Originally posted by crazy_grrluk:
mental abuse stays with you for life. one learns to live with it... and then something will trigger the memories off.. it could be an action or the way something was said.. then you regress back into your own little world
I agree with you that it never leaves. It really just goes to sleep and can come back with the right trigger. How bad that flashback is depends on how well you dealt with it in the past. If you don't deal with it, it will deal with you.

One other thing. I think one thing that makes mental worse than physical abuse, is that even we who have gone through it tend to minimize it. Even we tend to think someone getting beat up is worse, and we should just be thankful we didn't experience that.

When it is pushed down and made out to be not such a big deal we can set ourselves up for a big fall.