Seasonal Affective Disorder is just emotional scurvy, all my core wounds are reopening and they won’t be fixed until the big lemon in the sky comes back
While I do believe that spanking is physical abuse, I didn’t think it really affected me or was a big deal, but now I’m realizing that every time I make a mistake I feel I deserve to be hurt, I feel like I’m supposed to hurt myself and even kinda crave to be hurt, as if being hurt or even killed would absolve me. It makes me incapable of empathizing with myself and seeing myself as a human that made mistakes, or that mistakes are a natural part of life. I see my very existence as unacceptable and defective when I make mistakes. No dignity, no understanding. I am not supposed to make mistakes at all and making mistakes makes me unworthy of any grace.
It also makes me not able to think about mistakes I make objectively but just see them as intrinsically *bad* and *painful*. Like a dog trained with a shock collar. The meaning behind why things are bad is completely emptied and replaced with pain and shame. The why doesn’t actually matter at all.
I expect no forgiveness or understanding, I expect harm. And because it was done to me when I was too young to control myself or do things intentionally, I view things I do accidentally as somehow intentional and morally despicable.
I did a fast Google search for spanking and mental health and look what came right up:
Basically if you were spanked you feel significantly more emotional pain in response to making mistakes and you are less likely to do things that would lead to positive outcomes or pleasure or enjoy such things.
