One first big step I took was just acknowledging that it happened. I did go through all that embarrassment, people did think badly of me or feel bad for me but were unable to do anything. One thing that helped was finding other survivors of similar types of abuse or neglect. Also, the concept of radical acceptance, I think, was one key thing that really helped me work through everything that happened. No matter how bad things are or have been, accepting your situation will ease some of the suffering.

But I didn't figure it out in hindsight, really. It was more figuring things out as they were happening because I didn't leave my abusers until later on in life. Because hygiene is so tied up with trauma in my family, it gets used against you. This is one example, the bathroom in my old house isn't really functional. There aren't any faucets, so you have to take wrench to get running water any time you need to take a shower. My dad will hide the wrench to stop my siblings from leaving the house, even to go to school or work, not just out to socialize. Sometimes they end up leaving the house anyway, if it's really important, but they will have to go through the embarrassment of being outside without having taken a shower. He doesn't apologize or even act like he didn't mean for things to turn out that way. He will shame you for having been in that embarrassing situation and try to convince you other people look down on you.

My mom went through the same type of abuse I did and my dad did too I think but to a lesser degree. My mom was kept dirty as a way to shame her and then she married my dad who is also abusive and he saw that hygiene was a sore spot and made it hard for her to start to become a more "normal" person once they were married and kept her shame alive with verbal abuse. I have a feeling that when adults don't go from early bad hygiene to a normal hygiene as they get older sometimes it has to do with not ever leaving abuse. They marry into it or end up in friendships that are actually toxic.

All of it is really bizarre but I found that I could still see my story as viable because I kept being exposed to similar stories online. There are many subreddits and many other places online where people discuss abuse and the specific things that they went through and all of them are doubting that it even happened. I did too, but in the end I'm more at peace with myself when I tell myself it was real, it happened and I need to accept it before I can move on and try to have a life outside of the abuse I experienced early in life. And I'm in my late twenties...