I grew up in the ‘50s with no father and an alcoholic mother, so of course there was lots of verbal abuse. I was easy prey for bullying at school since divorce was rare in those years. I went to college with almost no self esteem and was a fish out of water. I started in my mid-30s.
It took me between 300 and 400 hour long sessions of talk therapy over about 7 years, but I really did it. The first big insight was that parts of me liked the anger (there was a payoff). Then I could begin exploring which parts got what payoff and why they thought it was good.
The biggest obstacle was just believing it possible, which kept me from starting for years. I hope your journey to this goal won’t be so long, but don’t underestimate the difficulty. Obviously one needs help from at least a higher power or a therapy group or both.
