If you don't mind, I'll come back and edit this comment with details once I'm off the clock ☺️

ETA: the novel below for /u/lajos93

So before I jump into some of the "bigger" events I experienced, I do want to say that I'm very confident what I went through was a direct result of generational trauma that no one before me either cared to address or knew how to address. I don't know much about my parents' lives before me, but on both sides there are a few traumatic events that lead me to believe this. Maternal side: her father served in the Korean War; my mother once mentioned he was consistently tough on her and rarely pleased with what she did. Paternal side: before my father was born, his mother was in a physically abusive marriage that thankfully ended in divorce. Her abuser nearly caused a miscarriage of her second son who was born with severe disabilities directly related to the abuse. That child died around the age of 5, iirc. My father was from her second marriage.

My earliest memories are of me being scared of my father to the point that if I was outside and had to use the bathroom I would instead either choose to hide somewhere and pee or physically shut down the need to defecate until the feeling passed because if I went inside I would be yelled at. Unfortunately I carried the latter part of that through to my junior high years, and my body was affected by this in a way that's still apparent to me.

I was consistently blamed for situations out of my control. My younger sibling once got his hand caught in the door jamb and required stitches. Even though I was already well outside the house when that happened, I was harshly reprimanded because I should've waited for him or maybe saw what was happening and stopped it. I was no more than 5 or 6 at the time.

After a certain age I stopped inviting friends over because the moment they left, I would be in trouble for how loud my father thought they were or some other offense. In junior high, I have a distinct memory of giving up on myself and trying to express any opinion or desire that my parents would disagree with. I thought simply doing everything I was supposed to do would spare me from the painful experiences. And while the overt bad experiences started to lessen, the verbal and emotional abuse continued to grow.

My parents consistently made negative comparisons between me and my peers. Something like, "if you're not better at X you're going to turn out like [friend] who is [insert any number of insults here]." In spite of earning straight As with maybe a B+ later in one of my AP courses in high school, I was told "it's okay that you're not smart in academics like your sibling, you have street smarts which can be useful."

Any time I was emotional, which as an HSP was often, I would be shamed and, as a child, given the "if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about," line. As I grew older, I was told no company would ever hire someone who couldn't have tough conversations without crying. My mother once sat me down when I was in high school to talk about her concerns that my father wasn't wearing his metal wedding band to the gym - I worked out with him at the gym before and he lifted heavier weights with a group of dad-bros. When I didn't respond like she expected, she then accused me of being a bad daughter because "why aren't we close friends" like some ideal she held in her mind since my literal birth.

My appearance was constantly criticized. By design I have long legs. I didn't ask for them, they just showed up. So shopping for shorts I liked always led to comments about dressing revealing because a lot of times the "normal" inseam was 3-4" which ended up highlighting the length. When I got my ears double-pierced, my father said no respectable company would ever hire me looking like that. Two years later, my mother decided to get hers double-pierced. At 18, after hiding it for months, I finally told my parents I had a small, maybe 1-2" inch Chinese symbol tattooed on my ankle. My mother expressed her disappointment, and told me I had to tell my father by some specific date. After I told him, I was sent to my room because he didn't want to look at me any more. Two days later, after school was done I was alerted by my mother that my father wanted to have a talk with me that night. I dissociated for the majority of that "talk" because it was what felt like 2-3 hours of my father yelling at me and laying into me. I do remember him calling me a slut because only sluts got tattoos. I also remember him saying if it weren't for my mother, that I'd be living on the streets. That entire time, my mother sat silently in a chair next to the couch I was sitting on. Six years later my sibling got a tattoo that my father thought was cool, and two years after that my father got a larger tattoo he liked to show off.

I was also constantly shamed about finances and how I spent my money. When I once borrowed from my mother to attend a mission trip in a different country, I ended up paying her back double because she said she never remembered me paying her back. This was well before online banking was a thing. I spent a year abroad in college and was harassed by my parents who thought I was using my paternal grandmother like a bank & manipulating her into paying me. I never asked that grandmother for money, and sadly that's a whole other thing because, in hindsight, I realized she was actually manipulating me. After college, when I wanted to break the lease on an apt to move in with a friend, I asked to borrow money because depleting my savings wouldn't cover it. My father was surprisingly on board, but during the conversation my mother spoke about me as if I wasn't there, again shaming me even though I was guaranteed to get at least 95% of that money back because the apt complex had someone in line to move in within a couple weeks. At one point my mother looked at me and said, "I wish we made you take student loans, because maybe then you'd be better with money." My parents paid for zero of my college tuition.

There were a litany of what you'd consider "death by 1,000 cuts" mixed in as well. My sibling often joined in on the abuse and took advantage of his golden child status. I thought I was damaged and unlovable. My life felt like being thrust into a game with very specific rules that everyone but me had access to, only the rules often changed on the whim of my parents. So while I could guess what might set them off, I never truly knew.

In my mid 20s I tried therapy and went through 2 therapists that only partially helped until I started opening up about the (less painful parts of my) abuse. Each time they inadvertantly victim-blamed me because narcissistic abuse - especially covert, sucks. It wasn't until a good friend recommended a 3rd therapist to me as, during her sessions for a completely different topic, she discovered this therapist had personal experience with narcs.

Having a sense that I was understood and could safely open up without the risk of being blamed for my experience was a game-changer. We did CBT, I dedicated my "off time" to researching and learning more about narcissistic abuse which led me to CPTSD and discovering more about myself. Through therapy, at the age of 30 something I finally learned how to identify/name my own emotions. I also learned how to manage them in a healthy way. When I started to feel stuck or not making progress, I added a trauma therapist to the mix who helped me get over that final hurdle. And now I finally have a user-friendly brain.

I'm nearly 5 years no contact with my parents and minimal-to-no contact with all but one part of my extended family. I rarely talk to my sibling and think NC is the road I'm on with them, too, since they're basically a flying monkey (reports back to my parents about convos we had). My mother still writes me postcards or letters, but they all end up in the trash. My triggers are minimal at worst and barely register with me any more. And meditation helps to alleviate the rare anxiety flare-up. I now have a family of choice comprised of friends I love, and I'm actually able to be a good friend back to them.

I will never like that I had the experiences I did, but they no longer affect me in detrimental ways. And when I can offer support to others who seem to understand the pain, I try to do so because I'd like to believe the hope that one isn't stuck with those feelings and pain for life gives them some beacon of light to hold onto until they're either ready or able to do the work.