I grew up in a psychologically abusive home. My mother is a narcissist, in the clinical sense, and my dad was an enabler. When they fought, it was long and drawn out -- sometimes they'd be in shouting matches for WEEKS...seeming only to stop when Dad would pass out drunk, then resume the next day. I learned about sex when I overheard my mom freaking out when my dad confessed to cheating.
One of my earliest memories is of my mom downing a bottle of painkillers in an attempt to kill herself after my dad hit her, and of watching my father squeezing his hands around my older brother's neck, after my brother tried to defend my mom.
The first time my mom told me she wished she'd never had me, I was in kindergarten. She's referred to me as "bitch" to my aunts since fifth grade.
Her style of parenting was fire and brimstone "Christianity." She instilled the fear of judgment day, and cobbled together fundie rhetoric she got from forums she lurked on. She tried to convince us she was a mouthpiece of Jesus, that she knew what we children were thinking because He would tell her.
When we upset her, she would make a big show of packing her bags and leaving. If she didn't do that, she'd pretend to have a psychotic episode and throw things and scream gibberish. When she calmed down she warned us about in the Bible it says children can abuse their parents. She told us we were parent abusers. It's still disturbing to think about now as an adult.
My dads methods were more straight forward. Bellowing in our faces, "spanking" (they left bruises, so idk if that actually counts)
We were homeless from 2004-2006, couch surfing and grifting. My parents took advantage of their friends' kindness and what could I even do? I was 11. I knew it was wrong of my dad to pretend he couldn't find work, and it embarrassed me, but I was powerless to do anything about it.
The worst part is that she claims that I made this up. Luckily i have siblings who recall the same shit but it means no one in my extended family actually believes this happened.
I've grown and left that place, and my moms boyfriend finally convinced her to get therapy (she told me raising us abusive kids gave her PTSD) and so she's less flat out psycho but she's still awful.
I've never told anyone in my life the whole story. And I'm still leaving out things in the interest of maintaining a pretense of anonymity. She told me if I ever told anyone and she found out, I would "regret it." It still scares me, what she might mean by that.
To this day I'm still, on some level, terrified of my parents. No one, not even the man I'm marrying in four weeks, knows how scared I am of my mother and father.