Hey there! Welcome to the forum!
You wrote: I have had a very hard time accepting that I didn't get what I needed emotionally growing up and that it made me vulnerable to abuse. I couldn't accept that for many years because I was brought up to know that asking for anything or needing attention or to be heard was selfish and that I was being ungrateful if I thought my parents didn't give me all I needed.
That's been the theme of my most current struggles. However, I'm kind of glossing over how it's made me vulnerable to more abuse. I've been really grieving not having gotten what I really should have and then suffering the feelings of shame and guilt for longing for things like, oh, unconditional love, guidance, an open ear and mind, a caring figure to help make sense of the world and my emotions while assuring me the world is a safe and good place. It's really damaging to start one's journey the way we were forced to--relying on ourselves to make meaning of the world, deciding all of the scariness, confusion, abuse is of our own making and that people are not to be trusted.
I've been crying over the loss, which is good, grieving is good. But I've also found myself jumping right back into the old ways of coping--blaming myself for wanting too much, telling myself that I'm ugly, stupid, a loser, and that I'll never learn to take care of myself properly. Those "tapes" keep starting up and playing over and over and over. They're hard to ignore.