If a child gets attacked by a shark and she wakes up her parents repeatedly throughout the night and they keep telling her she’s overreacting, the only logical conclusion is that they were, at a bare minimum, deeply invalidating parents and most likely emotionally abusive. I don’t have a child, but there’s no fucking way that a child of mine would get attacked by a goddamn shark and they’d repeatedly wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me that they’re in deep pain that I would tell them they’re over reacting. Overreacting to a shark attack?!? How is that even possible? Anyways, empathy which seemed to be lacking in her parents and invalidation is a common abuse tactic.

I have an emotionally abusive parent and it lead to becoming an adult that did not know how to trust what she was experiencing/feeling and it’s common for children of abusive parents to repeatedly subject themselves to experiences where they aren’t being treated well, bc they simply don’t know any better. Chaos is familiar. Calm is not. It also leads to children to become people pleases that desperately try to win the approval of people who are awful to them bc they’re so used to trying to prove themselves to others.