@naturegirl5 I’m much improved, but still have a lot of work to do. I realize that I will probably never be “emotionally normal” because the emotional scars left by the trauma cut so deeply in my personal views of myself. I was constantly told that I was less than I should be, a useless waste of humanity and many other wonderful quotes from my father. My Mom didn’t put me down all the time, but she never said a word to my father, and seemed to encourage the physical abuse and ignored the sexual abuse. She never seemed to hear me sobbing at night. I felt so guilty about cutting my parents out of my life, as I was constantly manipulated to believe that no matter what was done to me, that I owed them respect and love. It took a lot of convincing by my psychiatrist to realize that I needed to love myself, and stand up for my emotional needs. She had me write letters to them - laying out exactly what they did to me, and the miracle it was that I survived it and made a life for myself - despite their attempts to prevent it. I told them that I was going to be protecting myself from their actions going forward, and would no longer take their calls or allow them in my home. As you can imagine they blew up my phone with constant phone calls, which I refused to answer, and my father came to the house several times and would pound on the door for quite a while before giving up. That stopped when I yelled through the door that the police were on their way. So after a few months things calmed down. It’s now been 18 years since I cut them out of my life. I am emotionally more stable and have stopped having panic attacks. In other words I have a good life now.