To spank or not to spank?

[MTL]

Warning:  this post may be triggering to some.

---

My Dad hit me with a belt.

It was frequent.
It was severe.

It was administered with you laying face-down over the side of their bed,
bare-assed, and you had to keep count.
The most I remember is 25.

If I covered my backside with my hands,
he'd hit my hands anyway,
and when I rolled onto my back,
the strike would fall just as impartially across exposed genitals.

I always wondered if he would have done that to a boy.
I guess it's ok to hit female bits.

Then you'd be sent to your room for the evening,
go without supper, have privileges revoked,
and be grounded, ON TOP of the physical punishment.

Now, my parents were dutiful and responsible,
they thought they were doing the right thing.

They never hit me with anything hard that would leave permanent damage,
and I never had broken bones or a black eye or anything like that.

I also know religion played a major role;
"spare the rod, spoil the child".

Maybe the connection I draw between the physical punishment
and my depression is not justified.

I do acknowledge that it is entirely possible I may have had issues, as an adult, anyway;
maybe I'm neurologically predisposed to it, I don't know.

But I know how it made me feel, at the time,
and I know I still feel that way, today.

I basically have no self-worth, although I try to act like someone who respects herself.

What the physical punishment taught me that my body is not really my own;

that it is outrageously presumptuous for me to think I deserve dignity,
when I so obviously deserve to be hit, and to be shamed.

---

Sympathies. Isn't that always the way. We all have childhood psych scars. Yours from that behavior, mine from other parent behavior.

Thanks, and my sympathies to you as well.