Wow - talk about opening a door to the past. I stumbled upon a journal on DeviantART titled 'Why I Oppose Spanking', and man: this person really, really hit the nail on the head for me in ways the title does not elucidate. I feel that sharing this with you here is important, and may incite interesting and helpful threads of discussion and contemplation in others of like sentiment.

I have some baggage to drop off here, so if you are triggered by abuse, belittlement, or childhood discipline, I warn you here.

I highly, highly recommend you read the journal first: http://eternalgeekexposed.deviantart.com/art/Why-I-oppose-spanking-393017463

This is what I wrote in response.

"Holy crap.... you are so amazingly eloquent, it makes my skin crawl. The points you have made all strike a deep chord in me, and I can relate to them on a level that I didn't think was even there originally. Your exploration into the future consequences of those past incidences of spanking is just chilling to me, as I feel very similarly in my own conditioned responses in life; avoiding responsibility and fessing up, even if the transgression was innocent, self-defeating behavior (which has limited my potential for growth in a lot of ways, sabotaging my own efforts to progress without even thinking about it), and feeling that violence and humiliation, punishment, is deserved. In all honesty, I was certainly one of those kids that became violent when truly desperate, or when I knew I could get away with it, finding a dark pleasure in lashing out at others, to give them what I had been given myself.

I grew up in a household where, while I actually don't remember spanking as a frequent occurrence (might be blocking those memories out, not sure), one had to walk on eggshells to appease my father. I learned to avoid situations where I was to be responsible for an act, just so I could avoid the punishment should that responsibility be executed incorrectly. My father was very very poor at giving directions, and when he wanted me or my sisters to do something, he would not teach us; he would just say, 'get it done'; he set us up for failure most times, just because we were meant to figure out how to execute the task to his standards by pure intuition and prior knowledge. And I learned to be afraid to ask him how to do something, because he would become very, very angry and frustrated. I would interpret that to mean that I wasn't smart enough to read his mind or able to execute the task flawlessly to his expectations on the first go. These tasks would range from everyday chores, to helping him fixing machinery, to sanding buoys, to using tools properly, to executing larger tasks on our own with only his initial command to go on, and too much fear to ask further on how to do what he asked properly.

He would mostly instill obedience by screaming out threats, screaming out shame, through sheer fear-inducing presence and display (he is a very tall and physically capable person, hardened by hard work and a lifetime of abuse and physical pain himself), sometimes throwing things at me, and one time kicking in the bottom panel of a hardwood, very thick door out of blind rage. He was, and still is, frankly terrifying when he is angry, and the constant threat of that impending anger seeped into my very being, sculpting the behaviors I work to shift today.

The worse thing is, none of my sisters or I would know when a tirade would strike, or what would set him off. It could be a chore that we hadn't yet gotten to, but were about to start with all honesty in the next minute, or a task that was actually done just fine a few days ago, but would be deemed inadequate today. He would scream at us for two hours straight in blind rage even if it were a minor transgression, and violence was never far away, even if we weren't physically hurt (sometimes we were).

I remember the point where I finally broke and gave in to his constant questions of 'why did you do this/not do that/make things hard for your mother and the family', where I began to reply out of sheer exasperation, through choking sobs, 'because I'm stupid, lazy, and need to learn better, and should know better.' I thought that this was the response my dad wanted, because I thought that that was the truth that he was trying to get out of me. I had gotten to the point of truly believing my answer, and had wanted to say it in the past, but was often too scared to even reply, fearing that whatever answer I gave would not suffice. And trust me, this answer didn't suffice either - it only made him more angry, because he thought me to be better than that. He wanted a specific answer, such as 'The bowl broke because I was trying to put too many away at once and they toppled out of my arms' (true story), though I never felt that those answers were the ones he wanted, because he would always still be really angry afterward, and never gave me full closure on the incident. His anger would just dissipate, and leave me feeling like it was just bubbling under the surface for another accident to trigger. And he was only trying to do what he knew to do to help discipline me and my sisters - he was asking 'why did you do this' in the way any other parent might, but through a terrifically horrifying filter of rage and frustration.

Wow...I wasn't expecting to type so much here. Your story truly struck a note with me, and I cannot thank you enough for writing what you have. It speaks so many volumes....so many volumes. Thank you. <3 You have inadvertently helped me begin to identify and work through my own issues through sharing your own experiences. Your words are indispensable. <3 Thank you."