasses. I too, was picked on in school. I stopped wearing the glasses, and spent years walking around squinting. This may be why I had forgotten this episode. I resolved it in my own way.
The reason I bring this up, is that once I was reminded of this, I started to remember other small events in my childhood, that at the time confused me, but didn't feel like abuse. And none of these things would seem like abuse to other people. If you told someone about the eyeglass thing, the average person would simply assume that the parent didn't have the money, when in fact it was a deliberate attempt to humiliate the child.
I wonder if this is a conscious effort on the part of the N parent, to make the abuse appear benign, and spread it out over several years. It makes them look like normal, even good parents, while our souls are slowly being destoyed.
