Emotional invalidation

I think one reason it took so long for me to realize our mother has been invalidating our emotions thoughts and judgement despite our having access to resources on abuse, is because descriptions of invalidation were scarce.
(And I believe articles understate how much positive caring attention the abuser can give you, which of course does not in any way affect the negative.
Or how they wrap it up in "you're being unreasonable" bullshit.)

Whenever you assert that you know yourself better than them, they'll tell you that you're just wiggling out of responsibility or some crap.

Here's the first article that I saw which covered the emotional aspect:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/gaslighting-is-an-abuse-tactic/
(This article on gaslighting made emotional invalidation clear to us, and we've since learned that "gaslighting" is probably not the right term for our experience.)

Another important line from that article is "Abuse is a pattern." It's not one big specific event, it's many subtle events over time, while each one alone seems reasonable. Which makes it all the harder to see or feel what's happening.

A particularly insidious theme our mother pulled on us was
"You often look for reasons to dislike me, don't you?"

But not so obvious, not so sharp, not so directly stated. Usually.
It didn't seem extreme enough to qualify as abusive, especially as she is quite accommodating in most other areas.

The rule of thumb seems to be, if you are really worried you're a bad guy in a relationship, then you're probably watching yourself too closely to be that bad of a guy. You're probably grumpy, but who'd expect you not to be pretty miffed by now?

What's a general sign look for? I hope to be helpful but I am not at all an expert. Maybe:

You set out intending to politely discuss your feelings or worries and expecting the other person to be reasonable and fair, and by the end you're convinced that you are fully responsible for whatever is going badly.

Coupled with a general resentment of them.

Also, I... guess I should accept that the mild plurality I experience is very likely in large part a result of her and others' mistreatment (maybe autism & trans stuff too idk). I think some of us are reeling at the revelation that she's worse than any of us believed.